Getaway/Midwest: Winona, Minn.

I almost died once, as a skinny teenager climbing up Sugar Loaf's west side, trying to reach the best view of Winona, the town where I grew up.

The 85-foot-tall limestone landmark is perched atop a 400-foot bluff. I was two thirds of the way up when the rock onto which I was pulling myself gave way. I fell back to the ledge where my feet had been planted and, teetering backward, watched a large chunk of rock fall slowly toward me. Somehow I pushed it off to the side, grabbed hold of the wall and pulled myself back. The safest route, I now know, is up the south side.

Sugar Loaf is Winona's mountain, its monument, and climbing it was the closest thing to the ultimate conquest for the town's bored adolescents -- a group I once counted myself among.

There is evidence that Lt. Zebulon Pike was once tempted to climb the same tall hill on his exploratory journey up the Mississippi River in 1805. Once on top, Pike gazed down and waxed poetic in his journal on the beauty of what he saw: "It was altogether a prospect so variegated and romantic that a man may scarcely expect to enjoy such a one but twice or thrice in the course of his life."

In 1805, though, Sugar Loaf was not the boxy silhouette it is today. Then, it was a tall, round, reddish-rock dome surrounded by cedars. When Wapasha II's band of Dakota moved to the sandy prairie beneath it in about 1807, the hill became known as Wapasha's Cap because of a likeness to the leader's trademark voyageur hat.

Nearly 200 years later, we now look up at a starker profile: It's the result of an intensive mining program in the 1880s. The Cap's plentiful limestone was used to trim the many fine buildings erected in the prosperous frontier town of Winona.

On top of the Loaf, the breeze is cool. Below, the quiet river town of Winona fans out along the valley floor next to the gently flowing Mississippi River. Even from over 500 feet, evidence of its many attractive aspects can be seen.

Immediately below is Lake Winona -- once the river's main channel -- ringed by an immensely popular, 5.6-mile bicycle and walking path. Joggers, walkers and cyclists create a steady flow of light, friendly traffic around the loop.

A little beyond the lake is the downtown area, where visitors can walk in the shadows of those fine, limestone trimmed buildings. Winona was founded unofficially in 1851 by Steamboat Captain Orrin Smith, and officially in 1853 when the Dakota under Wapasha III were removed to the Lower Sioux Reservation on the Minnesota River.

Within a few years of its birth, the town began to grow fat on the lumber trade. Evidence of its former prosperity survives in one of the richest collections of historic buildings in the state, including structures designed by nationally known architects such as Ralph Adams Cram, George Maher, William Purcell and George Elmslie.

Museums pepper Winona, each giving glimpses into a distinct aspect of the old days, while trails, parks and campgrounds surround the town.

Past the downtown, at the edge of Levee Park, the Mississippi shone blue and white under the clear, fall sky as it rolled south in the valley it created between the hills of Wisconsin and the hills of Minnesota.

Best of all, to take everything in from the city's skirting blufftops, one needn't -- and shouldn't -- risk death by falling. At Garvin Heights Park -- accessible by car (directions in article below) -- visitors can look peacefully out over the breadth of the valley, from Lake Pepin to Mount Trempealeau, without exertion or danger.

Climbing the naked stone of Sugar Loaf is for those made of sterner (or more foolish) stuff.

--Frank Bures, Jr., is a freelance writer in Houston, Minn.