Big Red Canoe - Friends of the Boundary Waters podcast · Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness

Gunflint Falling - Stories from the 1999 BWCA Blowdown

·49 min·3 clips

Vicki Brockman’s pelvis was shattered when a tree fell on her in the tent.

1. Big Red Canoe - Friends of the Boundary Waters podcast focuses on Kerry Griffith’s Gunflint Falling and the 1999 Boundary Waters blowdown. 2. Host Dave Meyer and author Kerry Griffith matter because Meyer was in the BWCA on July 4, 1999, and Griffith wrote Gunflint Falling and Gunflint Burning. 3. The episode asks how a 1999 derecho with 100-mile-per-hour winds changed the Boundary Waters, the people in it, and the landscape that followed. 4. Griffith says Gunflint Falling is a prequel to Gunflint Burning, his book on the 2007 Ham Lake fire. 5. He says the blowdown stories started when people he interviewed for Gunflint Burning kept describing what they lived through in 1999. 6. Griffith calls the blowdown one of the first extreme weather events tied to climate change in northern Minnesota. 7. He says the storm started in North Dakota and traveled 6,000 miles over three to four days. 8. He says the Boundary Waters portion flattened 40 miles long and five to 10 miles wide, with 48 million trees down and 487,000 acres damaged. 9. Griffith notes that the Forest Service planned for fatalities, but none occurred in the Boundary Waters. 10. Meyer describes entering on Bower Trout Lake, seeing more moose than usual, and noticing how hot the trip felt before the storm. 11. He says the sky turned green while he was fishing, which made him run back to camp and clean the fish later. 12. Meyer and Michelle held up a cheap tent with fiberglass poles while the wind made the fabric flap near their heads. 13. When they stepped out, they saw trees uprooted by the root ball and other trunks sheared 10 to 20 feet above the ground. 14. Griffith tells how Dave and Michelle had to climb over stacked windfall on portages while leaving Swan Lake and heading to Grand Marais. 15. He also describes ranger and rescue stories involving Nicole Selmer, Pete Weckman, and wilderness rangers Bruce Slover and Joe Barnier. 16. Griffith says Pete Weckman had relied on a white pine with an eagle’s nest as a landmark, and after the storm both the tree and nest were gone. 17. He says John Pierce advised finding an eastern campsite that faces west so a traveler can run toward shore if a blow comes from the west. 18. The episode sounds like a field interview mixed with personal recollection, storm history, and practical backcountry lessons. 19. People interested in Boundary Waters history, wilderness travel, and severe weather stories would likely enjoy it. 20. People looking for light travel talk or short-form entertainment may skip it.

As heard by us

A Boundary Waters storm story that makes the 1999 blowdown feel immediate and lived in.

Gunflint Falling follows a Boundary Waters storm story centered on the 1999 blowdown, when a derecho tore through the BWCA with winds around 100 miles per hour, snapping and uprooting trees and leaving a huge mess behind.

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Why you'd press play

When you want a Boundary Waters storm story that feels immediate and lived-in.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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