1999
Seven Mile Creek (t14)
by Tom Marks
Even an ordinary hike in a county park can turn into an adventure. Seven Mile Creek, one of the area's finest parks, lies seven miles North of Mankato, Minnesota, along US 169 in Nicollet County. The park affords picnic grounds and substantial hiking trails in and around a beautiful, deep forested valley with a handsome trout stream flowing down the middle. Seven Mile Creek enters the Minnesota River a few hundred yards east of the highway near a public canoe access to the river.
Starting out about 4 pm on a Sunday afternoon early in November, I took loop #8 on the south side of the creek. I proceeded hastily up the valley with the intent of finding and exploring an unfamiliar spur trail, that I have noticed on previous occasions, as well as just plain getting some exercise. At the western end of the trail, I crossed the creek on the newly constructed bridge below the former Campfire Girl's camp and followed the trail back down the valley, this time on the north side of the creek. I met a mountain bicyclist. Overhead, geese seemed to laugh at the whole thing. Gunfire snapped in the woods beyond the park and a few dogs answered the report of the hunter's gun. I felt quite safe on the trail in my orange clothing. The trail crosses a variety of terrain and habitats: now flat, now hilly, lovely maple and oak woods, rock gardens, secluded meadows, hummocky, horsetail wet areas, and vistas of the beautiful and clear running Seven Mile Creek at every turn.
About half way down the trail, I came to loop #9, the objective of my hike. Since I intended to explore this new trail, I left the main trail and proceeded along #9. Signs warn of the difficulty of the trail and prohibit bikers from using it. I was prepared for a work out. As expected, the trail narrows and winds up hill through the woods until it comes to the rim of the valley. Here, the steep slope gives way to forest floor covered with a carpet of newly fallen leaves. No understory obstructs one's view and the area reminded me of a pleasant city park. Darkness was now quickly approaching but frequent trail markers reassured me that things were going well. Admittedly, at the start, the trail is more difficult than loop #8, but it afforded no particular challenge to a hiker like myself, certainly -- until it comes to a dead stop at the crest of a small ravine.
While the trail appeared to end abruptly, a trail marker on a large oak near me told me that I must be on the right path. With darkness so near, I did not particularly want to retreat along the way that I had come anyway, so I started down hill clinging to one tree after another to avoid slipping on what I still took to be the trace of a trail. I figured that once to the bottom, the trail would lead out along the side of ravine. But when I reached bottom, I could see no evidence of a trail anywhere. By now it was dark, and the hill I had just come down seemed a long way back up. So I decided to make my own trail, follow the ravine to Seven Mile Creek, pick up loop #8 and hike out.
The plan seemed simple enough but the ravine proved longer than I expected. I felt my way through deep cutbanks, under and over downfall, across boulders buried in the creek bed, around spurs and along washed-out slopes. Luckily, the autumn had been dry and almost no water lay in the sandy creek bed. The temperature was now beginning to drop and though I was dripping with sweat from all this bushwhacking, I was glad to have on my polypro zippered turtleneck. But my flannel shirt and fleecy-cotton blend running jacket were light and it began to cross my mind that my gear posed a threat should my progress be interrupted by unforeseen injury.
None too soon, I came to the mouth of the dry ravine and encountered Seven Mile Creek just as I intended. The only problem was that the ravine ends in a canyon with vertical sandstone on all sides but one, the one across the creek. Deep or not, I was ready to ford the creek. Fortunately, boulders, somewhat shallow water, and a few overhanging branches for balance made my departure from the canyon relatively uneventful. But as one final insult, I had to cross one of those hummocky horsetail sloughs that I had noticed earlier. However, within a few hundred feet I came to a recognizable portion of loop #8.
Then in moon-lit splendor, I followed the trail to the picnic grounds and crossed a grassy field to where I had parked my car. I turned around to take a last glance up the valley from whose borne I had just come. In the moonlight, the whole scene echoed of places far to the west. One thing is for certain, I plan to go back to loop #9 and find out where and how I had lost that trail.
