My buddy, my brother and I will be riding the Red Dot trail this this coming Saturday. Anybody want to join us?

 

Archer have you been on the Red Dot before?
I rode the Red Dot last weekend for the first time. Although the scenery was great, I was very unimpressed with the extreme overmanagement of the area. The trails were very wide, very smooth and hard packed. They almost seemed groomed. We never came across any type of challenge that even a novice rider would have had trouble with. I was wondering if we missed something or if the whole system was like this. We rode about 35 miles and became discouraged and left for more familiar areas. We did however stay only on the marked trails. Do you know if it is ok to venture off on some of the smaller unmarked areas? I would hope there is more to it than we saw. Hopefully we just gave up too soon and it would be worth a return trip. Please post if you are familiar with any of the more challenging areas of Red Dot!
Thanks

 

I hope nothing has changed up at Red Dot. We used to joke around and say that we would measure how far we rode by how many miles we put on our winches. I have ridden Red Dot several times and really enjoyed it. The trick is to get into that back half of the trail system. If you stay too close to Beaver Bay and Silver Bay your right it is like riding down I-35. There are quite a few fire roads that criss cross with the Red Dot trail on the western portion of the ride. You can take these fire roads and hook up with the old logging roads. With all the rain we have had the old logging roads get pretty interesting. If you get onto the back side of Tettegouche State Park the riding gets really good. The key is to get away from Silver Bay and Beaver Bay. The Red Dot is a multiuse trail system. Lots of people go and hike up there. The trails close to the towns are much drier and they see a lot of traffic from hikers. It takes osme time to get to the back half. it is probably a 7 or 8 mile ride to ge there but it is worth it.

 

That is good to hear. I thought I remembered you had a post a while back about this area and if I remember right you said it was pretty good then. Thats one of the reasons I wanted to check it out. You are probably right that we didnt get far enough away from town. We got there late (around 5:00pm)planing to camp and stay there the weekend. We didnt want to get too far out that late in the afternoon being unfamiliar with the trails, but we were discouraged by the dry and smooth trails so we took a vote and decided to head to some wetter areas. Now I wish we had stayed and toughed it out. Oh well, darn.... now I will have to go back and ride it again. I hate when that happens! If things have changed post it here.
We did find some wet stuff though. We ended up in the Big Falls area. We rode some nasty logging roads, and rode literally MILES without ever getting out of water and muck. There was one stretch that I clocked 4 miles without ever coming out of 6 or more inches of water. The only bad thing was that the mosquitoes were horendous. We had to wear bug hats to survive!
Thanks for the info about Red Dot!

 

We leave today. I will make a post when I get back on how the trails were. Everybody have a safe weekend.

 

Well Trailboss I am sorry to say you were right. red Dot is officially a loser now. I could not believe it they brought a bunch of gravel and sand trucks in and filled all the holes and muddy areas. There used to be an area on the far sid of the "A" trail that was so muddy you could not get through it without a winch. Now it has been built up about 10 inches and it is smooth as a highway. We were ver let down.

We spent most of the weekend riding Superior National Forest. That is great riding.

All in all a good weekend. We saw 14 deer, a bear and we kicked up 2 moose.

 

I wish you would have had better news... I was really looking forward to a return trip to see the good stuff. Next thing you know it will be paved for the roller bladers.
Where did you stay by Superior? Thats where I do most of my riding. My buddy has a shack north of Ash Lake (off Hwy 53). We usually ride a week in the spring and another in the fall. You are right ...that area is the BEST.

 

The guy I ride with is the same guy I hunt with. He has a small cabin about 20 miles east of the intersection of hwy 33 and county road 16. When we ride up north we stay at his cabin. We should hook up sometime and ride together. Where else do you guys ride up there? The only other area we have covered is the southern most portion of the Superior National Forest. That is great riding. Are there any other trail systems that you like to ride?

 

The area we ride is actually the north western corner of Superior National Forest. It borders the Boundry waters area. It is the most diverse area I have ridden. It has many "winter roads" made for logging that are really wet and muddy but also shear rock cliffs and rocky hills to climb. There are thick forests with hard pack trails, and clear cut areas. There are also some gated forest roads only open to atvs for hunting and such for those few times you might want to open it up a little. I dont do much of that but it is available if needed. We have been riding the area for about 7 years now and we still find new stuff every time we go out. We have started to press more east and south lately but some of the forest roads are posted for no Atvs. It seems that there is plenty of good stuff with out going on the roads though.
We generally go up twice a year (just to ride) for a week each time and the guy that owns the shack also hunts there. I do a lot of riding north of McGregor too where I have my own cabin. There are some good trails in that area too.