The first came from Roy Krantz of the Midland Hiking Club. In 2003, Roy and a friend hiked the entire Lakeshore Trail in Pictured

Jim DuFresne

Rocks National Lakeshore – 42.4 miles from Grand Marais to Munising – in one day. Or 14 hours and three minutes to be exact.

Extreme or just plain crazy? Before I could decide Roy dropped me a line with his latest challenge:

 In an effort to figure out the next hardest thing to try, my crazy buddies and I are planning a non-stop yo-yo hike of the Lakeshore Trail at Pictured Rocks for this fall. This year, we’ll be starting in Munising hiking to Grand Marais and then back to Munising in 28-30 hours (hopefully).  I want to make sure that I go far enough to make it official but not any farther than I have to.  A woman at the park told me that the official starting and ending points are Munising Falls and the Grand Sable Visitor Center.  Is that your understanding? Can you help?

Roy

My reply: Roy, you are crazy but if I can help with that insanity, I’ll try.

I then went on to say it has always been my understanding that the Lakeshore Trail went from the Grand Sable Visitor Center to Munising Falls because it was set up soon after the park was created in 1966, meaning it predates the North Country Trail, which connects to it at each end.

A backpacker on the Lakeshore Trail.

If you’re crazy, Roy has posted a You Tube video,  inviting other hikers to join him and his buddies. It’s pretty funny but I’ll pass.

A few weeks latter Eric Charette sent me an email with questions about the 42-plus mile Greentsone Ridge Trail on Isle Royale National Park:

As an ultrarunner and having grown up in the UP and graduated from MTU, I have been fascinated with running the Greenstone Ridge Trail. From my research, it looks like the fastest known time (FKT) from Windigo to Lookout Louise is 10 hours 17 minutes. Having just run rim to rim to rim in the Grand Canyon for fun in 11 hours (41 miles) I think that I can run the GRT in well under 10 hours.

Anyway, my questions are numerous, but to start I need to know if this travel schedule is possible. I have researched the options a hundred times over and as an engineer this is a complex problem to solve!   

Eric

I answered the questions as best I could and I think Eric is, pardon the pun, off and running.

His plan is to run from Windigo along the Greenstone Ridge Trail to its east end at Lookout Louise this July. Because Lookout Louise is a rather isolated spot in the park, his support crew is going to rent a canoe and paddle across Tobin Harbor to meet him at the finish and take him back to Rock Harbor Lodge where they have booked a room for the evening.

His main concern will be how much weight he’ll need to carry while running, particularly water. He plans to carry have 130 ounces of fluids but will also have a water filter in case he runs out.

I’ve hiked the Greenstone Ridge Trail almost a dozen times. It is truly one of Michigan’s classic trails. But I’ve always hiked it, taking the usual four to five days to complete the foot path that spans from one end of Isle Royale to the other and hauling along some 40-pounds of gear to spend the night in the backcountry.

To me, the beauty of either the Greenstone or the Lakeshore Trail is the length of them that allows you to escape into the backcountry for days at a time. Only then do I slip into the natural rhythm that is long distance hiking, where there are no deadlines other then setting up your tent before dark (and sometimes not even that).

You eat when you’re hungry; you take a break when you’re tired. You move at your own pace because all you have to do by the end of the day is to reach the next backcountry campsite. Only by being out in the woods for so long do I feel spiritually refreshed when I return home.

 But my hat is off to Roy and Eric and I’ll be following their escapades closely to see how they do.

You can too by checking into Roy’s web site (www.roykranz.com) and Eric’s (www.ericcharette.com) to keep tabs on them and then cheer them on at the finish line.

Editor’s Note: Jim DuFresne has covered both these trails in his guidebooks; Isle Royale National Park: Foot Trails & Water Routes and Backpacking in Michigan. You can order the books through the MichiganTrailMaps.com e-shop at www.michigantrailmaps.com/store.html.

By Jim DuFresne

A friend and I were hiking the Manistee River Trail, that classic trek 30 minutes south of Traverse City near Mesick, when we paused to watch a drift boat floating the Manistee River below us.

 There were three in the boat; a guide manning the oars and a client at each end casting large streamers towards the bank. They nodded, we asked them how they were doing and in the middle of the discussion about fly fishing and giant brown trout, the angler in the front stopped casting and sat down to take a call on his cell phone.

Jim DuFresne

No, I’m sure it was a smart phone. Because this was a person, a CEO probably, who took a day off to arrange a guide and go fishing but couldn’t take a day off. In the middle of the Manistee National Forest, in a place so remote you could only reach it in a boat or on foot, he found it necessary to still conduct business. From a bluff above I called him out on it.

“Is that a cell phone?” I said. “You’re taking a phone call out here!”

 He looked at me, kind of sheepishly, and said “Stuff happens.”

            *                               *                                      *

Many consider the Michigan hiking season to be June through August and maybe in sheer numbers of people hiking then, it is. But to me the peak of the season is right now, this week.

How could you ask for better trail conditions? The weather is clear but cool. I don’t need hot weather and a brutal sun while I’m in the woods. There’s no bugs yet, at least not any that want to suck your blood or buzz annoyingly behind your head.

There’s also very few people out on the trail. The wildflowers were just beginning to bloom in the corner of the state we were in and if I was more knowledgeable I would have known if the morel mushrooms were starting to pop up.

A hiker on the Manistee River Trail.

If you’re backpacking, the nights are cool enough to justify building a fire but not so cold where you spend an evening shivering in your sleeping bag. If you’re not tenting it, then there are some great deals in Traverse City, resorts that charge close to $200 a night in July were trying to entice you last week with that same room for less than $60.

That’s a deluxe room with a Jacuzzi tub, something that might actually be useful after your first 13-mile hike of the year.

But the best part of April hiking is that the leaves had yet to unfurl. They’re coming but until then you can see for miles from a high point whereas often in the summer there would be no view at all.

That was particularly true where we were on the second day; the portion of the North Country Trail that is combined with the Manistee River Trail to form a 23-mile loop. The NCT is rugged and often we found ourselves skirting the edge of a forested ridge to a view of valleys, more ridges and acres of the Manistee National Forest to the east.

In my mind this is the best time to be out on the trail. But if you make the effort to escape into the woods, then escape.

No Facebook, or Twitter checks, or emails or ring tones that come from the movie “Top Gun.” If you pack along a phone, then turn it on only for an emergency or to arrange for transportation at the trailhead.

When you enter the forest alone, free of any communication with the rest of the world, it becomes a spiritual cleansing from the high-tech overload most of us live with.

Enter the woods and listen to nothing but the wild around you. There is no call worth disrupting the tranquility you find on a trail, there is nothing on the Internet worth reading while you hiking along a high ridge.

 Not even this blog.

Jim DuFresne

It was a Sunday when the new MichiganTrailMaps.com e-shop was launched and then those of us who had worked tirelessly for three months to build it … waited. Patiently.

What else could we do? The first order is always the hardest and as Sunday rolled into Monday and Monday rolled into Tuesday there were moments when I wondered if it would ever come.

I’ve waited painfully for other things of my life; for the birth of my first child (we named her Jessica), for an answer from the stunned girl I had just asked to Homecoming in 11^th grade (she said no), for the results of an exam in college I was pretty sure I bombed (I did).

But this time it was almost maddening. I’d be online, checking email every few minutes, looking for that Pay Pal notification. Any sign that the shop, with all its coding and links, was out there working.

As it turns out it was. On Wednesday at 2 p.m., the 15^th time I was checking the account that day, there it was, in the subject line: Notification of Payment Received.

Our first sale!

It was from woman named Lois and she ordered two books, requesting that the author (me) autograph them. On that particular day I was also the warehouse and shipping department so I packaged the books and then hand wrote her address on it because our tech person forgot to inform me I could print out the mailing label through Pay Pal.

Then I stepped outside to head to the post office. In all the excitement I didn’t realize that the clouds had cleared, the sun was out and in the middle of February it was in upper 40s. It’s been that kind of winter. I’ve yet to ski close to home but I’ve been cycling continuously since November.

The cycling has been amazing. A near snowless winter means the shoulders of roads, bike paths and sidewalks are clear. The temperatures have been ideal. I wear a light pair of wool gloves and a thin wool cap under my helmet and once I’m on my bike I never get cold or overheat.

Perfect equilibrium on two wheels.

I tucked Lois’ package in my bike bag and headed out on the seven-mile ride to downtown Clarkston. From my home I followed the bike path through Independence Oaks County Park, pedaling pass four lakes. When I entered Clarkston I passed four more lakes; Park Lake, Upper Mill Pond, Mill Pond and Deer Lake, and then crossed the Clinton River.

Pulling up to the post office I realized I may have just stumbled on a new slogan for the company, one with an eco-friendly theme:

MichiganTrailMaps.com: We Don’t Burn Fossil Fuels Delivering Your Book To the Post Office!

Match that Amazon!

When I returned home I did something else I doubt Jeff Bezos, founder of the giant online bookseller, had ever done; I wrote a personal email to Lois. I told her the books were on the way and thank her for the order. I even mentioned how agonizing it was waiting for that first one and thanks to her the wait was over.

The next day she wrote back to me:

I always looked forward to reading your Saturday article in the Ann Arbor News.  My kids were young then, and we followed many of your family trip plans.  All four kids are grown now but still enjoy outdoor adventures.  You have touched many lives.

Sometimes being small is better.

Jim DuFresne

I was more than a mile from the trailhead before I noticed the dog prints following the same path I was. There was something unusual about them and at first I couldn’t put my finger on it. Then it hit me.

There were no boot prints accompanying the tracks. This was no dog.

I paused and studied the prints more closely, immediately regretting not packing along a field guide to identify tracks. But I have seen wolf prints before and there was no reason to believe these weren’t made by the same species.

At some point after the snowfall had subsided early in the morning this wolf was the first down the trail. I was the second.

When wolves finally returned to the Lower Peninsula after being extirpated in the early 1900s, most biologists believe Wilderness State Park was their door step. It may have been in 1997, when a Coast Guard helicopter pilot reported sighting a pair of wolves along the shoreline of the park after they had apparently made the 5-mile trek across the frozen Straits of Mackinac.

Swamp Line Trail in Wildernesss State Park.

In 2010, U.S. Forest Service biologists verified that a pack of wolves living in the tip of the mitt had been successful breeding and the pup, most likely the first born in the Lower Peninsula in more than a century, has been radio collared.

They’re here and for all I knew this was one of them.

I followed the prints for more than a half mile, so mesmerized I almost never took my eye off them. If I was more knowledgeable about tracking, I probably could have determined the animal’s size, the pace he was walking at, maybe he’s age. But I’m not.

It did appear at one point as if the wolf paused or at least cautiously slowed down. In the beginning the tracks were clean and almost perfectly spaced as if they were made by a steady gait. Then suddenly there weren’t and at that point the wolf made a sharp turn to the right and entered the tangled cedar wetlands that Swamp Line Trail passes through.

I peered into the woods, wondering what made him leave the easy travel of an old two-track like Swamp Line Trail for the thick underbrush and deeper snow he was now in. I couldn’t figure it out so I skied on and 30 yards later I stopped again at another set of tracks.

A snowshoe hare had run across the trail in the same direction as the wolf, leaving prints almost as clean and sharp as his. Suddenly I realized I was witnessing life, death and survival in a place called Wilderness.

I was definitely not alone in the woods.

            *                                  *                                  * 

Wilderness State Park is a wonderful place to visit in the winter for a backcountry skiing adventure. But when you want to retreat to someplace warm and comfortable, there’s no better choice then Crooked River Lodge  (866-548-0700).

Located right on the banks of its namesake river in Alanson, the impressive log lodge is on US-31 and only 20 minutes from the state park. It features large, comfortable rooms, a hot breakfast in the morning and not one but two hot tubs.

One is located indoors adjacent to the pool, the other is

The outdoor hot tub at Stafford's Crooked River Lodge.

outdoors overlooking the wooded banks of the Crooked River, a great place to soak away sore muscles after a day of breaking trail. This is a Stafford property, the same family who also operate the Perry Hotel in Petoskey and nearby Bay View Inn, so you know the service is impeccable.

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.

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 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.

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.

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?