Down the mineshaft to the physics lab

Don’t hit your head on the stalactites

I spent my first summer after college doing an internship at a University of Minnesota Physics Lab in Soudan, MN, https://www.soudan.umn.edu/. The town is in Northern Minnesota on the shores of Lake Vermillion. The Mesabi Trail runs through it.

An astute observer would question why I had to go live out in the styx to work. You see, this particular lab was no ordinary lab. We were on the hunt for neutrinos, dark matter, and muons, which are only detectable deep underground when background radiation is shielded. Thus, there existed a physics lab over a mile underground in an old iron mine.

Every morning I got in a metal cage with my coworkers and hurdled down to the jobsite. In the afternoon we were lifted back to the surface. If I worked in the U of M public relations department I would probably say something like “it was a great opportunity to work on cutting edge science that is changing our understanding of the universe and will open future doors for technology.” Really, though, nothing of interest was ever discovered or detected there. Still, it was a lot of fun soldering circuit boards alongside stalactites and bats.

Cycling the Mesabi Trail

Soudan lies in the heart of the Iron Range, and makes a good basecamp for road biking. My typical after work or weekend ride started off down the road to the town of Tower. Then I’d hook up with a section of the Mesabi Trail. From there I explored several different country roads which were all wonderfully absent of car traffic. The only time I felt in danger was when a big dog came barking and snarling at me on a road in the Chippewa Reservation. If you manage to bike all the way to Orr, you may have bears hassling you…

There are lakes to find, parks to explore, and miles and miles of pine forested highways. I never did the full 135 mile Mesabi Trail – which runs from La Prairie, MN on the Mississippi River to Ely, MN in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area – but from the sections of it that I did complete I’m confident it is one of the best bike rides in the state. If you make the trip, take a ride in the big metal cage and tour the Soudan Mine, my old hangout. Be on the lookout for any stray dark matter we might have missed.