How to stay safe while hiking along the raging St. Croix River
ST. CROIX FALLS, Wis. – The swollen St. Croix River is drawing tons of tourists to one of the more accessible state parks outside the Twin Cities. But it's also making a hike there more risky.
Pothole Trail is not as awful as it sounds. It's a 125-year-old walking path through the woods of Interstate State Park in St. Croix Falls, Wisconsin. It leads to one incredible view.
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Trudy Lorenz has spent decades coming to this park and has seen both the beauty and the dangers of it.
"Every spring we deal with the fact that people get too close to the river and they fall in, and that happened about a week and a half ago again," Lorenz said.
Crews are still searching for a missing 18-year-old man who slipped and fell from the rock ledge on the Minnesota side of the rocky St. Croix River gorge between the two states.
Lorenz is president of a group called Friends of Interstate Park. The group's mission is to educate hikers, showing them lookout spots that give breathtaking views without risk.
"You can see each way down the river and you don't have to put yourself in harms way," Lorenz said.
The nicer weather and the flooded river are both draws for spring hiking. But the flooding has added to the danger of falling.
"We've had quite the floods and we've had quite the soft ground from that, and so people slip," she said.
One of the most obvious signs that the St. Croix River is flooded is the rushing water, and how you can see white caps on the river.
Jason Lord is from Minneapolis, but came out to western Wisconsin to capture nature at its best on Sunday. As a photographer, he often takes risks to get the best shot, but with these conditions, it's not worth it.
"It's pretty incredible. Just sort of the speed of the water and all the froth that the rapids are creating," Lord said. "There's no grace if you lose your footing. You're down the river fast, and I don't know how anybody could ever swim with how fast that water's going."
Click here for more information on Friends of Interstate Park.
The Pothole trail gives you the best vantage points, with the widest view of the St. Croix River Gorge, from a safe distance. Click here for trail map of Interstate Park in Wisconsin.