After some mixed advice from different sources, my wife and I decided to ride out of Grygla, MN, for Saturday, March 15. We arrived at Motel 89 late Friday night, so the owner just left our room unlocked with the keys on the coffee table. I guess 9:30 pm is pretty late for some people, so we only unloaded our bags and left the snowmobiles on the trailer. We appeared to be the only guests that night.

Saturday morning came and when I went to check out at 8:15 am, I think I got the owner out of bed. I don’t know what I’d do with 11 hours of sleep, as 6 is the norm, and 7 is a luxury. Anyway, the owner was a nice older man who told us we could leave our rig parked right where we were, hogging most of his smallish lot. He gave us a trail map, that would later serve as a useful supplement to the two we already had.

We hit the trail right across the street from the motel at about 8:30 am. It was the start of the first real trial of our new (to us) snowmobiles. A short ways up the trail, along a big dike that stretched for miles, was a warming shelter. We stopped, looked inside, took a photo, and were on our way again.





The dike we were riding along provided a wide, flat, fast, and smooth trail.

After a few more miles of forest roads, we came to where the trail crosses the Morehouse Road, within Beltrami Island State Forest. At this point, the trail had been re-routed and had been freshly dozed through a swamp. There was a too-small-to-be-measured dusting of random flakes on top of a trail made of dirt clumps, stumps, tree branches, and sticks. A sizeable berm of like material made the edges of the trail with willows, brush, and trees on the other side. It was the most horrible trail conditions one could imagine. I tried to get off the trail and parallel it a few times, but that proved ineffective. If I wasn’t getting stuck in the loose snow that swamps seem to attract, I was resorting to run over 2-inch diameter trees while dodging the 4-inch trees. It was the trail or nothing, and we were past the point of no return.





After 4 to 5 miles of that crap, we came to a proper trail again. I was so happy to get on some snow again, I squeezed triple digits out of the speedometer before backing off again. In short order, we were somewhat lost with poor trail conditions. We had missed an unsigned trail intersection, which we didn’t know at the time. This put us into an active logging area and then to a dead-end trail. After riding a section of gravel road back and forth a few times, we opted to take a OHV trail in the direction we thought we wanted to go. Luckily, this came out onto the snowmobile trail after a few miles and we were on our way again.

We got to Warroad and opted to find the fuel station before finding lunch. The trail just kind of stops being marked at the edge of Warroad, so we didn’t really know where to go. Luckily, a couple riding Arctic Cats helped us out and led us to the Springsteel Resort before continuing on their way. We had a good burger and Coke. We talked with a local, who suggested some places we might ride and ways to avoid “Hell Swamp” on the way back.

After lunch, we decided that the day was nice and sunny, and we’d head north of the 49th parallel, across Lake of the Woods. My wife and I were caught somewhat off guard by the sheer amount of people on the lake. Ice fishing is a big deal up there. I’ve seen lots of people ice fishing before, but not quite like this. There were thousands of people spread out for miles in every direction.

The trails were very well marked on the lake. A stake was placed about every 50 yards and evergreen trees were drilled into the ice near intersections an points where caution was to be exercised.








Pressure ridges ran for miles and showed the power of expanding ice. One trail had been consumed by a pressure ridge and we were forced to detour from our originally intended route. It wasn’t a big deal, as we weren’t really on a set schedule, anyway. An ice road was rendered useless to automotive traffic by the heaving ice, also.





We hit the terra firma of the Northwest Angle after approximately 20 miles on the big lake. We rode a twisty trail that had the best snow conditions we had seen all day. We stopped to enjoy the nice weather and take a few photos. The temperature was probably in the mid-20s, but the power of the late winter sun was very apparent.








A little further and we hit the Polaris Trail. At the intersection of the Polaris Trail and the Allan Hetteen Trail was a sign that I thought deserved a photo.





We then took the Hetteen trail east, back out to the lake and rode the Angle’s shoreline to another warming house, where we stopped and signed the guestbook.





There was a sand point there, and since it was such a nice day, my wife decided to relax on a piece of driftwood on the beach. Notice the sand near her toes.





An uneventful ride back across the lake ended in another fuel stop in Warroad.

The trip back southward through Beltrami Island State Forest was much better than the northward trip had been. We avoided the logging area, gravel road, and dead end trail, as the trail was marked much better in that direction. We planned our route on forest roads to avoid the re-routed swamp trail and were racing the setting sun in order to make it in the daylight. The route-finding for the first mile or so was made easier by following the tracks left by a previous snowmobiler who obviously knew where they were going. The snow conditions were mostly poor for that stretch, but considerably better than the stump-jumping we had been doing earlier. The dike trail provided a place to see the century mark on the speedometer one last time for the season. We arrived back in Grygla about 7:30 pm, loaded up, and headed out.

We put on 240 miles for the day. In hindsight, we should have just stayed in Warroad. We would have had better snow conditions all day, rode better trails, and been able to relax and enjoy the ride a lot better.

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