Originally printed September 1, 2020.
I had another pair of wonderful walks when I returned last week to hike the Lake Eleven Segment, the final segment left for me to hike in Taylor county. My plan was to divide the 15.6 mile trail into two hikes. On Thursday, August 27th, I was going to hike the 8.9 mile portion of the trail north of where it intersects with Winter Sports Road. My bike shuttle to the starting point went smoothly. After I locked my bike to a tree, I got started at 9:42. The temperature was in the low 70s and humid with a cover of morning overcast that the sun soon burned away.
For the bulk of the hike, I walked north and east in gently rolling country through the deep forests of the Perkinstown and Richter Lake Hemlock State Natural Areas. Based on the information in my guidebook, the dominant land features in this area were two ice-walled lake plains, “Mesa-like hills that were once lakes on a melting glacier” according to my guidebook. “Streams flowing on the glacier deposited loads of sediment into these lakes. When the surrounding glacier the lake bottoms became the hilltops.” For me, hiking them was a little like walking on a table top.
The highlight of the hike was seeing Lake Eleven itself. I found it quite striking after several miles of walking in forest canopy. Hopefully, the picture above gives you some idea of its beauty.
I was pleasantly surprised with how dry the trail was, compared to previous hikes like the Mondeaux Esker hike. Yes, there were some unnamed streams for me to cross, but they were pretty easy to navigate by tiptoeing on rocks. I guess I will measure most, if not all, of my hikes against the Mondeaux yardstick.
To get to the last two miles of my hike, I had to cross a two lane highway, County M. Normally, you would think that dealing with something like this would be a no brainer, but, for reasons I don’t understand, I can really tie myself in knots in such situations. First, my paper map shows the trail as simply crossing the highway, where the actual signage showed a left turn. Then I had to choose whether to walk along the highway itself or to see if the trail went into the woods a bit and paralleled the highway. I guessed wrong a couple of hikes back, so I did some probing to look for a trail. No luck. Eventually, I walked along the highway a bit and found the trail. Wasted time. Not good.
Once I found the trail north of County M, the forest thinned out so I was walking in the open. The grass here had not been cut back; this was the most extended portion of trail that I would consider overgrown. Had this been May or June, I would have been very concerned about ticks, but that isn’t an issue in the late summer. After crossing the South Fork of the Yellow river, I passed through another wooded area before reaching my car. By this time, I was hot and bothered.
Some cookie dough ice cream seemed like a real good idea!
My Days on the Ice Age Trail 