A Good Read: “Gunflint Falling: Blowdown in the Boundary Waters”
8-minute read
Canoeists everywhere—especially wilderness canoeists—will appreciate reading Gunflint Falling: Blowdown in the Boundary Waters by Cary J. Griffith. It'll hit home, whether we’ve been anywhere near that type of event or not.
By “event” I mean a catastrophic weather event. But it could equally mean any natural event that wreaks havoc in wilderness areas.
If you’re like me, one of the questions that constantly runs through your mind while reading books like this is: “What if that had been me out there?”
Gunflint Falling
The Boundary Waters “Blowdown” storm of 1999 was a defining weather event for Minnesota’s canoe country wilderness. Cary’s book Gunflint Falling tells the stories of several rangers, rescue workers, outfitters and canoe trippers impacted by it.
NOTE: Cary’s love of the area prompted him to write this book (and another, mentioned below). He told me: “Ever since I first visited NE Minnesota (fifty-odd years ago) I have loved the area. Not just the Boundary Waters, though clearly it's a gem. But the entire North Shore, up the Gunflint Trail, the Ely area and the whole 3 million acres of the Superior National Forest that encompasses the place. The region's rugged beauty and remarkable scenery continue to stun and amaze.”
In a nutshell, the Blowdown was a storm that blew through the Boundary Waters on the afternoon of July 4th, 1999. Straight-line winds in excess of 100 miles an hour (called a derecho, I learned) flattened 30 million trees across nearly half a million acres.
Its magnitude wasn’t predicted and because most of the damage was in wilderness, it was several days before the rest of Minnesota realized how severe it had been. Neither Ely nor Grand Marais, the main entry towns for BWCA canoe trippers, experienced the worst of the storm, so even the folks there didn’t grasp the full extent of it at first.
I took this photo after another BWCA storm, not the Blowdown—but this is what huge swaths of the Boundary Waters forest looked like after July 4, 1999
Gunflint Falling introduces us to several canoe trip groups, rangers, outfitters and area residents and follows their stories before, during and after the storm. It offers details of the rescue operation, along with incident reports. And it gets into details of the weather event itself—why it wasn’t predicted and what made it so destructive.
Even with quite a lot of personal history with this storm (without actually being in it), I wasn’t aware of many of the details Cary includes in his book. So it was hard for me to put down. Reading the stories of those directly involved was enthralling—in a sort of horror-struck way.
Getting into people’s own experiences is always the best way to learn history, even when that history is within our lifetimes. I have several friends (also Boundary Waters lovers) who’ve read this book too and would join me in recommending it to anyone who loves canoe culture and wilderness, no matter where in the world you live.
Gunflint Burning
Before Gunflint Falling, Mr. Griffith wrote Gunflint Burning: Fire in the Boundary Waters. I haven’t read that one yet, but it’s on order.
The scene behind the book is one of my photos from late summer 2007—the fireweed is already blooming among the burned trees
Although he wrote Burning first, the events described—a wildfire that swept through the BWCA in 2007—occurred a few years after the Blowdown. It burned just under 76,000 acres in the Boundary Waters and in Canada’s Quetico wilderness next door.
The fire wasn’t unexpected. All those downed trees from ’99 provided almost 500,000 acres of prime firewood, rangers knew. Combined with a few successive dry summers and just the right unfortunate circumstances, the result was the Ham Lake Fire.
Thankfully the fire started at the beginning of May, well before the Boundary Waters is busy with canoeists—not over a holiday weekend.
Other wildfires have occurred in the Boundary Waters since the Blowdown, but this one has been the biggest to date.
My Personal History with the Blowdown and Ham Lake Fire
My family and I live in the Twin Cities in Minnesota and are “regulars” on the North Shore of Lake Superior, the popular harbor town of Grand Marais, and the Gunflint Trail, which took the full brunt of the Blowdown (hence the title, Gunflint Falling).
We weren’t up in our favorite campground that particular day, but we could’ve been. We’ve spent many July 4th weekends up there enjoying the northwoods. My husband and I each had many Boundary Waters canoe trips behind us before we met and married.
The summer the Blowdown happened we had three kids aged five, three and one. So I was a busy mom looking after active children, not paying too much attention to the event until later. But when the Ham Lake Fire occurred in ‘07 we all followed that story continually.
Both events became personal pretty quickly.
My husband and father-in-law drove up with chainsaws the week after the Blowdown to help clear trees at the campground we frequent. A group of friends and I already had our permit for a girls’ canoe trip in August of that summer (while the Forest Service didn’t issue new permits after the storm, those who already had them were allowed in).
The campsite we chose for our couple of nights was crisscrossed with huge downed red pine trees. Teams had already cleared our portages since it was a popular route. But I remember us trying to hike along the lakeshore from our site, only to encounter a 15-foot pile of fallen trees on either side. They were everywhere we looked.
My sister and I at our Boundary Waters campsite in August 1999, sitting on one of the many fallen trees from the Blowdown
In 2007, I still remember the weekend I was up north in early May. The fire had just begun. I remember driving up the Gunflint Trail from Grand Marais one night after dark and seeing an eerie glow in the distance as we crested one of the big hills. We knew a wildfire had started, but of course couldn’t know how large it would become.
Crews were eventually able to get it under control before it spread to the area where “our” campground is located. Our friends there were ready to evacuate at any time though. Those further up the Gunflint Trail had already done so.
Towards the end of the Gunflint Trail later in summer 2007—scenes like this were everywhere
Even on a 2013 family canoe trip, we could clearly see the fire’s path from one lake to the next.
The effects of those two events are still evident in many areas, although the forest recovers remarkably fast. And there have been more similar events, though smaller. And again, the question: “What if that had been me out there? What would I do?”
Ways to Prepare for Wilderness Catastrophes
We have a lot of content here on Bending Branches about paddling safety. Most of it is focused on paddling safety—dressing for immersion, bringing an emergency kit, wearing your PFD, checking the forecast, et cetera.
But preparing for these kinds of massive uncontrollable events is a whole different animal. Preparation has to begin—as with any potential emergency situation anywhere—with the awareness that these things can and do happen.
Wilderness First Aid certification is a great idea for anyone who regularly enjoys backcountry canoe trips. A fully stocked First Aid Kit is a must. I always appreciate going on trips with friends and/or family members whose day job is in the medical field.
Educating ourselves about what to do in weather events, lightning, a medical emergency or other events is very wise. Part of that education is reading books like these that tell us what those people did in their situations.
One of the major takeaways for me while reading Cary’s book was the generosity and dedication of so many people—official and unofficial—that helped in any way they could. Many worked tirelessly to get help, provide care for the injured, search campsites, clear portages and everything else required.
The reality is (and this is brought home very well in Gunflint Falling) that risk is part of wilderness canoe tripping. The EMTs won’t be there immediately. We’re on our own for hours at minimum, possibly days before help can reach us. “What if it had been me out there?”
Storm clouds on one of our many trips up the Gunflint Trail, sometime in the early 2000s
Check out the links below ("More for you") for more blogs about paddling with risk. (One of them includes the story of a personal friend who was in the Boundary Waters that infamous July 4th weekend with three of his kids.)
Gunflint Falling is published by University of Minnesota Press. You can buy your copy there or at your favorite bookseller. Learn more about author Cary J. Griffith and all his books on his website.
Sharon Brodin is Bending Branches’ content writer who sometimes enjoys writing blogs from her own perspective for a personal touch. Photos courtesy of Sharon Brodin. Book cover images courtesy of University of Minnesota Press.
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