Kingsbury Creek Trail and "DWP" Trails

Today Noelle and I had originally planned to head east into Wisconsin to do some hiking at Copper Falls State Park and nearby Potato Falls County Park. Unfortunately, we got a late start this morning and so we changed our plans. Instead of heading into Wisconsin we opted to stay closer to home. With the start of Minnesota deer season we decided a hike within Duluth city limits would be our safest bet and so we headed to the Kingsbury Creek trail-head to hike a portion of the "DWP Trail" from near the zoo eastward.

When we got to the trail, we were quickly distracted by the sound of cascading water on Kingsbury Creek and decided to followed the Kinsbury Creek Trail which was blazed with red metal disks. We first followed a spur of the trail which led around the perimeter of the chain link fence surrounding the Lake Superior Zoo. This spur trail dead ended at Grand Avenue and we were forced to retrace our steps back to the "DWP Trail".

From here we followed the main Kingsbury Creek Trail as the creek itself cascaded down to Lake Superior and formed small waterfalls.

Eventually we arrived at a junction with a snowmobile trail and the Superior Hiking Trail. Our trail veered of the SHT and soon headed into some young woods with small trees and a lot of grass.

The trail here began to get fainter and fainter and soon disappeared completely. I knew the Superior Hiking Trail lay uphill and so we bushwacked a short distance to the SHT which led us back to Kingsbury Creek and a rather impressive series of cascades complete with a few icicles left over from yesterday's cold.

We followed the combined SHT/Kinsbury Creek Trail downstream on the opposite side of the creek to the DWP rail bed.

Since we still had plenty of daylight left we decided to follow the "DWP Trail" east, which had been our original plan. The trail here was vastly less interesting than the sections we had hiked to the west, but I think that it could make a good section of the Lakewalk extension which is planned to head west from Canal Park.