Pembina Prologue

Night One…

Everything leading up to loading the car and getting in, was done on a whim. A random inspiration the week before coupled with several rabbit-hole dives, and I had a plan that I was certain would make for a good adventure.

The route had been pieced together. Equipment sorted. The last important piece of this puzzle came together hours before I left that very day. That piece’s name was, Carl.

Specialized Diverge, loaded for bear

Carl is a good friend of mine and was down for my cause. If he weren’t such a great friend, this trip surely wouldn’t have even happened and those nights spent spelunking down bottomless rabbit holes would have been for not. Carl’s contribution to this trip was driving the 2 hours and 15 minutes from Fargo to Pembina, ND, all to then turn around that same evening and drive back to Fargo. It was a tough ask of anyone to taxi me to my “trail head” on a Tuesday evening, but as previously mentioned, Carl was down for my cause.

The roughly 2 hours seemed to slip by quickly and my time with Carl was nearing its end. In addition, the final moments spent within the warmth and comfort of the car was also coming to its conclusion. We arrived to my campsite after 10pm and the temperature outside was roughly 40 °F.

Time to set up camp.

Carl stayed in the climate controlled cabin while I fiddled around with tent poles under the high beam light shinning from the car. Once I had my sleeping situation sorted, I hopped in the car to try to regain what warmth I could before climbing into my shelter for the evening. With the feeling returning back to my hands and the courage within me stabilizing, I said my farewells to my good friend Carl all before I could change my mind on the whole thing.

Camp in Pembina, ND

I stepped out, crawled into my sleeping bag and watched the light fade off down the road. It was just me now, looking down the barrel of a trip that I had hatched just days before. Hopefully everything would work out, is all I could think to myself, as I waited for the water to boil that would be used to keep me warm as I snuggled the bottles containing them. The cold truly started to set in and the reality of the trip was taking hold. I couldn’t help but to feel motivated by it all. I didn’t plan the trip because it was going to be easy, but rather to challenge myself and to pay homage to the folks that had made this same trek some hundred and then some years ago.

The Woods Trail

The Pembina Oxcart Trails were a series of meandering, rough and rugged, well worked trade routes that traced down from the Metis settlement , located in Pembina, ND, to St. Paul, MN. These Trails, also known as the Red River Oxcart trails, were composed of three main routes; The Woods Trail, The West Plains Trail, and The East Plains Trail. The Trails were originally used primarily for bringing furs down from the settlement in exchange for goods to be used on the frontier.

Most of the trail has been destroyed by years of plowing and has nearly been forgotten, but many relics and reminders still remain and exist in new forms such as old minimum maintenance roads, ruts in the sod across preserved prairie, or rough double track that wind through the woods.

A couple years back, on a Tuesday night in late October, I hitched a ride to Pembina. I set out to learn more about these Trails by experiencing them first hand with a modern twist. I planned a solo bikepacking trip with the intent of retracing and finding what remained of these lost and forgotten Trails.

The Woods Trail bikepacking route