About the Border Route

I am going to use our travel days to tell you about the trails we will be hiking. Today is the Border Route Trail (BRT). The map above is clickable to make it larger. On the big map I haven't colored any lines, but the thumbnail isn't really useful without some aid! The blue line is the Border Route. Red is the portion of the SHT that we are doing on this hike, and yellow is the Grand Portage Trail.

We are not hiking the entire BRT. It actually extends farther east and then joins the Grand Portage Trail to go all the way to the tip of the Minnesota Arrowhead at Grand Portage. But the SHT comes in about 1/3 of the way to the west, and the North Country Trail (NCT) uses that route.

The Border Route is an historic trail, that almost faded into oblivion. The current trail was re-established/built beginning in 1970 by a group that called themselves the Minnesota Rovers. They still do most of the maintenance work on the trail. It was the first long, non-motorized trail in Minnesota.

Many sections of the route follow old portages of the Voyageurs. The trail is now almost entirely within the Superior National Forest, part of which is in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness

See The Blog Plan for the Arrowhead Hike