BREITUNG TWP- When I ran into Bernie Krauss on a recent Sunday morning on the Mesabi Trail in Soudan, he was fresh off a hot breakfast at Good Ol’ Days in Tower. He was headed to Ely, for a night in a motel, and then to Snowbank Lodge for an overnight and a day off to take in the scenery. He was making his way on foot.
Krauss is a man for whom hiking is a passion and he was passing through the area earlier this month as part of his traverse of the North Country National Scenic Trail (NCNST), all 4,800 miles of it. He had begun his hike in North Dakota, at the western terminus of the trail and had made it this far despite extraordinary insect outbreaks that had proved a challenge. Ticks were outrageously abundant in North Dakota, he said. One day he removed up to over 1,000 of the little critters, mostly from his legs. Mosquitoes, as locals are well aware, are also abundant this year, and were particularly horrible on the trail section in Itasca County, he said. The NCNST follows the Mesabi Trail in our area, and the bugs and ticks were not an issue for him on Sunday, and he was enjoying the cooler weather.
Krauss is a retired wildlife biologist who spends most of his time hiking and traveling. He does not keep a “home address,” and to him, wherever he is at the moment is where he calls home. He is a seasoned hiker, and mostly averages 30-40 miles a day while backpacking. Krauss plans to hike to Ohio and then do a flip, traveling to the eastern end of the trail in Vermont before hiking back west to Ohio.
According to a Facebook post he made on May 6, Krauss plans to take a month or two off after completing the NCNST, then hike the 444-mile-long Nastchez Trace National Scenic Trail and the 425-mile-long Potomic Heritage National Scenic Trail.
You can follow Krauss’s progress on the Facebook page, North Country Trail Thru Hikers, where hikers share photos and posts of their experiences on this trail and others.