Superior Hiking Trail: Splitrock River Loop

Today Noelle, Mom and I decided to head out to do some snowshoeing. We decided that our best bet for a close but new snowshoe was the Splitrock Rover Loop which lies mostly within Splitrock Lighthouse State Park. We drove north on Highway 61 through Two Harbors to our destination only to discover that there was not enough snow on the ground to justify snowshoeing. Everything turned out okay though, we just hiked instead.

The trail started out very icy and soon we were at the location of a beautiful, large frozen waterfall. Icy conditions did not improve and the walking was slow going. For once in my life I wish we had some of those Yak Trax things I've seen advertised in the Campmor Catalog. Eventually we made it to a section of trail with a short side trail that led onto the Splitrock River itself. Because we had seen some people skiing on the river, we decided to give river hiking a try.
This decision made the traveling much easier and faster. before we knew it we were at the river's supposed namesake, a rock formation known as the "split rock".

After the split rock we quickly moved on to the halfway point of our hike, a bridge crossing over the river. At this point we elected to return to the trail. Luckily hiking this section of trail was much easier than going than the previous section we had hiked. There was much less ice on the trail. We moved pretty quickly to an overlook of Lake Superior and then dropped down to the highway and the start of our hiking adventure.