27

Total Miles
4.9

Technical Rating

1

Easy

Best Time

Winter, Fall, Spring, Summer

Trail Type

Full-Width Road

Accessible By

Trail Overview

This trail follows the edge of the National Forest and consists mostly of wide, well-maintained gravel, though some stretches are corrugated and bumpy. It passes a few farms and homesteads and crosses through a swampy area, where extra caution is advised due to the possibility of encountering local traffic. There are no designated or dispersed campsites along the route, and the trail does not offer basic services such as trash disposal or a water supply. Cell phone reception may be unreliable in certain sections.

Photos of 27

27
27

Difficulty

This trail is well-maintained and used regularly by OHV users, so be watchful of other off-roaders and adventurers.

History

Covering more than 1.6 million acres of glacial lakes, red-pine uplands, and sphagnum bogs, Minnesota's Chippewa National Forest lets motorists experience the North Woods at an unrushed pace. Paved state highways soon yield to a lattice of numbered forest roads, most of them well-graded gravel that thread between kettle ponds and stands of towering white pine, the tree that helped earn the forest its 1908 designation as one of America's first national forests. The forest harbors one of the highest breeding densities of bald eagles in the continental United States, and patient drivers often glimpse loons, black bears, and white-tailed deer as they move from shoreline to clear-cut regrowth and back again.

Technical Rating

1

Status Reports

There are no status reports yet for this trail.

27 can be accessed by the following ride types:

  • High-Clearance 4x4
  • SUV
  • SxS (60")
  • ATV (50")
  • Dirt Bike

Access Description

Drivers who want a defined route can follow three state scenic byways--Avenue of the Pines (State Highway 46), Lady Slipper (Highways 39 and 238), and the Edge of the Wilderness (Highway 38). Each traces an old logging corridor and pauses at cultural touchstones such as the Norway Beach Visitor Center and the 1930s Civilian Conservation Corps camp at Joyce Estate. Explorers who prefer improvising may take any signed spur and soon find themselves alone beside a beaver-built wetland or watching the Mississippi River's headwaters twist through tamarack lowlands.

27 Map

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