Trail Talk

Editor’s Note: Jim DuFresne has suggestions for anybody heading to Isle Royale National Park for the first time. For more on the island park check out the Isle Royale pages at MichiganTrailMaps.com.

By Jim DuFresne

Teresa sent me an email recently with a question about backpacking that I have been asked a thousands times before: Can we do this?

Or in her case, can her boyfriend do this and survive? Possibly even enjoy it?

Jim DuFresne

My boyfriend and I are planning a trip to Isle Royale this July. I bought your book have been reading and planning our 3 night 4 day hike. I have also been dehydrating fruits and veggies for our stay. We have never done this kind of overnight hiking before and in just the last few days he sounds like he isn’t sure about the whole thing. Is there any advice you can give me so as to reassure him that this can be done and that 1000′s do it every year.

Teresa is correct on the last point. Thousands do it every year. Isle Royale is a remote island national park in Lake Superior that attracts roughly 17,000 visitors from April through October.  That’s a drop in the bucket by National Park standards, less than what they draw on a good day at Grand Canyon.

But of those Isle Royale visitors, the National Park Service classifies 12,000 or more as “backcountry users,” people who arrive to spend a night or more away from the entry ports of Rock Harbor and Windigo. Some are kayakers, some are canoers, some are anchored in a backcountry bay in their sailboat.

But the vast majority is backpackers, hikers who cram everything they need, and a few things they don’t, in a pack and then head down the trail for days at a time. That’s what leads to Isle Royale’s most unusual stat. The island boosts one of the longest visitation period of any national park in the country; the average stay at the park is 4.5 days.

Weighing a backpack at Rock Harbor on Isle Royale National Park.

People don’t come to see Isle Royale, they come to escape.

Once you hit the trail, you realize backpackers come in all ages and physical shape; from a couple of retired guys plodding down the Greenstone Ridge Trail to a family with five-year-olds hauling their own gear.

Once you reach you’re next camp, the camaraderie among backpackers pitching their tents for the evening is heartfelt and spirited. You swap stories about seeing a moose and in the evening you share your chocolate bar with another couple while watching a pair of loons on a lake. Everybody is pulling for everybody to reach the end of the trail.

Because it is Teresa’s first backpacking adventure I do have a few suggestions that will make it much more enjoyable:

Keep the backpack as light as possible

This is the key. Isle Royale is not overly rugged, we’re not talking about Rocky Mountain National Park here, but you’re still hauling your gear down a trail that will include steady climbs every now and then.

You don’t want a lot of weight on your back, that’s why at Rock Harbor there’s a scale to weigh packs and storage available if they are too heavy. Ideally for adults the weight of their backpack should be between 30 and 40 pounds and as close to 30 as they can get it.

You don’t need a lot of clothes. You need one set that you will be hiking in and one set when you’re done for the day.

You don’t need gadgets. You need a lightweight backpacker’s stove, fires aren’t allowed in the backcountry, but you don’t need a trailside cappuccino maker, no matter how compact and cute it is. Freeze-dried coffee will be just fine.

Stop often

Breaks are crucial, especially the second day when you shoulders will be most sensitive to the straps of your backpack (the reason to keep it light). The rest periods don’t need to be long, just numerous so you can remove the pack and allow your shoulder muscles a brief recovery.

Besides this why you’re out here, to soak up the amazing scenery on the island. Backpacking is not a foot race, take time to enjoy the surroundings.

Bring Moleskin!

The most feared injury on Isle Royale is being attacked by a moose or falling off Mount Franklin, it’s a blister on the back of your heel. To survive you don’t need to haul along a giant first aid kit, just carry a small piece of Moleskin, a few other bandages and tape and, even if a blister develops on the second day, you’ll be fine.

Eat Well

Teresa has a good start here, dehydrating fruits and vegetables will result in delicious meals in the middle of the wilderness. My favorite is tomato paste that we spread thin on wax paper and then dry at the lowest possible temperature in the oven. We then store it in a Ziploc bag and on the island tear off chucks of it to make incredibly rich sauces and soups.

Father and daughter on the Greenstone Ridge Trail.

Keep in mind that after hauling a pack 8 miles, whatever you cook at the end of the day is going to taste great, even if it’s watery mac-and-cheese and cup-a-soup. Pack enough food so you’re not hungry at night but to end the hike with anything more than an emergency granola bar is a cardinal sin in backpacking.

Limit your itinerary

A common mistake when you have only have four days on the trail is to cover too much mileage each day. On Isle Royale 7 to 8 miles is a pleasant day, allowing you to start around 9 a.m., be done by mid-afternoon and stop often for breaks and lunch in between.

If she can work out the logistics with her schedule, my suggested itinerary to Teresa is to take the Isle Royale Queen IV from Copper Harbor which lands in Rock Harbor around noon. That gives them more than enough time to hike the 7.1 miles to Daisy Farm campground the first day.

The second day can be easy; 5.8 miles to Lake Rickie Campground. On the third day they can hike to McCargoe Cove, a beautiful campground to spend the night, and along the way drop their packs at the Greenstone Ridge Trail junction and climb the ridge a half mile to the west for a view of the inlands lakes form the top of it. Total mileage that day, including the side trip, would be 7.5 miles.

On their fourth day they can hike to the old mining ruins on the Minong Ridge in the morning without packs and then return to McCargoe Cove and hop on the Voyageur II. The ferry that circles the island and will pick them up for a ride back to Rock Harbor. The boat ride will be a way to see the scenic Five Fingers region of the park and cap off the trip.

As far as Teresa’s boyfriend, if this blog doesn’t convince him to go, I say go without him. And after you come back so enthused about your adventure on the island, he’ll never pass up another opportunity to go backpacking again.

Neither will you.

I received two emails recently from what only can be described as “extreme trail users,” people who push it to the limits and then some.

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.

I was up north, researching trails in Antrim County for www.michigantrailmaps.com, when the press release arrived in my inbox. The tag line was intriguing:

Wolf Pup Captured and Released in the Northern Lower Peninsula

The release was fascinating:

“A USDA Wildlife Services employee was recently successful in capturing and releasing a wolf pup in Cheboygan County. This occurred during an effort to trap and place a radio-collar on a wolf following the verification of a wolf pack in the northern Lower Peninsula earlier this year.”

And the attached photo seemed to take forever to download. The wifi spot I was using was crawling and the photo came in one bar at a time at an agonizingly slow pace. But finally there it was, on the screen of my laptop, the first documented wolf pup to be born in the Lower Peninsula in almost a century.

“This is the first evidence of wolf breeding in the Lower Peninsula since the population was extirpated in the early 1900s,” said Jennifer Kleitch, wildlife biologist for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment,. “It indicates that we have at least one breeding pair in the region and the potential for a growing population.”

Wolves in the Lower Peninsula, not even that far from where I was hiking. A pack of wolves that is growing and, no doubt, expanding its territory.

The wild has returned to the Lower Peninsula.

I have never seen a wolf in Michigan despite my extensive time spent at Isle Royale. As author of Isle Royale National Park: Foot Trails & Water Routes, I have spent months in the backcountry of the Lake Superior island and yet the closest I ever came to wolves was listening to them howl one night while camping at Feldtmann Lake.

But that’s all it takes – spotting their tracks in a swamp, seeing the bleached bone remains of a winter kill or listening to a pair call out to each other – to make you realize that you’re not alone. You’re simply a visitor in somebody else’s home.

I don’t even need to see evidence of their arrival in the Lower Peninsula, much less the wolves themselves. Knowing they are out there, somewhere in the woods, is enough to instill a sense of wilderness in the places I hike for a day or longer with a backpack. Just seeing the signs at many of the trailheads in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore that announce “You Are A Visitor In Cougar Habitat” adds a quality to an area you can’t find in Peoria, Iowa or Southeast Michigan for that matter.

Michigan's newest wolf pup

In the end, that’s all I need. If I encounter a wolf in the wild, and I have twice in Alaska, or a black bear which I have several times in Michigan, it’s always an unexpected occurrence and one of those moments that leaves you both nervous and excited. A moment you rarely forget.

But what’s really important to me is the notion that they’re there, that the land is rugged and wild enough for bears, cougars and wolves to survive, even prosper. That the places where I go to escape the trappings of civilization are as primitive and pure today as they were a century ago when wolves freely roamed across Michigan. Across all of it.

“The 23-pound male pup was in good health. An identification tag was placed in the ear and the pup was released on-site unharmed.”