Fox Landing to Highway 70:
A vaunted northwoods paddle primarily surrounded by state forests, this segment of the upper St. Croix offers swift water, Class I-III rapids, a unique option to dabble on the Kettle River in Minnesota, fabulous boulders, islands, sandstone outcrops, and primitive riverside campsites. A wide stream with a reputable gradient in this section, low water levels will yuck a kayaker’s yum. And unless the wind is out of the north or east, paddlers – especially canoeists – will want to stay off this broad boulevard of river. But at the right water level with minimal wind and ideally fall foliage, this trip on the St. Croix will make you sing!
Rating: ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Trip Report Date: September 27, 2025
Skill Level: Intermediate
Class Difficulty: Class I-III rapids (depending on water level)
Gradient:
≈ 5′ per mile
Gauge Recorded on this Trip:
Danbury: ht/ft: .7 | cfs: 720
Recommended Levels:
This is too low to paddle. In Minnesota DNR verbiage, these levels are considered “scrapable,” the lowest category possible.
To offer some context, I weigh around 155 lbs and paddle a 14.5′ solo canoe. I was >just< able to skim over the shallow shoals in most sections. A heavier paddler, especially in a kayak, would be walking… a lot. Regardless, at such low water levels, one must weave forth and back to find enough water, which becomes taxing. Worse though is every rapid will be rated down one tier, meaning anything that is Class II in normal conditions will be Class I, Class I will be surface-level riffles, and riffles will be Scrape City.
Bottom line (as it were), this section of the St. Croix is too wonderful and too far away to paddle unless the gauge reads a minimum of 1′ high or 1000 cfs.
Put-In:
Fox Landing off Foxes Landing Road, Grantsburg, Wisconsin
GPS: 45.89035, -92.71288
Take-Out:
Highway 70 (Wisconsin side)
GPS: 45.77401, -92.77973
Time: Put in at 12:30p. Out at 3:00p.
Total Time: 2h 30m
Miles Paddled: 9.75
Wildlife:
Ravens, turtles, trumpeter swans, great blue herons, an osprey, mergansers, and a veritable sturgeon (among many other fish).
Shuttle Information:
13 miles by vehicle or bicycle – long, but flat. Note: Foxes Landing Road, the name of the road to Fox Landing, becomes unpaved as it wends down a steep ravine for about a mile. No idea why it’s foxes, plural.
Background:
As far as rivers go, there’s much that distinguishes the St. Croix. For most of its 169 miles it is the natural border between Wisconsin and Minnesota north of the Mississippi River, and it’s the twin sibling of the Bois Brule River (except that it flows south from virtually the same source). Above and beyond all nota benes, it is a designated wild and scenic river – one of the original eight (together with its tributary Namekagon) passed into federal law in 1968. This designation holds a lot of legislative and logistical sway relevant to paddlers, such as restricted shoreline development, established accesses, and free riverside campsites. It also means long shuttle distances…
While its name literally means “holy cross,” holy cow might be more appropriate, considering its drainage basin comprises some 7700 square miles! The geological history is as riveting as those that hold together the steel bridges over the river. First, about a billion years ago, a midcontinent rift split North America apart. Like a jelly donut broken in two, volcanic goo spewed out and eventually cooled into basalt. This slick, hard rock is on sumptuous display at Interstate State Park in the “lower third” of its journey from source to mouth. Fast-forward roughly 600 million years later, and now the area is underneath a shallow ocean slowly coalescing with marine sediment that will solidify into a compact of sandstone. This too can be admired along many bluffs along the river. Much more recently – a mere 2.5 million years ago, give or take a minute – colossal walls of ice a mile high and unfathomably thick scoured the landscape. The glaciers didn’t automatically flatten everything; they simply rearranged the furniture. Only 11,000 years ago, scientists believe that a predecessor of modern-day Lake Superior called glacial Lake Duluth drained in such a manner as to bore out what would become the St. Croix River and its valley.
And this concludes our TikTok equivalent of geomorphology.
I’d paddled the St. Croix before, but only from Interstate to Somerset, a considerable distance downstream and featuring an entirely different personality altogether – much like how the lower Wisconsin River is incomparably different from its upstream stretches. For many years I’d wanted to paddle the river further north. After talking about the Governor Knowles State Forest earlier this year at Canoecopia, I knew it was time for the rudder to hit the rowed, so to speak. Most of the St. Croix’s miles murmur, but upstream its current has voice and verve. There is a fabulous flash-in-the-pan set of Class II+ rapids just below St. Croix Falls, but nowhere in its 169 miles does the river dance and sing as it does from Nelson’s Landing to Soderbeck Landing, with an average gradient of 6.5 feet per mile (chump change for whitewater paddlers perhaps, but a heart’s skipping thrill for the rest of us). Moreover, starting at Nelson’s allows for a unique a la carte dabble on the tail-end of the Kettle River in Minnesota, a much narrower, more intimate sluice of Class II-III rapids at certain levels. Where else can one start on one river, switch streams midstream, then return to the original river all within a few miles?
So, why not do that trip instead of launching downstream from Nelson’s and taking out after Soderbeck? Sense and sensibility (and apologies to the Jane Austen fans out there). To be blunt, I was not paddling alone and I wanted to be courteous to my kayaking better half. I was taking a chance as it was, knowing how low water levels were. I was reasonably (re: stubbornly) confident I’d be OK in a solo canoe, but I knew that it would be more challenging and frustrating for a kayak – they sit lower in the water, after all. And just because I don’t mind going ass over Kettle, that doesn’t mean it’s everyone’s cup of tea, as it were.
Thus a compromise was born (a quaint old-fashioned notion in these winner-take-all times), such that I’d start from Fox Landing and rendezvous at Soderbeck (I keep wanting to say Soderbergh!) for an abridged version of this trip. We were camping only a mile away from the Highway 70 Landing, so it made sense to take out there. Being a national wild and scenic riverway, accesses are excellent and, in this section of the St. Croix at least, conveniently interspersed to allow for trips from 2.5, 4.5, 10.5, or 14.5 miles long.
Overview:
Before you even launch, your ears will be swayed by two sweet sounds: a natural spring tumbling down the rocky ravine you took to get to the water just past the concrete apron at the landing, and a hundred yards downstream a river-wide set of Class I rapids. The distance to the rapids is shorter than that from the landing to the huge island opposite you on the other side of which lie two splintered side channels of the St. Croix that are split by a separate enormous island. Yes, there are three channels to the St. Croix here! The main channel veers left and passes Fox Landing. To access the right channel you’d have to do one of the following: paddle upstream 1.25 miles against a heady current; dash over to the island and sneak up the “middle channel” only 1200′ downstream from Fox Landing and then paddle a half-mile up even steeper current that’s also very shallow; or do the sensible thing and just start this trip at Nelson’s Landing and avoid paddling upstream altogether. The reason you’d entertain any of these zany ideas is to reach the final 1.5 miles of the Kettle River and its Class II-III rapids.
Your eyes also are in for a treat. The physical landscape is comely and compelling, and the water itself has a tannish, tannin-hued luster to it. Granted, any river will look clearer at low water levels. But given its vibrant mussel population and protected status as wild and scenic, the St. Croix is truly a bathing beauty!
About half a mile down from Fox Landing you’ll come upon the first of many islands on the trip, this one lean and 1000′ long. After this, the 400′-wide river subtly sways its hips left and right. At my notably low water level, the bottom was composed of what seemed like billions of rocks resembling broken cobblestone, some the size of softballs, others the size of desks. Actual boulders do dot the waterscape here and there.
A gentle lift along the left bank marks the Brandt Pines trails, a dry-mesic forest flush with old-growth red, white, and – no, not blue – jack pines. Unlike most river trips where I see a cool swath of terra firma but don’t have the time to check it out, we hiked these trails the following day (Ravine, Ridge Line, and River View) and loved them. I can only imagine how fabulous they are for skiing…
A teardrop-shaped island appears next. More important, it announces what’s dubbed August Olson Rapids, a solid Class II in normal conditions (or sad, skimpy Class I in mine). Paddlers are generally advised to steer to the right of the island unless there’s enough water to run the narrower, friskier left channel. But this is just the beginning of the felicitous thrills. An S-curve wraps around this island and leads to the end of the enormous island that separates the Kettle from the St. Croix. At its mouth, the Kettle spits out two sets of exhilarating-looking ledges. What’s more, at the tail of this island, smack dab at the confluence, is a primitive campsite free to whoever gets there first. I was elated to see actual campers/paddlers there who returned my wave. Honestly, so often I pass these commendable riverside campsites only to see dereliction and neglect. To see one peopled and populated was like knowing there still are folk musicians strumming an honest to goodness acoustic guitar in a world of synth-pop laptop crap. (To be fair – no, not about my elitist views on music – there are several other campsites on this trip that also are primitive and free, but none are located in such a spiritual space.) On far river-right is another island that actually braids the mouth of the Kettle, but at these low levels it was an impenetrable mausoleum of gravestone boulders.
Downriver a mile you’ll hear/see another attractive creek spilling over a “palette” of rocky rabble on the left. According to author Kevin Revolinski, there’s a trail here that leads to an abandoned paint mine – yes, paint. “The pigment was dried first in the sun, then broken up and sifted until it was just a powder,” he explains in Paddling Wisconsin. “[W]ith the addition of linseed oil, paint was produced.” Alas, I didn’t have the time to check out the “colorful” ruins, but the spring-like creek is quite impressive and worth a look-see. Incidentally, this creek was dammed to power the waterwheel at the former mine.
Directly following the flowing creek are the so-called Seven Islands, a fun cluster of smallish isles ranging in size all huddled together. For paddlers a little weary of such a wide river as the St. Croix and/or the wind, this spot offers a little privacy and a temporary reprieve. Soak up both, as the river will swell even wider below these, now around 500′ (think skinny lake). The mouth of the Snake River appears next, on the Minnesota side, and it has quite a toothsome bite! Like the Kettle, the Snake is a designated state water trail (in MN) and now is in my hopper for future trips…someday. Opposite the boat landing on the Minnesota side is the Soderbeck Landing. It’s been ~6 miles up to this point, and from here to the Highway 70 Landing it’s 4 miles.
Below Soderbeck, the river takes on a distinctly different feel. It’s wider, slower, and deeper. Indeed, it’s deep enough for motorboats and Jet-skis to zip up and down. Also, the first/only houses briefly appear on the Wisconsin side. With all this in mind, you might be wondering “is there any value in continuing past Soderbeck?” The answer is Yes!
More islands braid the main channel downstream from the landing. Wherever applicable (and not a masochistic exercise in impractical scraping), I took the most intimate side channels. Again, saunter through and soak up the intimate escape, as the next mile is long, wide, and flat. But when the next set of islands appears, so too does one of this trip’s highlights, the Sandrock Cliffs, geological postcards from that long-ago primordial sea mentioned earlier. Like the Brandt Pines, the hiking trails at Sandrock Cliffs are fabulous and part of a complex series of trails all along the riverway. But unlike Brandt Pines, paddlers can dry-dock at the base here and clamber up to the trails to take in a few miles of hiking – always a welcome break to sitting in a boat.
Even at our woefully low water levels, I found a side channel with plenty of volume to hook around and take in the pretty cliffs. Spoiler alert: the outcrops comprise a kind of natural mural several hundred feet long – which is actually pretty short as far as dramatic displays of geology go. They stand out in this part of the St. Croix and are quite pretty, but sandstone outcrops are far more numerous and on a grander scale down by Osceola, FYI.
The final mile to Highway 70 is all smooth sailing. There are some small islands, a smattering of riffles, and a stately frieze of conifer trees, but otherwise it’s a straightaway roughly 600’ wide. The landing is upstream of the bridge on the left, the Wisconsin side.
What we liked:
Expectation is the incubator for disappointment; if we set ourselves up too much, it’s all but inevitable that something will not live up to that. But not always. Despite the low water and high wind, this trip did not disappoint in the least. I’ll always prefer a 50′-wide creek to a 500′-wide river, but the St. Croix is a sacred stream. Plus there’s something truly awesome about Class II rapids on a river this wide, a unique phenomenon rarely found in this part of the country.
There’s a lot of wonderful drama on this trip, from the island-inducing side channels, the mouthy excitement of the Kettle and Snake rivers, the cascading creeks, the primitive campsites, the mosaic of rock rabble and boulders in the streambed, the riffles and rapids, and of course the Sandrock Cliffs. Hands down, this is one of the handsomest segments anywhere in the nearly 170 miles of the St. Croix River!
Also, tangentially related, big thanks goes to Kevin Revolinski to one of his other books I’m happy to plug, Best Tent Camping in Wisconsin, where I first learned about the St. Croix Campground, where we stayed. Even though I’ve grown to resent campgrounds since the pandemic – “campers” have just become louder and more disrespectful than in the before times – this is one of the best I’ve ever been to. The sites are spacious, sparsely apart from one another, and the connection to hiking trails and the river itself is fantastic.
What we didn’t like:
First and foremost, obviously, the low water level. But that has everything to do with timing and my insistence of paddling despite the imperfect conditions. It has nothing to do with the river itself.
The wind is a thing! I had it on good authority that the river is formidable when the wind is out of the south, which makes sense considering how wide it is and that it mostly flows southward. So, I figured that if the wind was from the northwest, as was forecast, I should be OK. Wrong – real wrong! It was more west than north, and the river does veer southwest this whole trip, which meant I was against it most of the time. Between bee-bopping away from shallow shoals to find enough water to avoid scraping – now on the left, then to the right – and trying to take cover from the wind in the leeward side of islands, I’d worked myself into quite the lather.
This won’t come as a surprise, but on a sunny day – and who doesn’t want to paddle in September on a sunny day? – the sun will be in your face (not to mention the rest of your body) pretty much the whole day. It’s a different kind of lathering up. But between the sun shimmering on the water’s surface and the low water level indicating riffles or shoals, it felt a little disorienting to suss out what was a reflection and what was an indication of too-shallow water best to circumvent.
I’d be remiss to omit that the shuttling is long. If this hasn’t been established already, I’d like to offer a basic rule of thumb that the straighter a river is, the longer the shuttle will be. (Meandering rivers that practically double-back on themselves will typically require a shorter shuttle, since the highway dep’t engineers and construction workers are usually less kinky. Usually…) In this case, the shuttle was 3+ miles longer than the actual river mileage. If you’re driving, then this won’t matter too much beyond taking a bit more time than conventional shuttling. But if you’re bicycling, then that’s a consideration. (I’m leaving out the dog that suddenly surged after me out of nowhere during the ride back to the car. There was no bite – just a spontaneous jolt of fright. The doggie was just doing what doggies do. Besides, bike-shuttling is a particularly rare thing, still.)
The last thing I’ll add is at the time of our paddle there was no roadside sign for the landing at Highway 70, whether in the westbound lane to Minnesota or eastbound to Wisconsin. This discrepancy stands out since there are comparable signs for damn near everything else St. Croix River-related, be they of National Park provenance or state DNR – signs for campgrounds, signs for picnic areas, signs for hiking trails, etc. The most absurd was a sign for the Raspberry Landing 2.5 miles away, downstream from Highway 70, but not a single sign for the landing on the road where the landing is only feet from the road! There’s neither an outdoorsy brown recreation sign announcing the landing nor a green road/street sign at the landing itself. You just have to trust that it’s there, turn your signal on even if you don’t know precisely where or when you should, and then turn into it once it comes into view. Again, it’s on the Wisconsin side of the river, on the upstream/north side of the bridge at Highway 70.
If we did this trip again:
You dance with the one that brung ya. The river was woefully low, but that’s just the luck of the draw. Five hours is a long way to drive with boats on the car only to not paddle because water volume is skimpy. (To be clear, the flipside of this is not true: if a river is too high, it doesn’t matter if you drove five hours or five days; stay off it and live to paddle another day.) Ditto the wind; even though the wind was out of the west, not the south, it was still rough-going and tough sledding. And while I’m at it, the fall foliage fell far short of peak, despite this being northern Wisconsin at the end of September.
Planning a paddling trip can be maddening. You’re always trying to line up variables that are impossible to control – in this case, water levels, weather, and fall foliage, not to mention one’s own life schedule, or those of others, and finding camping/lodging, to boot. In those rare times when everything lines up plumb and perfect, you feel like the gods shined on you. When everything’s awry, you feel like the gods just sh*t on you. Usually, it’s somewhere between and that ought to be good enough.
Philosophy aside, I’d only do this trip again with higher water. And I’d launch further upstream, likely taking advantage of the Kettle Slough. Personally, I’d paddle-camp, too, and stay a spell at one of the riverside sites. Ideally, I’d do this on a windless or less windy day, and perhaps earlier in the morning or later in the afternoon so that the sun wasn’t in my eyes the whole time.
Speaking of time, I’d also want to give myself more of it to feel less rushed. I really wasn’t present on this trip the way I’d like – the way we all should be when in our boats on the water. Not only was I preoccupied about rendezvousing at Soderbeck, I knew we’d have a long pedal following our paddle (plus we had plans to meet friends at the delightful Brickfield Brewing in Grantsburg at 5:30 pm). All those factors, combined with finding the least shallow spots and getting blasted by wind gusts, conspired to being elsewhere – more in my head than on the river. This was not a mindful paddle. That should never be the case, but it really should never be the case after spending so much time to drive somewhere.
I’m still very glad I did this and got to experience it, but next time – and there definitely will be a next time – I’d like to do it better. The St. Croix is too special not to.
***************
Related Information:
St. Croix River I: St. Croix Falls to Osceola
St. Croix River II: Osceola to Somerset
Camp: Canoe + Kayak Camping Wisconsin – St. Croix River
Camp: Governor Knowles State Forest
General: National Park Service
Guide: Wisconsin Trail Guide
Wikipedia: St. Croix River
Photo Gallery:
No Comments