Originally printed November 4, 2018.
It will be great to be in deep woods on new trail again!
That was the general thought as I returned to the Waupaca area Thursday afternoon for two days of hiking on Friday and Saturday. I had done some shakedown hikes in the south Kettle Moraine, and I hiked two sections of Connecting Routes the previous weekend. Now was my chance to blaze some new trail on legitimate Ice Age Trail segments.
For this hike, I was also trying something new in terms of accommodations. When I’ve had to stay overnight for earlier hikes, I either got a motel room or I camped. After an unsatisfying stay at a “name motel” last weekend, Jane did some searching on airbnb and found a very nice place for me to stay at less than half the price of the motel. The house, located on the edge of town, was just what I needed. I had my own room and bathroom, and I had the run of the living room and kitchen. My hostess, Linda, is a Physical Therapist’s assistant, and her husband, Marty, drives a truck. Linda was there to help when I had a question. Otherwise, she let me have my space. After sleeping like a log, I rose in the morning, dressed, ate breakfast, and drove to the pickup point on state highway 54 to meet Ruth, my trail angel for Friday’s hike.
Ruth, a 2014 qualifier for the 1000 Mile Club, made the 30 mile trip all the way from Stevens Point to help me, for which I was extremely grateful. Thankfully, she arranged to meet a friend where she picked me up, and the two cars convoyed to where I was starting my hike. After I geared up, Ruth gazed at the beginning of my trail and saw two sizeable logs blocking the trail. She noted that they needed to be removed and asked me to tell her if I found any more blocks in the trail(I found three more). Then, I started off. Ruth and her friend rode in one of their cars some miles south, where they started their own road hike.
It was 24 degrees and partly cloudy when I started my hike at 8:20am. Today I was hiking two segments, the 2.6 mile Emmons Creek Segment and the 5.3 mile Hartman Creek Segment. The Emmons Creek Segment welcomed me immediately with a steep climb to the top of a ridge overlooking the Emmons Creek valley. As often happens, I didn’t make very good time at first. My hands were cold and stiff, so I was wearing leather gloves. That was fine, but I had to take them off every time I wanted to take a picture. Then, I had to put them back on, put my gloved hands through the straps of my walking sticks, and then usually adjust my gloves to better cover my hands. I felt like a baseball player constantly adjusting my batting gloves. It was bothersome, and it slowed me up. Fortunately, it warmed pretty quickly, so I could lose the gloves and stop imitating Ryan Braun at the plate.
The Emmons Creek Segment was beautiful from start to finish. Easily, the highlight of this segment was seeing the frost covering all the plants. This was particularly true in a large meadow I encountered about two miles into my hike. All the grasses, flowers and seed pods had a shimmering white glow on top of them. At a distance, the effect was like an impressionist painting. Up close, the frost created a delicate lacy filigree on the plants. The picture above is my attempt to capture the effect.
Throughout the hike, I was blessed to walk on soft ground that supported me while being easy on my joints. For most of the hike, I either walked on firmly packed sand covered by beds of pine needles or leaves. Either way, it was a treat for my body after two days of road walking the previous weekend.
The Hartman Creek Segment directly connected to Emmons Creek. By this time, the sun got higher in the sky, the clouds dissipated a bit, and the morning went from partly cloudy to mostly sunny. A large chunk of this segment is part of the 1400 acre Hartman Creek State Park. For all but a relatively small area of oak savanna, I hiked through majestic evergreen forests in the early going. The highlight of this section is a HUGE erratic – a boulder carried a long distance by a glacier and deposited when the glacier melted, according to my Ice Age Trail guide. This rock was half the size of a city bus. I cannot conceive of the force needed to pick up such a mass, carry it who-knows-how-far and deposit it. This erratic – I can’t believe it doesn’t have a nickname – is also the junction for several trails. Which one was the IAT? This proved to be a problem. Usually, I religiously follow the yellow blaze markers, and that’s what I started to do in this case. At the same time, I turned on my electronic map and fully expected to see my little vector planted on the trail. Nope, not right. Back 50 yards to the junction. Oddly, what was marked on the electronic map as IAT was not marked with the yellow blaze on the actual trail. What to do? Usually, I follow those yellow markers without exception. This time, I decided to follow the electronic map. Eventually, it linked with a section marked with yellow blaze, so I was back on track. But, things were a little tense for a half hour.
For the last 1.5 miles, the terrain changed to more leaf-bearing trees. I soon came to the edge of a farmer’s field, and I could see my car in the distance, perhaps a third to a half mile away. The trail snaked through a tree line separating the field in two and worked its way to my car. At 12:15pm, I was done.
Time for some lunch!
My Days on the Ice Age Trail 