Beet Mountain Traditional Cache
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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The cache is located away from the sugar beet pile station but
please watch for trucks and slippery roads, especially during
harvest in October. This should be a quick park and go!
Ever wondered what those mountains are rising up from the flatlands
of the Red River Valley in northern Minnesota? What you are seeing
from the cache site is a sugar beet receiving station. Every year
during the month of October, the beet harvest takes place and
farmers truck their beets from the fields to one of several pile
stations throughout the valley. During this intense period, trucks
haul 24/7 and the pile station workers work 12 hour shifts, 7 days
a week.
First, the truckers check in with the scale house to weigh their
load. The truck pulls along side the pile and dumps the load of
beets into a huge piece of equipment called a piler. The piler has
a conveyor that moves the beets to the top of the pile and it is on
wheels so it is slowly moved along the concrete pad to create the
mountain you are seeing.
Throughout the rest of the year the piles are gradually reduced
load by load. Trucks haul the beets from the pile to a processing
plant which produces the sugar we buy. There are fan units lined up
along the pile to keep the interior of the pile cool so the beets
don't rot. The fans run even during winter because with a blanket
of insulating snow, the beets can still be damaged.
The Red River Valley is considered the nation's "Sugar Bowl" and
Minnesota growers plant over 300,000 acres of sugar beets, placing
it tops in the nation.
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