The Timber-Frear is located about 15 miles northwest of Tofte in Superior National Forest. If you make the trek, consider extending your trip to explore additional camping, hiking, paddling, and fishing opportunities in the area. The route is about 10 miles long and can be explored as a day trip.
For Women’s History Month, we’re spotlighting women conservationists and environmental stewards who have contributed to preserving forests, wilderness areas, and cultural history in Northern Minnesota. Their efforts and activism helped shape the modern conservation movement and led the way for sustainable practices.
A four-person paddling crew will tackle 1,200 miles of historic routes between Minnesota and Canada. Their journey will take them from Grand Portage on Lake Superior to York Factory on Hudson Bay this summer and is expected to take 85 days. Through their journey, they aim to inspire young women and girls while advocating for gender equality in paddlesports.
New kiosks are appearing in ranger stations, state parks, and local businesses along Minnesota’s North Shore, making it easier for visitors to connect with the region’s cultural, natural, and environmental history.
The Superior National Forest and stakeholders who care about the BWCA collaborate on topics including forest stewardship, visitor use, fire management, impacts and restrictions…
Grand Marais printmaker Nan Onkka finds inspiration in the northwoods: “The beauty, the rawness, the timelessness of the wilderness is so totally different from agricultural landscapes or urban recreational areas. I think everyone deserves the chance to experience that, and I hope that we are able to continue to protect the waters and the woods of these wild places.”
Two new podcasts explore hot topics from Superior National Forest, the Boundary Waters and Quetico. In-depth interviews and key experts talk about everything from the challenges of wind and wilderness tripping, to this year’s ‘go-live’ day for BWCA permits.
Each year the Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness receives thousands of submissions…
One artist’s view of our impact on a place casts light on the wilderness nearby.
“An infinitesimal speck in the cosmos, I stood on the shore of Gunflint Lake beneath a great white pine-matriarch of a fast vanishing tribe. And I knew I was home. I was twenty-one. The year was 1927.”
An influential advocate for protecting northern Minnesota’s natural treasures, instrumental in Voyageurs National Park and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area we know today.
“I could hear the ice shattering like panes of glass as it came ashore… One moment you can see an endless expanse of skim ice and with a shift of the wind it can be gone, waves lapping the shoreline – sculpting ice as far as the eye can see.”
She delights in discovering the wildflowers of the Boundary Waters and was instrumental in the Chik-Wauk Museum and Nature Center. Betty’s passion for the beauty of life on the Gunflint Trail…
On August 5, 2020 we lost a wilderness legend. An ambassador to the backcountry, a passionate voice for Quetico Provincial Park, a trailblazer, a source of knowledge, a true hero. “What …
“Bud is one of our greatest and least recognized heroes. A giant figure in the battle for the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness…”
“As twilight descended and the fire settled to glowing embers, the stillness of the night was shattered by the unmistakable tremolo of the common loon. Within moments, loons from other territories and adjacent lakes began to respond, and the air came to life with the reverberating echo that we long to hear…”
‘This Wild Land’ focuses on lessons from past wilderness advocates for people fighting modern threats.
What Wilderness Means to Me Series Submission: “Rocky shores, lakes, rivers, and waterfalls, full moon paddles and islands alone, Boundary Waters you are my throne. Great wilderness of untold stories, nature is proof of your glory…”
“When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds…”
Photojournalist Ben Olson shares his trek to find Minnesota’s elusive lynx. “My obsession with Canada lynx stems from a series of unexpected events and chance encounters…”