Trail Talk

Editor’s Note: Jim DuFresne wrote and filed this blog for MichiganTrailMaps.com on Friday morning, Jan. 27. That evening five inches of snow had fallen on most of Emmit County and on Saturday Mother Nature added two more. There is good Nordic skiing from Gaylord through most of the northern half of the Lower Peninsula. For an update snow conditions report contact the Petoskey Visitors Bureau (800-845-2828; www.petoskeyarea.com) or the Gaylord Tourism Bureau (800-345-8621; www.gaylordmichigan.net).

By Jim DuFresne

When I left on my journey to find snow in northern Michigan, there was none around my house in Oakland County. Brown grass and fallen leaves were covering the ground.

Jim DuFresne

It’s been horrible year for cross-country skiers in Southeast Michigan. At Independence Oaks County Park, my home trails, we’ve had exactly one day skiing when three inches had fallen the night before. Not enough for the park staff to groom and barely enough for some diehards to show up with their rock skis and take a loop around Crooked Lake.

So last week I jumped on I-75 and headed north and saw nothing for the first 100 miles. Then at Mile 191, there it was, in the woods, small patches and mounds of white.

Snow, it’s what allows some of us to endure everything else about winter.

By the time I passed West Branch the ground was white, at Grayling there was four to five inches and at Harbor Springs, my base of operation for the next five days, almost foot in most places. But a thunderstorm (you read that right; a thunderstorm with lightening and heavy rain) had occurred two days before I arrived and the snow was hard and icy.

The first trail on my list was more ice than snow so I ditched the Nordic skis and stepped into my snowshoes. The second was further north in Emmet County and further inland but the snow was still hard and crusty and the skiing was laborious. On the downhills I was taking my life into my hands, on the climbs I had work at my herringbone to dig the edges of my skis into the crust.

A cross-country skier on the beach at Petoskey State Park.

I was ready to call it a day when suddenly the sun appeared and on impulse I pulled into Petoskey State Park.  The park has such a limited trail system that in the winter it’s where the locals go for a quick ski. Everybody else who has driven this far north searches for something more extensive.

This year the staff has set up a 1.4-mile loop, a ski trail that winds through the closed campgrounds, into the woods and then back along the unplowed park road. The trail is used enough that there is usually a decent set of tracks for classic skiing.

In the time it took me to park at the trailhead and step into my skis, the sun had already softened out the snow. I marveled how fast conditions can change in the winter and then glided into the woods on tracks that required only a few strategic kicks to keep the momentum up. Under a blue sky and with large pines whisking pass me, I found that Nordic rhythm that makes cross-country skiing such wonderful activity.

 It was my first ski of the season and like that first cup of coffee in the morning, it never gets better than this. Even if you are only in Petoskey State Park.

When the trail entered Tanner Creek Campground at the south end of the park there were tracks everywhere. To add additional mileage some skiers where heading east into the dunes for more challenging elevation. Most headed west to check out Little Traverse Bay.

I headed west and skied between tuffs of brown beach grass along the low fore dunes. On a rounded, white mound that are the dunes in winter I stopped to take in the view; Little Traverse Bay with a shoreline of jumbled ice formations that were slowly taking on the pinks of January’s early sunsets. As far as I could see nobody else was around.

It was quintessential northern Michigan. Without snow spring can’t come fast enough. With it, summer and those humid days in July can wait.

            *                         *                    *

 In every room at the Best Western of Harbor Springs there is a sign asking skiers “to please use caution with boots, skis and poles.” No doubt about it, this motel knows its clientele in the winter and caters to them shamelessly.

If you’re looking for a place to stay in Petoskey area, this Best Western (231-347-9050) is an excellent choice. The rooms are large, the breakfast will provide enough carbs to keep you going all day, there’s an indoor swimming pool and, more important, a hot tub.

 The Best Western is located on M-119 just south of Harbor Springs, making its location ideal for both the downhill areas and major ski trails. I highly recommend it.

Editor’s Note: This blog entry by Jim DuFresne was suppose to appear  just before Christmas but technical difficulties prevented us from posting it until now.

By Jim DuFresne

Jim DuFresne

This is the time of the year when we often pause to reflect, remember and give thanks. Despite these tough economic times, at MichiganTrailMaps.com we have much to be thankful for.

Conceived in 2009 and launched in 2010, this small publishing company and web site had its best year so far in 2011. We ushered in our first book, the fourth edition of Isle Royale National Park: Foot Trails & Water Routes, signed up our first two sponsors, laid the foundation for an e-commerce shop and our first commercial map, both which should occur in 2012.

And along the way we managed to research, map and upload almost 140 trails on the web site. That’s a lot of afternoons spent in the woods and for that we are eternally grateful.

But the more we thought about it the more we realized it’s the trails themselves and the organizations and agencies that plan, build and maintain them that we are particularly thankful for. Groups like the North Country Trail Association, the Michigan Mountain Biking Association, the Top of Michigan Trails Council, all the nature conservancies around the state that work tirelessly to preserve a small tract of woods and build a trail across it so we can enjoy the natural setting.

As a way of showing our appreciation, we decided to start an annual tradition of selecting one group at the end of the year and giving something back to them. This week we sent a check to TART Trails.

It wasn’t large – we’re young, we don’t have much to spare – but we sent what we could because this group has done so much for trail users in the Grand Traverse Area.

The TART Trail in Traverse City.

Formed in 1998 when four local groups merged to create a stronger voice for recreation trails in northwest Michigan, TART has almost single handily turned Traverse City into Trail Town.

They currently oversee six multi-use trails in Grand Traverse and Leelanau counties that total 55 miles of trails and are used by 200,000 people annually. The heart of their system is Tart Trail, a 10.5-mile paved path that begins in Acme, heads west through the heart of downtown Traverse City and ends at the M-22/M-72 intersection. The year the popular trail celebrated its 20^th anniversary.

Where Tart Trail ends their Leelanau Trail begins and heads north 15.5 miles to Sutton’s Bay.  On the edge of Traverse City in the Pere Marquette State Forest is the Vasa Pathway, a series of loops ranging from 3 kilometers to 25 kilometers that TART grooms for cross country skiers in the winter and maintains for runners, hikers and mountain bikers the rest of the year.

Among the projects the organization is focused on is the complete paving of the Leelanau Trail, the construction of the Sleeping Bear Heritage Trail that someday will  extend from 27 miles from the northern end of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore to south of Empire and linking the village of Elk Rapids to the Tart Trail in Acme.

That’s a lot of trail work. They could use our help.

If you bike, hike, jog or ski in this beautiful corner of Michigan, you can help by sending them a donation. Even if it’s a small one, they’ll gratefully accept it now or any time of the year and will put the money to the best possible use.

Building a trail somewhere.

I’m driving a new car. No, let me re-phrase that; I’m driving a newer car.

I picked up a Saturn Vue that is three-years old and has 43,000 miles on it. It’s high tech. For the first time I can use my IPod in my vehicle. It has remote start for those mornings when the windows are all frosted up and during those cold winter drives I can flick a switch and the seats warm up.

Jim DuFresne

I like the Saturn but it can never fully replace the car I just gave up; Father Jack’s Buick, a.k.a. the Priestmobile.

My wife’s uncle was a Catholic Priest and after he died I purchased his car from the estate, a 1998 Buick Regal with 110,000 miles on it. I only paid $1000 and figured I could squeeze a couple of years out of it. But this car was blessed because eight years and 140,000 miles later I was still driving it.

It took awhile to warm up to Father Jack’s Buick. You sat low in the seats so getting in and out was always a monumental effort. The trunk was poorly designed. I could barely squeeze my belly boat in and could only carry my mountain bike if I left the front wheel hanging out. And there was something wrong with the tape player. No matter what cassette I put in, it was always like I was listening to Alvin and the Chipmunks sing.

Plus it was Buick. Drive a car like that and you might as well slap an AARP sticker on the bumper. People who saw me on I-75 in December probably thought I was just another snowbird heading to Florida for the winter.

But that car had the character and perseverance of its pervious owner and eventually I came to realize that Father Jack was somewhere in the Buick. Maybe sitting next to me in the front seat.

Father Jack's trusty Buick Regal

This was a man who didn’t dilly-dally. He was famous for his 40-minute masses that attracted church-goers from surrounding parishes. He had little patience for excessive ceremonies and when it came to his sermons he told you what you needed to know without a lot brow-beating or biblical references.

This is how you should live your life, now go home and do it.

Naturally the clock in his car was fast. I would reset it at the beginning of every month and it would be off by 15 minutes at the end of it so I’d reset it again. This went on for eight years. It was hard to be late in Father Jack’s Buick.

After a couple years the trunk no longer locked. No doubt he was letting me know I was becoming too attached to worldly possessions. What was important wasn’t my flyrods in the trunk, rather the journey and certainly the destination at the end. That can be hard lesson to learn sometimes.

 Most of all, that car, like Father Jack, was dependable. No false fronts or pretentiousness. You knew what you were getting. It wasn’t a model I’d ever choose at a dealership but it was always there when I needed it. That Buick never stranded me in the woods.

And I spent a lot of time in the woods in that car. For two years I drove around the northern half of the Lower Peninsula trying to find and fish obscure rivers and creeks while working on my book, 12 Classic Trout Streams of Michigan.

Beginning in 2009 I was crisscrossing the state researching trails for www.MichiganTrailMaps.com. Sometimes it sputtered, sometimes near the end it hesitated but it always started up.

Once last year I was deep in the Pigeon River Country State Forest, a good hour from the nearest tow trunk in Gaylord. After spending all morning on the Green Timbers Pathway I jumped in the Buick, turned the ignition and nothing happened.

I was probably looking at a $300 towing bill, if I could even find somebody to come out there, when I decided what I needed to do was pray. But not to God.

“Please Father Jack don’t let the Buick strand me here. Please!”

He was in that car with me, he heard me. I got out and opened and closed the hood a few times, rock the car a little from behind and tried the ignition again. This time the engine roared to life.

I’m going to miss that car, maybe more than I miss Father Jack’s sermons.

On the day of Greg Hokans’ funeral I was hiking in Emmet County, recording trails for MichiganTrailMaps.com and enjoying a beautiful September day in northern Michigan.

At the Elk Rapids Library that evening, my Internet connection when I’m in this corner of the state, somebody emailed me condolences to the loss of my friend and upon further searching of the web I learned that he had died a few days earlier in Cheboygan and was buried that day.

Jim DuFresne

I missed it all because I was out in the woods. I wasn’t shocked because I knew he was gravely ill, he told me when I visited him a couple weeks earlier he had less than a month, but the grief that swept over me was profound and the guilt I felt for missing the end was even worse.

 The only thing that got me through the evening was the knowledge that Greg would much rather have me out on the trail celebrating his life than in a church praying at his funeral.

 So the next day I did that. I threw my mountain bike in the back of my car and drove to the Wildwood Hills State Forest Pathway near Burt Lake. Once there I spent the morning pedaling among the pines, trying to make sense why somebody like Greg would be told at the age of 46 that he had stage 4 colon cancer.

I met Greg in the late 1980s. He was the new executive director of the Marquette Country Convention and Visitors Bureau and had put together his first familiarization tour for the media. I was a freelance writer, generating travel and outdoor stories for newspapers and guidebooks.

 He invited me up for the tour and we hit it off the minute we met. He was a lifelong Yooper. I loved the U.P. He needed to get the word out how wonderful Marquette was. I needed material to sell. We both had a passion for the outdoors and adventure.

After that I didn’t need to wait for a media junket to visit Marquette. For the next eight or nine years I would just drive north and walk into his office, often unannounced. Didn’t matter. Greg would drop everything, tell the receptionist he was gone for the day and we’d take off to “research stories.”

Greg Hokans at Fort Mackinac

 We’d swing by Jean Kay’s Pasties & Subs Shop in town to pick up lunch and then Greg would hand me a media kit, a large envelope stuffed with the latest visitor’s guide, brochures, press releases. With a media kit in the hands of a media person, it was now official. We could go and play without worrying about board of directors, editors or wives.

We’d climb Hogsback Mountain, paddle Craig Lake, spend an afternoon following old two-tracks looking for moose, hike into the Rocking Chair Lakes Wilderness, try to catch a brook trout in front of a waterfall because it would make for a great photo.

He’d promote, I’d publish. Marquette and the surrounding region never received so much good press.

It was a Friday when I arrived at the trailhead of Wildwood Hills and, despite a car in the parking lot, didn’t see another soul on the trail which I was thankful for.

Wildwood Hills was developed in the 1970s primarily for Nordic skiers but the mountain biking boom of the 1980s turned the trail into a popular weekend destination for off-road cyclists. The pathway is actually a 12-mile system of three loops with the perimeter of it forming a natural route of almost 9 miles.

 It’s not overly scenic but not technical either and that’s why I chose it. The trails are old forest roads and even railroad beds left over from turn-of-the-century logging, making them wide paths with gentle curves and climbs. It’s also well posted. I could pedal through the woods while my mind wandered and it did.

I thought about life and the end of it. I thought about my purpose here and why a God would take away somebody as young, honest, hardworking and good hearted as Greg. Mostly I just thought about our times together.

We would work on stories and sometimes even create them. I once showed up Dec. 1 because that’s when the snowmobile season begins in Michigan. Only nobody snowmobiles then because there’s not enough snow to ride. Or so they think.

In Marquette, Greg borrowed a trailer and an old station wagon to pull it, we loaded two snowmobiles on it and off we went north of the city to spend the day driving around the rugged Huron Mountains looking for enough snow to snowmobile.

It took a while but we certainly were in no hurry. Nether one of us could think of a better way to spend an afternoon. Finally late in the day we found an area with a base of 10 or 12 inches on the backside of a ridge so we jumped on the sleds and rode through the woods, breaking our own trails. The entire ride, including stops to stage photos, probably lasted less than 40 minutes before we were back at the car, breaking out the still-warm Jean Kay’s pasties and a couple of beers.

Here’s to the start of the snowmobile season!

I was thinking about that when I realized I had taken a wrong turn somewhere on the pathway. I backtracked a quarter mile to the last trail sign, saw the missed junction and continued on, letting my thoughts wander again.

The time spent alone in the forest worked. I emerged at the trailhead feeling less burden by grief and sadness. I realized that more important than a funeral or being at his deathbed was the fact I was able to see him just weeks before at Mackinac Island where Greg’s final job was as the marketing manager of Mackinac State Historic Parks.

From his office at Fort Mackinac we walked over to the Tearoom Restaurant and sat outside to that incredible view of the island and the Straits of Mackinac. We talked about jobs and kids and our adventures together. When I asked about the cancer and his feelings, it became emotional so we pulled back to reminiscing.

The last thing Greg did was hand me a media kit for Mackinac State Historic Parks and pick up the tab for lunch. “Have to keep it official,” he said but we both knew it never was.

You’ll learn a lot hiking the Chilkoot Trail. You get a history lesson on the Chilkoot and a sense of the feverous attraction gold can have on men. You learn a little about personal perseverance as you struggle over the Chilkoot Pass on a rainy morning when the clouds are so low and so thick you have to peer hard to see the next trail marker.

And if you’re my son, you learn how to backpack comfortably…or as comfortable as your father can make it.

Jim DuFresne

The Chilkoot Trail is a 33-mile trail through the Coast Mountains that leads from Dyea, Alaska, just outside Skagway, to Lake Bennett in British Columbia. The trail, which crosses the historic Chilkoot Pass, was the major access route from Alaska to the Yukon goldfields during the Klondike Gold Rush that hit its peak in 1897-1899. The news that there was gold outside Dawson City hit the U.S. during a deep recession, prompting thousands of otherwise sane men and a few women to quit their jobs, sell their homes and leave their families for the opportunity to “get rich quick.”

Very few did of course. It’s estimated that of the more than 100,000 people who started out for the Klondike gold fields, less than 30,000 even made it to Dawson City. And once there those who did quickly realized that most of the streams had already been staked and claimed.

Today the Chilkoot is unquestionably the most famous trail in Alaska and probably the most popular as more than 3,000 people spend three to five days following the historic route every summer. It is a well-developed trail and not so much a wilderness adventure as a history lesson. For many, the highlight of the hike is riding the historic White Pass & Yukon Railroad from Lake Bennett back to Skagway. Experiencing the Chilkoot and returning on the WP&YR is probably the ultimate Alaska trek, combining great scenery, a connection to the past and an incredible sense of adventure.

What my son learned:

When the Weather Is Nice Push On Because You Never Will Know What Tomorrow Will Bring

A tent pad campsite in Sheep Camp along the Chilkoot Trail.

Michael flew into Juneau where I met him at the airport and a day and half later we were on an Alaska Marine Highway ferry headed for Skagway. Many hikers will overnight in this former gold rush town and get an early start the next day.

But the skies were clear, deep blue and without a trace of rain, an unusual occurrence in the Southeast Alaska, basically a rainforest that’s wetter than Seattle. We hustled off the state ferry, stopped by the National Park Trail Center to pick up our permits, hopped across the street to purchase our train tickets and then called a friend of mine to give us a ride the 8 miles out the road to the Taiya River bridge where the Chilkoot Trail begins.

There was still nothing but blue above us when we shouldered our packs at 3:30 p.m. and took to the trail. The Chilkoot begins immediately with a 100-foot climb above the banks of the Taiya River then settles down into a fairly level walk. We had enthusiasm, dry footing and that 20-hour Alaskan day, when in June the sun rises before 4 a.m. and doesn’t set until after 11 p.m. When we reached our intended stop, Finnegan’s Point, a 5-mile walk from the trailhead, that midnight sun was still high in the sky. We pushed on through the lush forest of Sitka spruce and western hemlock.

At 7:30 p.m. we pulled into Canyon City Campground. In 1898, Canyon City was indeed a bustling tent city of more than 4,000 residents and included restaurants, hotels, saloons (of course), a steam-driven power plant and waves of stampeders moving their loads up the trail.

For the first time we could poke around and see what the miners left behind a century ago. This is truly the most amazing part of the Chilkoot, its history is lying in the woods; rusty tin cans, tools, a lone boot and rotting building foundations. We crossed a suspension bridge over the Taiya River to view a huge steam boiler on the other side that at one time powered the aerial tramways carrying gear to the pass at 7.2 cents a pound . You can not help but soak in the history of this incredible period of gold-rush madness if for no other reason than the trail is lined with interpretive plaques featuring grainy black-and-white photos from that era.

 Do Whatever It Takes to Keep Your Pack Light

Stampeders climb the Golden Stairs along the Chilkoot Trail in 1898.

Our second day was short which was good because our shoulders were burning. Our packs weighed around 40 pounds each when we departed Skagway and somehow my son convinced me that when it comes to the group gear I should take the tent, stove and water filter. He packed the food. Smart kid. His load decreased steadily with every meal on the trail, mine stayed stubbornly at around 40 pounds.

The climbing begins after Canyon City. The trail ascends up the valley wall as the river disappears into a small canyon and soon we were hiking through a sub-alpine forest. Prospectors called this section “the worst piece of trail of the route” and with a light rain falling we found it fairly muddy with many boulders to scramble over and short steep sections to climb.

We reached Sheep Camp just before lunch, a crucial destination along the Chilkoot. As the last campground on the U.S. side, Sheep Camp serves as the staging area for the climb to the summit the following day. For most hikers that’s a 9-mile, 8 to 10-hour trek to the next campground in which they ascend more than 2,500 feet in the first half. A National Park Service ranger met with the 30 of us in camp that evening to detail the route and inform us we had to be on the trail by 6 a.m. due to increased avalanche danger in the afternoon.

Let me tell you, that grabs your attention and gets your adrenalin flowing.

It also made me ponder the weight of my pack – still close to 40 pounds. So after my son retreated to the tent for the night I hid some gear in the bottom of his food bag. The next morning you would have thought I cut off his left foot. He noticed it right away and accused me of trying to sneak extra weigh into his pack. I immediately denied it of course, there was manly pride involved, but had to claim I inadvertently put the gear in the wrong bag.

Even worse I had to take it back.

 Always Pack a Stove 

We were up by 4:15 a.m. and the second party out of Sheep Camp at 5:30 a.m., quickly passing the first group. In the beginning the trail was rocky and times we were boulder hopping. But after gaining a1000 feet or so, the climb became easier as snowfields covered the trail. We pulled out our trekking poles and advanced up the gentle slopes, keeping a weary eye on those avalanche chutes we passed. By 8 a.m. we had reached the Scales, where an interpretive plaque displayed the most famous photo of the gold rush, stampeders with heavy packs lined up one-by-one as they climbed to the top of the pass along the Golden Stairs, named from the steps that they painstakingly carved into the snow and ice.  

Michael DuFresne climbs the Golden Stairs of the Chilkoot Trail in 2011.

And there in front of us we could see their route which was our route. Suddenly it was 1898 again as we ascended the steep, boulder-filled slope to the Chilkoot Pass, lugging our own packs. For the next hour we never stood up, rather scaled the 45-degree chute by climbing from one large boulder to the next on all fours. It was cold, drizzly and so cloudy that we had to peer through the mist to see the next marker.

It’s the kind of adventure you come to Alaska looking for and when we reached the top there was an exaltation of summiting that you can’t get in Michigan.

By 9:30 a.m. we had reached the emergency shelter just across the Canadian border. We stepped inside, stripped off our raingear and I pulled out my MSR stove. There was a time during the planning of this trek that my son said we could leave the stove at home and just eat cold food. No way I replied.

In the shelter my fingers were so cold I struggled to lit my trusty MSR. When the white gas finally ignited there was a burst of flames and the first thing we both did was warm our hands. The next thing we did was make a pot of orange-spiced tea.

No cup of tea ever tasted so fine. At first we simply wrap our fingers around the warm metal cups. Then we slowly sipped the hot tea, feeling its warmth spread through our chilled bodies. At that point Michael realized a backpacker’s stove is required equipment.

  Always Sign Up For the Optional Lunch

 We reached the next campground, Happy Camp, by mid-afternoon and we pondered pushing on. But the sun broke out and blue sky appeared so we laid out our wet gear on a wooden tent pad and inflated our Therm-a-Rests. There were mountains all around us but no bugs. The warmth of the sun and the early morning departure lulled us into taking a nap. We slept for over an hour and by then I knew I wasn’t going to be shouldering my pack again that day.
           

The Chilkoot Trail stayed above the treeline the next morning until we reached Deep Lake and then skirted the edge of the incredible gorge Moose Creek flows through on its way north to Lindeman Lake. The mountain scenery remained impressive, the gold rush artifacts numerous for the rest of the day and by mid-afternoon we reached Bare Loon Lake Campground, where we planned to pitch the tent for the night.  

Our final day, the fifth on the Chilkoot, was short and easy as we hiked only 4 miles before arriving at Lake Bennett, the end of the trail. Here the stampeders built crude rafts, loaded them with their supplies and floated the lake into the Yukon River for Dawson City.

Descending towards Carter Lake from the Chilkoot Pass.

What put the Chilkoot Trail out of business was the construction of the White Pass and Yukon Railroad (WP&YR), which was completed from Skagway to Whitehorse in 1900 via Lake Bennett. On the shores of Lake Bennett, in seemingly the middle of nowhere, is a classic train deport that today serves as a huge dining room for the cruise ship passengers on WP&YR tours out of Skagway.

But when you book a seat on the train as a backpacker you’re offered the option to have lunch at the depot for an additional $12. Every hiker I saw on the Chilkoot was there for the end-of-the-trail meal.

 They put us all in a backroom, well away from the cruise-ship passengers, and who could blame them? None of us have had a shower in four or five days. But they feed us well. A crew of waitresses bought out cast-iron pots of beef stew, baskets of fresh bread, thermoses of hot coffee and big slices of apple pie.

We feasted as if we hadn’t eaten in five days.  Then everybody went outside and laid out in the sun to soak in the view of the mountains one more time before boarding the train, the first step in our long journey from mountain adventures in the wilderness to our daily routines back home.

Editor’s Note: This is Jim DuFresne’s final blog from his summer in Alaska. Beginning next week he will be back in Michigan researching trails for MichiganTrailMaps.com.

Jim DuFresne

It’s an amazing sight from my table but best of all the scenery is constantly getting better. That’s because I’m on an Alaska Marine Highway ferry, steaming from Haines down to Juneau.

For almost a month I have been crisscrossing Southeast Alaska, updating the 10th edition of my Lonely Planet guide, Alaska. Within this vast roadless region that stretches stretches 540 miles from Icy Bay south to Portland Canal there are islands, fjords, mountains, glaciers and narrows but only two roads that go anywhere. To travel here I jump on an Alaska state ferry, those distinctively blue boats that carry passengers and vehicles and first appeared only a few years after Alaska became a state in 1959.

Today there are 11 vessels in the fleet, servicing 32 ports along a system that stretches 3,200 nautical miles from Bellingham, Washington, to Dutch Harbor, home of the Deadliest Catch fishing crews in the Aleutian Islands. The vast majority of the vessels and routes are in Southeast Alaska but these are not cruise ships.

They are nothing like a cruise ship.

An Alaska Marine Highway ferry.

Most cruise ships are Love Boats, huge vessels that carry anywhere from 1,500 to 3,000 passengers, they congregate in three towns in Southeast Alaska; Ketchikan, Juneau  and tiny Skagway and they arrive in the morning and leave in the evening. There are times I’ve been in Skagway, a town of only 900 residents squeezed between two mountains, when six cruise ships show up and dump 15,000 people onto the cramped downtown area.  When you board a cruise ship for a trip to Southeast Alaska you always travel in a crowd.

That’s not the Alaska I want to see.

I want to see real Alaska, travel to small fishing ports with the people who live there. I want to be on a vessel that squeezes through the most narrow passages, like the Wrangell Narrows where state ferries thread their way through a 22-mile channel with the 46 turns, a channel that is only 300ft wide and 19ft deep in places. So winding and narrow is the Wrangell Narrows that locals call it ‘pinball alley.’

Sailing with the Alaska Marine Highway is casual travel, a relaxing, friendly pace. All the vessels are different, the only thing they have in common is they are named after glaciers. Right now as I write this I’m on the MV Taku, one of my favorites. There are several lounges to sit and take in the scenery, including the Observation Lounge with its 180-degree window view at the front of the boat.

There is a cafeteria where in the morning the chef cooks you eggs after your tell him sunnyside up. There is a jigsaw puzzle room on the MV Taku and a friendly pub and a solarium on the top level with lounge chairs where backpackers pitch their small free-standing tents and spend the nights. Others sleep in the lounges on blow-up air mattresses or rent a cabin.

The showers are free on the ferries so is the hot water if you brought your own tea bags and the microwaves if you packed along a can of ravioli.  Travel on the state ferries is very relaxed and very affordable.

Before my summer is over I will have boarded a state ferry a dozen times with trips that range from an hour and half to a day and a half. At every port I land at there are great adventures, particularly if you like to hike in the mountains.

Passengers on the Alaska State Ferry.

In Haines, I climbed the Mount Ripinsky Trail where from its 3690-foot summit  there are sweeping views of sea and land from Juneau to Skagway. In Ketchikan I spent Father’s Day following the Deer Mountain Trail and made it within 400 yards of the summit before heavy snow turned me back. In Sitka I’m hoping to hike the Gaven Hill Trail that begins close to town and ascends almost 2500 feet over 3 miles to Gavan Hill peak and then continues to a free-use U.S. Forest Service shelter where you can spend the night above the treeline.

And when my son arrives towards the end of my trip we have plans to hike the West Glacier Trail, one of the most spectacular hikes in the Juneau area that hugs the mountainside along Mendenhall glacier, providing exceptional views of the icefalls and other glacial features. This is in preparation for our ultimate adventure, a four-day walk across the Chilkoot Trail, including the steep climb over the 3525-foot Chilkoot Pass, the same route that the Klondike Gold Rush stampeders followed in the 1898.

And the common thread that connects all these wonderful hikes and adventures is the Alaska Marine Highway, an affordable and relaxing way to travel that gets you where nobody else will and allows you the flexibility to include every mountain top that appeals to you.

As a hiker, why would you ever book passage on a cruise ship to Alaska?

Editor’s Note: Jim DuFresne, the main contributor to MichiganTrailMaps.com, made it to Alaska and sent in his first blog entry.

In Los Angeles, you cruise the Sunset Strip; in Paris, you stroll the Champs-Elyse’es; and in Anchorage, you climb Flattop Mountain. This is the first mountain every kid in Anchorage scales on the way to higher things. Flattop Mountain is to children in Anchorage what the Dune Climb is to kids in Michigan; their first big challenge in life. Only it’s a lot high, 3,550 feet to be exact.

Jim DuFresne

I arrived in Anchorage on one those incredible clear evening when there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the downtown skyline was outlined by the snow-capped Chugach Mountains. On a day like that there may be no more beautiful city in the country than Anchorage.

In the center of all those peaks was Flattop Mountain, it’s distinctive sawed-off peak looking like the buzz-cut of a Marine Sergeant’s head. I knew then and there that my ultimate goal for my week in Alaska’s largest city was to work as hard and quickly as I could in updating my Lonely Planet guide in an effort to free up an afternoon to climb Flattop.

Flattop Mountain and the trail to it are part of Chugach State Park, one of the most unusual state parks in the country. Established in 1970, 11 years after Alaska became a state, Chugach spans over 773 square miles, making it three times the size of Isle Royale National Park and the third largest state park in the country. It’s home to lofty peaks, crisscrossed with wilderness trails and populated by brown bears, moose and dall sheep. A giant wilderness playground.

But the most amazing aspect of the park is that it lies on the edge of Alaska’s largest city, population 291,826.  Within 15 minutes you can drive from the tall buildings of the downtown area to the trailhead of Flattop Mountain and within a few minutes after that be above the treeline looking at a stunning panaroma of the city below you.

Amazing.

Looking down on Flattop Mountain Trail from the peak.

On the afternoon I had free I called Flattop Mountain Shuttle, which runs a van from Downtown Bicycle Rental on 4th Avenue in Anchorage to the trailhead daily during the summer. There were 14 of us in the van, all non-Alaskans and would-be-mountaineers, ready to conquer Anchorage’s most favorite peak. We had three-hours to hike it, the van was leaving the trailhead at 4 p.m.

This is probably Alaska’s most popular trail, often on the weekend its 50-car parking lot at the trailhead is overflowing. The trek to the top is a 3-mile round-trip and is generally considered an intermediate hike, though at the end you’ll be scrambling on all fours to reach the summit. I arrived with trekking poles and a day pack loaded with water, energy bars and rain gear.

I had no more started climbing when I noticed children on the trail, dogs that looked older than me, mothers with an infant in a backpack, guys running up while sipping from their Camelbacks. One woman that passed me was wearing a dress and footwear that was something between flip-flops and sport sandals.

But for a Michigander like me, this was a climb. We just don’t have alpine in our state or anything like an ascent to Flattop Mountain. Yea, the Dune Climb is a steady uphill trudge to the top but you’re done in 10 minutes or less. It took me an hour to reach the top of Flattop and it was the kind of a trek where toward the end my heart was beating and I had to pause every so often to catch my breath.

When I reached that flat peak there was no view, the clouds were swirling around the mountain and I could barely see where to pick up the trail for the return. Still there I was, on top of a mountain, above the alpine, high-fiveing the other hikers I arrived with as if we had just conquered Mt. McKinley.

I’m from Michigan and I miss the alpine, the Porcupine Mountains just aren’t the same. On the way down I decided that I would devote my remaining six weeks in Alaska to climbing a peak every chance I get.

Editor’s Note: Jim DuFresne, the main contributor at MichiganTrailMaps.com, is headed for Alaska this summer and will be spending more than a month in Southeast Alaska exploring the region’s wonderful trail system. He promises to blog about his walks beginning in mid-June. We’re going to hold him to it.

I couldn’t help but notice the person next to me at my health club. He was shouldering a backpack and I’m pretty sure it had a few bricks in it. He had his treadmill elevated to level 10 as if he were scaling a 10,000-foot peak in Colorado and swinging his arms. All he was missing was a pair of trekking poles.

Jim DuFresne

There was only one thing I could possibly ask him: “Where are you headed?”

“Yosemite.”

“Cool.”

This summer there will be hikers and backpackers hitting trails all across the country, but right now they’re prepping. That includes me.

The highlight of my hiking season will be the last week of June when I meet my son in Juneau, Alaska and then jump on an Alaska state ferry for Skagway to tackle the Chilkoot Trail.

The Chilkoot is unquestionably the most famous trail in Alaska and often the most popular as more than 3,000 people spend three to four days following the historic route every summer. It was the route used by the Klondike gold miners in the 1898 gold rush, and walking the well-developed trail is not so much a wilderness adventure as a history lesson. It’s a 34-mile walk that includes the Chilkoot Pass, a steep climb up to 3525 feet, where most hikers scramble on all fours over the loose rocks and boulders.

To fully enjoy it, I need to be ready. I need to do some serious prepping, especially at my age. I’m turning 56 years old this summer but there is no reason I can’t undertake a challenging walk like the Chilkoot.

Almost six million Americans age 55 plus go hiking or backpacking every year, making it one of the most popular sporting activities among older athletes. They’re out there to experience a slice of nature, to enjoy great scenery and for possibly the biggest benefit of all: aerobic exercise.

According to the Mayo Clinic, hiking, even on easy trails, burns more calories than walking or aerobic dancing, in my case 620 calories an hour. Throw on a backpack and I’m burning almost as many as cross-country skiing.

A backpacker on the Chilkoot Trail near, Skagway, Alaska.

The key to older backpackers like me is to prep and once on the trail to follow a set of rules that were passed down to me years ago on Isle Royale National Park by a backpacker named Jim Preish. The North Carolina hiker didn’t carry the heaviest pack on the island nor did he have the fastest pace on the trail. Far from it. But Preish captured my admiration because at the age of 65 he was still out there backpacking and I had no reason to believe he wouldn’t be when he turns 70. He taught me to:          

Ligthen the load. This is critical for anybody, young or old. Always perform a shakedown before every trip and evaluate every piece of gear in your pack. Do you really need a trailside espresso maker or that bulky solar shower?

Use the Right Gear. Even with required equipment you can lighten your load. Down sleeping bags are up to half the weight of synthetic bags. If you’re sleeping alone use a solo tent instead of a two-man dome.  Measure your food carefully in advance and repackage it. Hauling uneaten food for four or five days is a cardinal sin.

Invest in gear that will make you more comfortable on the trail. For many of us it’s the extra thick, self-inflatable Thermarest pad for a better sleep at night. For Preish it was a small, folding stool so he didn’t have to sit on the ground after a long day on the trail.

Reduce your daily mileage. Plan your trip so you’re only covering 5 to 7 miles a day instead of the 10 or 12 miles you did in your youth.

Slow down the pace and stop often. The breaks don’t have to be long, just more frequent to give your legs a chance to recover throughout the day.

When faced with a particularly hard day, take ibuprofen in the morning before you head out. Preish believed ibuprofen in the morning and a cup of good whiskey in the evening were the most effective ways in preventing sore muscles or relieving them .

And finally my addition to Preish’s list of golden rules; if at all possible hike with somebody younger than you. There is nothing like strong shoulders and young legs to carry a good portion of the group gear across a mountain pass.

After all those years of hauling his stuff when he was much younger, I told my now 25-year-old son this was payback time and he had to carry the tent, stove, water filter and a majority of the food over the Chilkoot Pass. Naturally he protested, who wouldn’t?  But eventually he agreed when I offered to pay for the ferry and train tickets needed to hike the trail and a night of lodging in Skagway after we’re done.

If you ask me, that’s a small price to pay for an adventure as grand as this one.

After a flight halfway down the world and another halfway across Argentina, an all-night bus ride and jaunts on subways and taxis, after dreaming and planning about this day for over six months, there I was—finally—standing on the banks of the Rio Malleo in the foothills of the Andes.

The river was roughly the width of the Au Sable’s Holy Water stretch near Grayling and just as clear. But it was slightly deeper, possessed a much stronger current and its bottom was composed of round, slippery rocks and small boulders. I immediately regretted not bringing a wading staff. I stepped into it gingerly and cautiously moved toward the center of the river with my guide, Marco, urging me on from behind with what little English he knew.

Jim DuFresne

On my first cast I was still getting organized when a trout took the No. 14 parachute Adams, a dry fly Marco selected and tied on for me. I totally missed the fish. On my third cast I was ready and after setting the hook watched with amazement as the trout leaped out of the water repeatedly and then ran with surprising power before I could reel it in to Marco who was standing guard with a net.

It was 12-inch rainbow, a beautiful fish with a bright pink splash of color along its sides. A 12-inch trout is a nice fish on Au Sable. A 12-inch trout is a great fish for me on the Au Sable. But before I could get my camera out Marco had removed the hook and slipped the trout back into the river, saying three consecutive words of English for the first time that day.

“Call your momma,” he said as the fish darted off.

A 12-inch trout was not a great fish to Marco.

Up to then, my only experience with guides was as part of a driftboat float, targeting steelhead. I had never had a guide for wading until Marco showed up at 11 a.m. my first day in Junin de los Andes, a small town in the Patagonia region. He was supposed to pick me up at 10 a.m. and that’s when I learned everything runs an hour late in Argentina.

We drove north of town, to within 20 miles of the Chile border, to a stretch of the upper Rio Malleo that Marco obviously knew well. The river was part of the country’s famed Lakes District. Preserved high in the Andes within Lanin National Park were a dozen huge lakes whose rivers descended towards Junin de los Andes.

They were rivers with cold, clear water and filled with rainbows and browns. Every one of them was designated flies-only and catch-and-release, the reason this small town is known as the fly fishing capital of Argentina.

Within the first hour there I hooked and released a dozen rainbows. I also managed to snag my fly a half dozen times in a branch which wasn’t easy, considering the lack of trees along most of the bank. At first it was embarrassing. Marco would rush over and retrieve the fly and untangle my tippet or replaced it. He also insisted on untangling my wind knots and, with a steady breeze throughout the day, some were ugly.

Jim DuFresne with a brown trout from a river in Argentina's Lakes District.

Often our conversation in the beginning was little more than me saying “sorry” for another wind knot and Marco replying “no problem, no problem.” But after a while my embarrassment eased up. Having somebody untangle your tippet was nice.

Other times he would say “mend” which I knew well but was struggling to do in the wind. Or “coast too close” which I quickly realized meant he wanted me further from the bank or else the trout I was casting to might spot me.

I spent seven hours that first day slowly working the pools and runs with him a couple yards behind me, watching intently. When my cast was a poor one, he’d quickly say “again.” When I nailed a particular hole he’d say “good cast” and eventually hearing a complement was almost as satisfying as catching a 12-inch rainbow.

When we broke for lunch, Marco set up a small folding table and chairs on the bank of the river and covered it with plates of crusty bread, thin pieces of chilled beef that had been coated and cooked like chicken-fried steak and marinated potatoes. We washed everything down with cans of ice cold beer that been sitting in the river.

For as little as we knew of each other’s language it was amazing how much we conversed.  I learned he was 30 years old and his wife was expecting her first child. He once attended a university near Buenos Aires but hated the sprawling city so much he returned to Junin de los Andes within a year, vowing never to leave the Patagonia again.

He learned this was my first trip to Argentina and possibly the only chance I’d ever have to fish his rivers.

By early evening the wind had eased up and we were working well as a team.  I had found my rhythm, casting steadily and needing only one or two false casts to re-position the fly and lengthen my line. From behind I heard a constant “good cast…good cast…good cast” as I caught and Marco released numerous trout in the 12-14 inch range and an occasional 15-16 inch fish.

When we came to a tree that fallen into the river we both instinctively knew there was probably a trout in the patch of quiet water it created. I managed to drop that fly right against the tree so it could float across the smooth surface. From behind I heard “best cast.”

 I smiled and might have turned to say something to Marco but almost immediately a dark, elongated shadow darted from underneath the fallen tree and slurped in that fly. I set the hook and it ran hard downstream.

The fish never broke the surface but one point I was within a few feet of my backing. I patiently work line back, only to watch the trout take it out again at will. At times it sat so still on the bottom of the river I thought the hook was snagged on a submerged log.

Then it would run again.

Finally after 10 minutes, the fish tired and I was able to work it in close enough for Marco to scoop it up with his net. It was a 22-inch brown trout and for a minute or two we both just stood there gazed down at the fish.

It only the third time I had ever caught a trout 20 inches or larger on a fly and I suspect Marco sensed this was a personal trophy for me.

He smiled and said “day awesome, huh Jim?”

I laughed at hearing another unexpected word of English and there was only one thing I could say.

“Day awesome, Marco. Day awesome.”

Editor’s Note: This is the second in a series of reports from Jim DuFresne, the main contributor at MichiganTrailMaps.com, who is traveling in Argentina. Due to technical problems in South America this entry of Trail Talk is a week late getting posted.

I was on a roll on my journey halfway around the world to catch a trout. 

I arrived at O´Hara Airport in Chicago in snow and freezing rain but my plane still departed, on time no less, for New York. We landed at JFK Airport ahead of schedule under blue skies and dry conditions. In Buenos Aires, my duffle bag was the first piece of luggage to appear on the carousel and at customs they just waved me through.

Jim DuFresne

Thirty two hours after leaving Chicago, I was sitting down with my daughter at a small outdoor cafe in the northwest neighborhoods of Buenos Aires, waiting for our dinner of milanesa, basically a piece of beef that has been pounded thin and then cooked with cheese, mushrooms, bacon and other toppings. It’s the ultimate meat lover´s pizza in a land known for its fine beef.

At the sidewalk café, in the cool of the evening, we were mapping the next leg of my journey to Junin de los Andes, a small town in the heart of the Patagonia´s Lakes District, in the foothills of the Andes Mountains and only 30 miles from the Chile border. It is the self proclaimed “fly fishing capital” of Argentina, a place where all the street signs are adorned with leaping trout. It is almost 1,000 miles southwest of Buenos Aires and I was going to reach it by a combination of planes, taxis and an all-night bus ride.

 My daughter lives and works in Buenos Aires and is fluent in Spanish. But she wasn´t going to be at my side like she was at the restaurant ordering milanesa. So in my notebook I asked her to write “where is the bus station?”

Donde esta el terminal de omnibus?

“You realize they are going to give you the answer in Spanish,” she said after translating the phrase.

“And I won’t be able to understand a word of it.”

So Jessica wrote Necesito ir al terminal de omnibus?

It translates into “I need to go to the bus station” and I practiced it with a slight accent of desperation.

I really wished I had paid more attention to Mrs. Gonzales, my high school Spanish teacher, because it’s always better to know the language for the place you’re trying to reach. But still it’s amazing how far you can traveled armed with only the Lonely Planet Latin America Spanish Phrase Book and a determination to get there.

Flagging a taxi and then getting him to take me to Buenos Aires’ domestic airport, as opposed to the international one. Following the other passengers when they changed our gate and then again when they changed our planes, not knowing why I was boarding a bus and being driven across two runways. Asking somebody where the banos was.

In the next 15 hours, all my conversations began with hola and ended with mucho gracias. In between, there was a lot of sign language, pointing and an occasional word of English or Spanish. Argentina is not like Mexico where, due to its relationship and proximity to the U.S., everybody in the travel industry seems to know a few key words of English.

Here I was on my own.

After arriving in Neuquen, I had to find my way to the bus station in the middle of this mid-size city. I walked out to the line of taxis and to the first one said “bus station.” He looked confused. So I opened my notebook and butchered the phrase Jessica wrote down. Now he was even more confused.

So I showed him the notebook, hoping that all those nights I spent harping on my daughter when she was in third grade about the importance of good penmanship would pay off 20 years later. It did.

“Ah! Si, al terminal de omnibus!”

A river and the Andes Mountains in Argentina.

Off we went. When he kept asking me the same question during the ride and it included donde, I gave him the only thing I could think of, Junin de los Andes. It was obviously the right answer and later I realized he just wanted to know which platform of the bus station to drop me off.

But at the time I thought we were actually having a conversation so I said “Going fishing.” He didn’t understand the English but he clearly understood the wave of my arm as if I was casting a fly rod.

“Ah, ir de pesca.”

“Going to catch peces.”

“Si, si,” he said with a big smile.

I was on a roll so I topped off the conversation with  Peces Grandes!, saying it as if I was super-sizing my burrito at Taco Bell.

At that he laughed and was still smiling when he pulled into the bus station. He dropped me off where the buses for Junin de los Andes depart and when handing me my duffle bag said something I’m pretty sure meant good luck catching that big fish.

Early the next morning, after a seven-hour bus ride that stopped at a dozen small towns throughout the night, I arrived at a beautiful log lodge on the outskirts of Junin de los Andes with mountains on the horizon taking on a pink glow of the sunrise. Above the door was a large carving of a rainbow trout.

When an older gentleman answered the doorbell and in broken English said “welcome to Rio Dorado Lodge,” I almost hugged him, realizing, once again, the journey is always half the adventure.