The Mississippi River between downtown Minneapolis and Fort Snelling in Saint Paul flows through a gorge formed by the retreat of Saint Anthony Falls, a retreat that took the falls 10,000 years to reach its current position, where it’s been entombed in concrete since the nineteenth century after some long dead idiot built a tunnel underneath it that—surprise surprise—collapsed. Next week, unless the rain is really dumping, I’m going to cover the same ground in two days, which, of course, is very impressive, though I don’t think I’ll have time to do additional gorge building.
There are paved trails skirting both bluff tops that you can pedal in a couple hours, but I’m going stay on foot and inside the gorge’s maw, as close to the water’s edge as possible. The gorge is in places surprisingly inaccessible and rugged--considering the many thousands of people living nearby--with small cliffs and steep banks. It’s a post-industrial landscape administered to by the National Park Service. The two greatest hazards of the hike are such: 1) falling off a bank into the river 2) being accosted by cantankerous homeless or drug addled individuals, most likely while camping.
I’m not too concerned about either, though, even considering the plenitude of crumbling shores and people making the gorge their summer home or chemical intake zone. I’ve hiked most all of it in pieces, but never continuously and never camping within. There are a handful of very fine camping spots, including a shallow sandstone cave perched over the muddy miss.
