Author: Spidermart

Hike. Storm. Hike. Storm.

Camp for last night ended up being on trail, tent pitched over lumpy 2-track grooves.  The kind of ground you have to work your hips into just right before sleep can happen.  Setting up on the trail is generally frowned upon, but we leave no trace, and generally do not want to go wandering in the unfamiliar woods at pitch dark.  Our frog friend approved.

If you’ve been reading posts from this hike and our other hikes, you may have noticed how difficult days are sometimes followed by unbelievably magical days.  The trend continues…

Our day started with more weather updates from Mel.  Another huge storm was headed our way, due to arrive around 4pm and hit harder than what happened on Monday.  This wasn’t a complete surprise, it was part of yesterday’s motivation to tap out 26.5 miles.  Today’s original plan was for 24 miles, set ourselves up to finish the IAT West Section on Thursday.  With weather being what it was to be, finding shelter became the new priority.  There was a shelter near mile 22, but there is no way we could make that distance by 4pm.  There was also a campground with cabins around mile 9, but they took damage in the previous storm and had not yet recovered.  What are a couple hikers to do?  Get lucky, again.

One of the tools Brianna & I use to find campgrounds and businesses while on the road is Google Maps.  Google Maps is really helpful when you’re scanning around unsure of what you’re looking for, more options and info.  During my Google Maps search for nearby shelters, I happened upon an unusual icon very near the trail, it had a phone number and no description. “Can’t hurt to call, right?” I said to Brianna, tapping the phone button.

A gentleman by the name of Jason answered the phone.  He laughed when I mentioned his information being listed on Google and apologized that it was not accurate, we could not stay there tonight.  We bantered back and forth for a bit, mostly me picking his brain on which sites might be safest for us during a big storm.  He thought getting a hotel in the nearby city of Antigo would be best. I explained that we would love showers and fresh food but have no way to get to the city or back to the trail. He responded, “let me call you back, I might be able to help.”

What a crazy turn of events.  Brianna and I had no idea if we were about to get a ride into town or sleeping in the woods somewhere, so we kept hiking in the direction of a ski lodge, Spychalla Lodge, that would be our best bet if our new friend couldn’t pull something together for people he didn’t know or have any responsibility for.  The Spychalla lodge is a beautifully built ‘no camping allowed’ building for skiers to enjoy, but I think Spychalla would have approved of us.

It couldn’t have been more than 15-20 minutes before Jason texted me, “My dad is in the area and will drive you to Antigo this morning.  I have a meeting that way tomorrow and will get you back on the trail by 0700.”  And that’s how it all so randomly happened.  Jason’s Dad, Ken, was in the area and heading back to Antigo, so he stopped and scoped us up.  After a tour of the city, he dropped us at the Sleep Inn where the awesome desk worker let us do an 11am early check-in.

We are showered, our clothes are clean, we are once again safe from the storms. Two more days of hiking and we will be passing through Antigo again, can’t wait!

400 miles!

Jason picked us up from the hotel a little before 0700 and shuttled is north to where his dad picked us up yesterday.  The entire series of events is pretty random, but even more random is that Jason and his family are taking a trip to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula next week.  He had a lot of questions about the North Country Trail and popular sites that Brianna and I were very well equipped to answer!  Jason also has a friend hiking the Appalachian Trail this year, he said it was fun helping hikers close to home in honor of his friend.

Thank you, Jason & Ken!  We will pay your kindness forward 🙂

Brianna & I were able to start the trail by 0715.  Today was a real mixed bag of hiking.  The first 10 miles had a lot of tricky tree blow downs we had to navigate.  Every blow down is different, a riddle in its own right.  How do we get around a huge tree with bogs on each side?  How do we get over a huge tree with steep declines on each side?  I like riddles, but they were physically exhausting us.  I’m very thankful we did not have to navigate Harrison Hills after the storms.

The last 14 miles of our day were very easy.  Rough trail turned into hardened dirt paths through shaded forests with few blow downs.  We finished the day halfway through the Kettlebowl segment, an area we had read to be very challenging and easy to get lost in.  Overall, we found it to be very well marked with yellow blazes.  It had rolling hills that were easy to keep pace on and not steep at all.  I don’t know that we would recommend that segment to a friend, but it was not high on the difficult meter.

If I was to pick a most notable part of today’s hike, it would have to Bakers Lake.  Bakers Lake is the last place to fill up on water for 17 miles.  There is no water in the Kettlebowl, you have to hike all the way over to a Park in Polar Township before another opportunity arises.  Brianna & I knew we would be dry camping, so we filled up with 3 liters of water each, had dinner at the lake, really took our time before making the day’s final push.  Bakers Lake is positioned right on the edge of the Lumbercamp segment, making it easily accessible if anyone ever wanted to come back and fish it.  Fish were hitting the top of the water with big splashes the entire time we were there.

Home for tonight is nestled between and beneath some small pine trees where the ground is soft and the sleeping is easy.  Our goal for today was 24 miles and we made it before dark.  It is also the last time we will be able to primitive camp anywhere we want(where allowed).  From here on out, it will be parks and IAT designated areas only.  Feels right that our last free camping night was in the pines, one of our favorite places to be.

We made short work of the last few Kettlebowl miles this morning and began the long road walk into Polar where we would resupply on water and take a proper long lunch break.  A man in a Razor stopped us on the way into town and asked how the Lumbercamp trails were after the storms, any intel would be valuable as he is one of the main caretakers.  I thought we were dropping some bad news on him, as that was one of the worst areas we have past through, but he didn’t seem to think they were that bad, even after he saw the pictures.  I’m sure he knows more than I do, have at it, sir!

Polar is a small town sat on big water, Lake Mueller.  Except for the bathrooms, which were so nasty I do not have the ability to write about them in polite company, Polar Park was very well groomed with a clean little patch of sandy beach.  There is upper polar park, in the shade of many trees where we had lunch, and there is lower polar park where the beach, public docks and all the other people were.  Brianna & I decided it would be a hot lunch kind of day, so she heated water for our ramen and salmon while I put the tent up to dry.  Because of dew, drying the tent out is a daily affair even when it hasn’t stormed during the night.

The remainder of our day was pretty uneventful.  We road walked into the Langlade County RV park, our home for $10 a night, with showers, water, electricity and trash!  The park is next to a baseball diamond and was especially busy because of a local tournament that was happening.  No matter to us, we resupplied at the local super market and ordered cheeseburger pizza for dinner.  It’s not a quiet night, but it’s good to be in a town and off the roads.

Global reach, global power.  GRGP was a term I heard often in the four short years I spent as active duty enlisted in the Air Force.  To sum it up, GRGP is the military’s ability to touch anywhere in the world,  at any time, within x amount of time.  We drilled it, we executed it.  Touch having many different meanings, though I can’t remember a single time we drilled to meet a humanitarian related objective.

As hikers, Brianna & I have nearly zero reach, zero power.  Our ability to touch specific locations is dependent on things like physical health and caloric intake, hours in a day and average rate of travel.  However, we are not powerless.  Our power rests in the small footprints we require and leave, to be so small as to go undetected or ignored, it makes no matter which.  If it can’t be seen, it can’t be targeted.  We are secret agents of obscurity?

Sleep comes early these days and last night was no exception.  Prior to passing out, Brianna and I stuffed our faces with food and attempted to riddle out what the next few days of trail might look like.  The next camping area is 20 miles away, Dells of Eau Claire, a doable hike but the campground is full for the weekend.  The next closest camping spot is 10 miles after Dells of Eau Claire, a 30 mile hike… that is pushing it.

We reached out to all of our usual resources, the local coordinator, the Facebook group, various maps apps; we found nothing.  The local coordinator mentioned that the camping spot after Dells of Eau Claire was where a tornado had hit during the latest storm.  She warned of copious blow downs and a chance that the designated camping spot may not exist when we get there.  A 30 mile day through tiring blow downs with a chance of being screwed upon arrival.  Ok, sweet.

Trail coordinators are very helpful and often very funny.  On more than one occasion we have had them ask us how far away our car is.  I’m guessing most of them don’t deal with thru-hikers very often and aren’t sure what it means to thru-hike.  Brianna and I always laugh and sheepishly reply, “Our car is in Michigan.”

This morning’s hike started windy, hazy and cold, with an air quality alert due to smoke from Canadian fires blowing down our way.  After much debate, the only real plan we could come up with for the day was to hike the 9.5 road miles into the next trail and see what happens, do what we have to do.  The road miles were actually pretty fun, we passed a huge dairy farm and lumber operation.  Dairy cows were chomping down some breakfast but did raise their heads to acknowledge us as we passed.  The lumber operation looked like a prison from afar and was very busy for a  Saturday from up close.  Earlier this week Ken had told us that lumber is one of the main industries in Antigo, trees seem to get smaller and smaller every year.

Once back on the trail, we came upon a boardwalk observation deck; a perfect place for lunch.  Lunch time came and went quickly with still no plan for where to camp or what the next best move might be.  Here is what we did know: we were both tired and a 30 mile day, even if halfway there by lunch, was not going to happen.

Without going into too much detail, we did find a place to camp and were passed out by 6:30pm.  

We had camp broken down and were on the trail by 0550 this morning!  Left no trace!  The initial morning push only lasted about an hour before we both started bellyaching about needing breakfast and coffee, so we stopped at the nearest IAT bench and did the morning routine we usually do before leaving camp.

Injuries on the trail are very different than injuries in normal life.  If I pulled a muscle working out in my normal life, I would probably take a week off and let it heal because injuring myself worse could really throw my routine off.  Injuring myself on the trail, like I did to my calf, like Brianna did to her shin, you just keep limping on and hope that it heals or the surrounding muscles get strong enough to pick up the slack.

Long hiking days like today have a way of bringing old injuries back.  All of today’s segments, Plover River, Thornapple, Ringle, they all had huge blown down trees.  Ringle segment was by far the worst. There were many spots where trees weren’t just blown down, they were twisted like pieces of braided rope.  They say a tornado went through and I believe it.

Overall, even with the trail damage, today’s hike was beautiful.  Going over, around and under trees was more like a Tough Mudder event than a chore.  If the trail is well maintained, going around a tree can be fun.  If you’re going around a tree and dealing with bogs and/or high grass, that’s no fun.  Ringle getting hit so hard is super unfortunate, as this is a new area the IAT had planned to complete work on later this fall.  On the other hand, we have talked to the trail coordinator for this section a lot, Gail, and she has her shit together.  She is already out there with chainsaws and a crew.

We have been on the trail for 27 days and I’m still trying to wrap my head around this whole “Ice Age Traill Alliance” thing.  Trail coordinators, the people who manage specific segments, are all volunteers.  I have to believe that the skilled labor, the people with chainsaws and hammers, are getting paid something.  Ruby and Bruce told us that all the trail maintenance equipment is bought by the IAT and the building of shelters is contracted out with very precise specifications.  They laughed about how one 3-sided shelter costs 6-7k once it’s all said and done.

I would really like to research the top of the the IAT organization more.  With all the legal work and paperwork that’s required to string this thing together, someone has to be getting paid big money, right?

Towards the end of our hiking day, we arrived at Dollar General for a planned resupply.  Brianna must have been in the store for an hour trying to find where things were and deciding which foods to get for our future breakfasts, lunches and dinners.  She must have made friends while wandering the store, soon after she came out with our supplies a gentleman gave us each our own ice cream Snickers bar!  After devouring our dessert, Brianna hung back and organized supplies in the parking lot while I sprinted over to Subway to grab us a couple Italian BMT footlongs.

With full stomachs and heavier packs, we road walked the final 4 miles south to a cozy designated camping spot just 30 yards off the highway (Rice Lake).  We are under the pines again 🙂 Tomorrow will be a lot of road walking.  Having more food is cool, heavy packs suck.

Philosophies of a Thru-Hike, Part 1

Today’s hike was a frustrating road walk that ended in a shorter day than we had hoped.  We ended up putting in a call to this area’s local coordinator, Debbie, who drove us ahead 10 miles to the shelter we had hoped to hike to.  But I don’t want to talk about today, I want to talk about why Debbie is picking us up in the morning and driving us backwards 10 miles to where she picked us up.  I want to talk about the different philosophies of a thru-hike.

This hike has taught Brianna & I something we never knew about each other before, we both define and approach a thru-hike very differently.  

Brianna’s approach is what some might call a ‘purist’ approach, I’d call it Kantian.  Every mile must be hiked, to skip a mile would be a bad action and bad actions are never ok.  At a very base level, Brianna believes that by definition, a thru-hike is only a thru-hike if you hike every mile that can be hiked.  Hard to argue that point, right?

My approach is what some might call the ‘whatever works’ approach, I’d call it utilitarian.  If skipping 10 road miles is going to lead to more fun, or good, then I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.  Don’t tempt me with a good time.  If I begin a hike on the west side of Wisconsin and finish on the east side, the details of how many road miles I did or did not do are inconsequential.  I thru-hiked it.  Maybe I didn’t follow gospel to the word of it, but let’s not get into a conversation about gospels and the two thousand years worth of translations.

If you think these differing approaches cause us conflict, you would be wrong.  I would be ok with skipping road miles, but that doesn’t mean I’m against hiking them, it just means I don’t care, that I do not place value in the action.  If hiking every mile is important to Brianna, then the way for me to have the most good, or the most fun, is in hiking every mile.  If it comes down to the wire and we need to skip forward to make the IAT Eastern Terminus, we would probably only do so with the intent to come back and finish next year.  A fair and reasonable compromise.

This topic is actually a hotly debated one in the hiker community.  I might even be labeled a heretic for my stance, or lack of a stance.  Wait until I write Philosophies of a Thru-Hike, Part 2, where I’ll be discussing laws and how they don’t apply to all people all the time, namely me.

All that aside, our shelter for the night is awesome. We have a roof and electricity, the latter is pretty unheard of. Here is to hoping tomorrow is a better one!

It was nice sleeping at the Iola winter sports club shelter last night.  Staying at a shelter means no putting up a tent, and more importantly, not having to find time to dry it out the next day.  On the trail, Brianna falls asleep about an hour before me.  I looked out the open side of the shelter at Mars dipping across the black horizon for a while, my legs spasming after the long road miles.  A critter was scratching the wall next to Brianna’s head, eventually making it onto the roof of the shelter, but she did not stir.  I could also hear several hornets nests in the rafters, but they did not bother us.

Debbie, our local trail coordinator for this segment, picked us up at 0700 as planned.  She greeted us with a smile and a bag of fresh grapes.  It’s clear to me now after these brief encounters with Debbie that she has a busy mind and is a hub of whose who in the local IAT community.  In the short period since dropping us off, she had reached out to several people who might assist us later.  Thank you for everything, Debbie!  You are a rockstar.

Our hiking day began where it had ended, the Rosholt Dollar General.  I’m not a fan of dollar stores and their ability to shut down local businesses when they come into town, but they seem to be everywhere on the trail we need them to be.  We shop locally whenever possible.

Today was a much better day than yesterday!  There was more road walking, of course, but we had a breezy overcast kind of a day.  New Hope & Iola Ski Hill segments were pristine.  Fresh wood shavings lay about the trails, evidence of recent trail work to clean up after the storms.  These central trails have some challenging hills, short and dry, well traveled and easier on the feet.

We found and reserved an AirBnB apt for tonight in the little village of Scandinavia,

Wi.  The best part, other than showers and laundry, is we didn’t even need to add extra miles to make it.  The village has a population of about 263 and is one of the oldest established villages in Wisconsin, probably no more than a couple square miles in size.  

Somehow, as small as it is, Scandinavia is easily one of our favorite places to have passed through so far.  Every business and many houses fly various Scandinavian flags in honor of the original settlers.  Brianna & I both got 1/2 pound burgers from the Norway Bar & Grill before retreating back to the luxury of our $125 a night AirBnB apt.  It doesn’t take much to make us happy these days, this place is above and beyond.  Newly renovated loft style bedroom with locally made beer and caramel candies in the fridge.

Swedish pancakes & iced coffee, not a bad way to start any day.  The next possible place we can hike to from Scandinavia and camp is Hartman Creek State Park, a shorter day.  The total miles say 14.5 miles, but our road walk back to the IAT recommended route is 3 miles and our hike into Hartman is .5, so more like a an 18 mile day in total.  In any case, we took our sweet time this morning before hiking out of town.  We visited Scandihus, a cultural crepe and pancake coffee house(that also serves ice cream) for breakfast. Scandihus is such a cool restaurant/store. They sell Scandinavian clothes and trinkets, too, but we can’t carry extra weight like that, no matter how much we might want to. Afterwards, we hit up the local bakery, Trout Bum Bakery, for second breakfast.

By the time we got our packs on and out the door, it was well past 0830.  Leaving later meant a hotter sun on our faces for the morning road walk, we powered through it well enough.

Both yesterday and today, we encountered some on the trail that we had yet to really see, trail closures.  IAT has closed some trails for high water and submerged bridges.  I think this is curious.  We have been asked to ford waist deep rivers and hike through deep bogs, are these closed trails really worse or more dangerous than those?  We had to road walk around them, so I guess I’ll never know.

Today’s hike was smooth and unrushed until about lunch time.  Brianna spotted a campground concession stand that would be open until 6pm.  From that point on, I sorely wanted to make it there before it closed.  We have all the food we need for the next couple of days, so it wasn’t that.  We had also just had a wonderful 24 hours of beer and amazing food.  There is just something about a cold pop that cranks my mental motor into overdrive.

We were about a 1.5 miles away from the concession stand with 40 minutes before 6pm when Brianna said, “I’m going to record a video, you can go as fast as you want to the store.”  Boom, I was gone.  Brianna has a saying for every time we go downhill and are physically and safely able to run it, “Thunder Cats are go!”  Let me tell you, the last mile of this trail was downhill and boy was I yelling, “Thunder cats are go!” the entire time.  No one was there to hear me, but I think it helped.  

When I felt tired, I’d remind myself, “Mountain Dew will fix that.”

When my ankle and feet began to hurt, I’d think, “I’ll just put some ice cream on those when I get there.”

I did make it in time, too.  Brianna was waiting for me at the campsite when I returned with some ice cream and pop for tonight, a couple of Gatorades for tomorrow’s longer day.

Today was a good day.  Weather looks clear for tomorrow, looking forward to the mental storms all the miles will cause us :-/.

Reservations on a thru-hike are a difficult thing.  Every day we forecast out with a plan is little hazier than the one before, a little less likely to actually happen.  On top of that, every park has its own guidelines.  Some parks, like Hartman Creek State Park, requires reservations be made at least 48 hours advance.  Other parks, like Collins County Park, wouldn’t let us do any reservations earlier than a week out.  If you wonder why we get jammed up when looking for places to stay so often, this is why.

Let’s talk about Collins County Park for a minute.  After trying and failing to reserve a spot online, we called to inquire if they had any openings… for a Monday.  The lady who answered the phone unapologetically advised us that they were full up.  When Deb picked us up that day, she drove us over to the park so we could see what was going on for ourselves.  The place was a ghost town.  Sure, all the sites had reservation tabs on them, but the dates were for the following weekend.  Are you telling me no one can camp in the empty spots during the week if someone has it reserved for Friday and Saturday?  This is in contrast to Hartman Creek, who not only let us reserve a spot, but helped us move the date forward a day when we couldn’t make it on time.  It’s also frustrating to me that many of these parks have overflow camping spots for bikers, none for hikers.

On a shade break after one of yesterday’s long road walks, we ran into a group of women hikers – LEGO, Ladies Exploring the Great Outdoors.  They recommended we attend the IAT conference in Stevens Pointe to share our experiences.  This is something I would really like to do, and I have a lot of thoughts for them.  

It’s clear that the IAT does care about thru-hikers, otherwise thru-hiker specific camping areas like Rice Lake would not exist.  What I don’t know is how much they care and how many resources they have available to improve our experiences.  I would ask them why the connecting routes (CRs) seem to go around towns like Rosholt & Scandinavia. Instead, these CRs hike past seemingly nothing, but the mileage is nearly the same.  I would ask them how it is we road walk through and next to so many publicly owned lands, but are unable to camp on them.  Camping for a thru-hiker is not the same as allowing the normals folks to camp.  Beer is too heavy to carry and we are usually too tired to deal with a having a camp fire.  We require 7 square feet for camp and you’d never even know we were there once we’ve left.

Hopefully I do not sound ungrateful.  I merely seek to understand with a side of wanting to help.  These are the thoughts hiking through my head during a 15 mile road walk, so in some ways, these are the trail’s thoughts.

There are many ways to hike the trail, thru-hiking is just one of them and not necessarily the most important of them either.  We met a man on the road a couple times today.  He is hiking every IAT mile a little bit at a time.  His strategy uses a vehicle where he starts and a bicycle to get him back to the car once he reaches his finishing point.  The LEGO ladies are hiking all the trail miles and lead Friday group hikes to get others involved in the trail.  Thru-hiking just happens to be our trail flavor and I think we can make good into better.

Today started our unlike any of the 30 days before.  We set an alarm for 0400 and actually got up!  Getting out of camp usually takes us at least an hour with breaking things down, taking time to enjoy the hot coffee and breakfast.  Hiking started around 0530, light was breaking across the horizon to guide our way.

As a whole, the day was arduous.  You know that tunnel vision feeling you sometimes get after driving a long distance in the car?  If someone later asked what you saw on the roads, you’d have no memory of any of it?  That’s what today was, except it was hiking tunnel vision.  I think the trail was nice, I’m sure it was?  We did 26.5 trail miles + .5 back to the trail from last night’s camp @ Hartman Creek + 2 more miles road walk to tonight’s camp @ Tomorrow Wood Campground.

By the time we reached the campground, we were utterly broken.  Things did turn around quickly when the campground owner, Ed, shouted us down shortly after we walked in.  He informed us that there was a pizza delivery place and drove us down to our tent camping spot, which was on the far side of the very large campground.  

I was so tired and broken, that I just straight up asked for help in the morning, “Is there any chance at all that you could give us a ride back to the trail tomorrow?”  He said, “Yes, no problem.”

Long day.  We are exhausted.

Ed, the owner of the Tomorrow Wood Campground, is an awesome person.  He ended up circling back around to our campsite about an hour after first dropping us off.  This time, Ed had cold pop and water for us.  His family has owned the campground since the 1970s when they moved away from the hustle and bustle of Milwaukee.  The campground itself has to be over 100 acres and is next to the fully fish stocked Fish Lake.  Half the campground has been cleared for tent camping sites while the other half has seasonal RVs and tiny homes under CCC pines trees.

Of all the people we have met, Ed laughed the most and the loudest.  Thank you for everything, Ed!

Last night was hard.  When even pizza does not refill your health bar to 100%, your party is in trouble.  It still felt like I was walking when I closed my eyes at night.  A very similar feeling to when I close my eyes after I’ve been on a boat fishing all day and it still feels like I’m on the water.  Sleep came to me fast and the morning came faster.

With Ed driving us to the trail at 0800, we were able to set our alarms to later than normal and sleep in to 0630.  The morning alarm went off right around the same time the thunder started.  It doesn’t take a big storm to get our attention.  We hopped out of the tent, broke camp down and ran our gear to a nearby pavilion for breakfast and coffee.  Our real motivation for the fast action was to keep the tent dry, the campground trees kept us dry from the morning dew and keeping gear dry was worth the effort.

Breaking camp down was the last thing we did quickly today.  Exhaustion from last night carried over to this morning.  We were suffering from a plague of fatigue that no sugar or caffeine could cure.  Humidity for today was at 100%, this did not help.

Even with the worn down bodies and dire mental states, we managed to find some luck today.  A hiker from Alabama, Emily, passed us while on a break yesterday, she let us know she would be in the area for another day or so and gave us her number in case we need anything.  She passed us again today, we always seem to be on a break when we meet people, and it reminded us that we need a ride into Coloma today or be doomed to a 4 mile road walk in.  Emily was good to her word and drove us into town.  The ride ended our day earlier than planned, neither of us had a problem with that.

Coloma is bigger than Scandinavia, Wi type town, though still very small.  Our hotel didn’t open for another hour so we headed over to a rundown laundry mat to wash some clothes.  The biggest riddle we had left for the day was figuring out how to get a ride back to the trail in the morning.  Our riddle ended up being an easy one, I asked the hotel co-owner, Dennis, if there were any cans around and he asked his wife, the other co-owner, if she would drive us out at 0700.

Friday is fish fry day at the local Cabin Bar & Grill, something we could not say no to.  We need a good night sleep to help counter balance how much tomorrow is going to suck. If the forecast is correct, we will be road walking 16 miles in the rain.

Chicka & Sunsets might be bringing us trail magic on the road today!  A light at the end of a very wet and stormy tunnel 🙂