REGIONAL— A search was continuing as of this week’s Timberjay press time for two men who went missing when their canoe went over Curtain Falls on the U.S.-Canadian border last Saturday evening. The two men were part of a party of four in two canoes, both of which went over the high-volume cataract that spills out from Crooked Lake on the east into Iron Lake on the west.
Reis Grams, age 40, of Lino Lakes, and Jesse Haugen, age 41, of Cambridge, remain missing and are presumed dead in the wake of the incident. Meanwhile, Kyle Sellers, age 47, of Ham Lake, was airlifted with serious but non-life-threatening injuries, to Essentia Medical Center in Duluth. A fourth individual, Erik Grams, largely escaped injury in the incident. A fifth member of the party, Jared Lohse, age 33, was not in either of the canoes that went over the falls.
The accident prompted a massive search and rescue effort and a closure order by the U.S. Forest Service for a large area in the vicinity of the falls. The falls is located in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and the Curtain Falls portage and campsites on both Iron and Crooked lakes tend to see considerable activity in the wake of fishing opener.
The five friends were reportedly fishing near the top of the falls, something they had done on previous trips to the area.
“They’ve been in there before. They’re familiar with the area,” Nate Skelton, a division commander with the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office, told Minnesota Public Radio.
“Four of them were basically anchored at the top of the falls fishing, which they’ve done in the past, and it sounds like one of them may have had an issue and the other one went to try to give some assistance and both canoes and four people went over the falls.”
The fall’s drop, at approximately 20 feet, isn’t the highest falls in the region, but the volume of water flowing over the drop is immense, which has long made it a cataract to avoid.
The search
The report of the incident came into dispatchers just before 7:30 p.m. on Saturday evening. The sheriff’s office and the St. Louis County Rescue Squad, which had been staged at the Duluth Air Show on Saturday, quickly responded to the report and had begun search and rescue efforts by Sunday. “Members ran search sorties this evening until it was too dark to see and are sleeping on the ground tonight in order to be up to run more sorties at first light,” noted the sheriff’s office in a Facebook post Sunday evening. “An Advanced Base Camp is staffed all night to ‘keep an ear on’ those in the field. Curtain Falls is extremely difficult to access, and we are depending heavily on our aviation partners to transport equipment, supplies, and personnel in and out of the backcountry,” the Facebook post continued.
Search efforts continued on Monday despite adverse weather and difficult water conditions presented by the falls. Searchers brought in drones as well as a remotely operated underwater vehicle to search under the surface at the base of the falls.
The sheriff’s office received help with the search from the Duluth office of the National Weather Service, Adventure Seaplanes, North Air Care, Virginia Fire Department, DNR, USFS, Minnesota Air Rescue Team, Minnesota State Patrol, St. Louis County Emergency Management, the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center, Ely and Tower airports, Ely-Bloomenson Community Hospital, and Essentia Health-Duluth.
Closure order
To help the search efforts, Superior National Forest officials closed a large area in the immediate vicinity of the falls to prevent bystanders from disrupting search activities.
The closure, which expired at midnight on Wednesday, prohibited entering “all trails, campsites, portages, rivers and lakes” in the closure area including Iron Lake, Crooked Lake west of Sunday Bay, the LaCroix-Bottle portage and the LaCroix-Iron portage.
The order was not issued to individuals already camping in the area. “What the order does is give us the option to vacate campsites in the closure area if the search requires it,” said Carl Skustad, Kawishiwi District Wilderness Manager. “We’re not going around asking people already there to leave if we don’t need to.”