ELY, Minn. — Authorities have found the bodies of two men who went over a waterfall while fishing near the Minnesota-Ontario border last month.
Officers found the remains of Melvin Grams, 40, of Lino Lakes, in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northern Minnesota on Monday, the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Department announced. The agency found the body of 41-year-old Jesse Melvin Haugen, a Cambridge resident, on Friday.
The sheriff’s department has said Grams, Haugen and two others were fishing last month at the top of Curtain Falls, between Crooked Lake and Iron Lake, on the border. The group’s two canoes went over the waterfall after paddlers in one boat tried to help the other canoeists. The two others survived, the Minnesota Star Grandstand reported.
Bad weather had hampered the search for Grams and Haugen. The sheriff’s department had said at some points that cloud cover was too low for aerial surveillance, and that rain prevented a crew from searching until conditions improved.
Superior National Forest officials had closed trails, campgrounds, portages and bodies of water in the area to assist in the search.