Minnesota Hiking Club #66 - Franz Jevne State Park

Minnesota Hiking Club
#66 - Franz Jevne State Park
Date Hiked: February 22nd, 2025
Other Hikes That Day: Big Bog State Recreation Area, Zippel Bay State Park
Wanderloon Ranking System Score: 1.5

This is an occasion where my ranking is not inherently the park's fault, and thus I spent a good deal of time in the Introduction explaining and emphasizing the subjectivity of this ranking system.

Is there anything wrong with this state park? Probably not. The lack of enjoyment I had hiking this trail was more due to the surrounding factors than the park itself. Totally unrelated, but this is how I learned about the seasonal updates on the websites for the state parks. Until that point, I'd relied entirely on what I called the "W* Code." 19 of the Hiking Trails are listed as ones that will be groomed when there is snow (because when is there any of that in Minnesota?), therefore hiking on them is not allowed in order to make way for snowmobiles, snowshoeing, or skiing. On the map I made, I put a W next to every one with this designation so I wouldn't break that rule, and until this park, that was a very effective system. Franz Jevne had no W, therefore I thought it would be realistically hikable.

Franz Jevne is close enough to Canada that I could throw a Hail Mary to someone across the river. Two streets run on either side of the park, with a main road perpendicular about a mile away. With the entrance being closed, I parked outside the gate. The trail didn't look terribly far away, so getting a little extra cumulative distance for my AllTrails stats didn't slow me down. Rather, the snow did.

When one looks in the booklet and sees 1.3 miles as the distance, it's reasonable to assume not much of a time commitment will be necessary. Normally, I can cover 3.5-4 miles in an hour. Add in a half mile from the entrance through nearly thigh deep snow, downed trees, the effort it took to get up hills in these conditions, and a solid hour had passed when I finally spotted that password sign. One might ask why I didn't just try it another day? Well, as previously mentioned, it's a good toss away from the Canadian border, so it took a five-hour plus drive to get there.

I am not a native Minnesotan, but even still, this should've probably been logical to assume. But, mostly until this hike, I had no trouble accessing and hiking the trails, so it didn't occur to me that there might be several feet of uncleared snow, making traversing the grounds difficult. That's on me, I'm not denying that. But I wasn’t driving nearly six hours north without getting my password!

The best part was before I started, when I spotted the Great Gray Owl pictured hanging out nearby.

(*Winter)