Sue Ahrendt of Tuscarora Lodge on the Gunflint Trail called Cook County Law Enforcement at 3:48 p.m. on May 30 reporting that a guest, 70-year-old James Hawkins of Minneapolis, had not returned from a hike. Hawkins had set off on the Centennial Trail alone early that morning. Although a number of other hikers had traversed the trail and returned, they had not reported seeing Hawkins.
Northern Lights Search and Rescue was paged and responded, along with Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Conservation Officer Mary Manning. As responders staged for the search, seeking authorization from the US Forest Service to use fourwheelers in the wilderness, the hiker was found. Word went out at 4:48 p.m. that Hawkins had been found and he was okay.
Contacted by phone, Ahrendt said the hiker hadn’t really been lost. “He had just taken another trail. He had a map and he never went off a trail, so he wasn’t really lost. He just wasn’t on the loop we expected him on and he was late arriving.”
The Centennial Trail is a loop trail of 3.3 miles. It consists of 1.2 miles of the Kekekabic Trail and a new section constructed in September 2009 on the Port Arthur Railroad bed built in the early 1890s.
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