Purgatory

Nature trail

Have you ever wanted to hike down a small creek among the homes of the filthy stinking rich and then packraft your way back to the start point on the larger body of water that said creek feeds.......... well, Purgatory Creek is just that.

didn't get much deeper than this

 After dropping off and locking my bike in a wooded ditch near my rendezvous point, I drove up stream (in my nearly 20 year old van) past a half dozen gated communities to my start point. Not the kind with tacky names affixed to pillars or piles of rocks on either side of the road, but those with bonafide electrically controlled  security gates, and real, working, gas lanterns.

strange looking rock...with teeth

shitty bridge...why not just walk across?

I can't take complete credit for this outing, a while back ArcFlash and myself seemed to come up with the idea about the same time and wanted to check it out together. Unfortunately It didn't happen that way, I got done with work really early and was looking for something to do close to home that wouldn't take too long. I also didn't have much motivation and figured I would bail out on this if it didn't look too fun when I got there. It turned out to be lots of fun and an interesting endeavor. I started at a park near the creek and hiked down a "nature trail" approximately a mile before getting onto the creek.

this little fawn thinks it's hiding...I felt bad for scaring him/her into laying in the water and tried to get it to move. It didn't budge so i left it alone and moved on quickly 

newest toy....Alpaka raft   Scout

Not a house could be seen from deep within the small creek valley but I knew they were there having reconed the area via google maps. Someone along the timeline of development must have had the fortitude to designate this area a green space. Once in the creek I was amazed to see not a single human footprint for the duration of my outing. Surely there would have been some kids playing in it somewhere right? nope. The creek lacks any waterfalls or cliff faces but is beautiful in a Minnesota, summer jungle, type of way. The water was clean in appearance and was void of large amounts of trash...which is always good.

home free 

169

Near the end, I encountered a fence across the creek and no trespassing signs. There was large hole in the river right, side, so I took it. I had been out for over an hour now and had no intention of backtracking. I was in stealth mode for the remainder of the creek's course. As I neared the Minnesota River the creek got much deeper with a final rock pile marking the point at which the packraft would become necessary. I aired it up within the steep mud banks, concealed from a large house that overlooks the creek, and then quietly slipped away. It wasn't long and I was on the Minnesota, drifting with the fast current. It was about a half mile to my take out at a large bridge and then another half mile overland with a final tromp across a nasty muddy backwater swamp to my bike.

Is this the new place for everyone in the twin cities to take a pic, post to facebook, and think it's unique ?

 As I rode back to my van in my wet and muddy clothing on an inexpensive steel Surly, past homes I would never want to afford........ I could see through the trees and noticed two guys walking down the street like they were headed out to the "links", both wearing white shorts, one with a pink shirt the other light yellow....I surmised they were named Chet or Dirk, maybe Claude and were probably talking about their portfolio's............ It felt good to know I had just been mashing around in the mud and water in their own back yards, so-to-speak,  and with all their money, they were still missing out on something I had just done.