Trail Talk

I was the first skier to arrive at Wilderness State Park on Saturday morning after this corner of Emmet County was blessed with three inches of lake-effect snow the night before. I stepped into my skis and headed south on Swamp Line Trail, alone in the woods, surrounded by winter’s stillness.

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.

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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.

A day after the Great Lakes Cyclone, when winds were hitting 60 mph and stronger, I was in the Pigeon River Country State Forest following the 10-Mile Loop of the Shingle Mill Pathway for http://www.MichiganTrailMaps.com. It was still windy, but otherwise the afternoon was cool, clear and crisp, the perfect day to be out in the woods hiking a trail.

The Shingle Mill winds past some of the best scenery that Northern Michigan has to offer, but what occupying my thoughts wasn’t views of steep-sided sinkhole lakes or the Pigeon River, but all the logs and trees that the high winds had blown across the pathway.

Jim DuFresne

Who was going to remove them?

In mid-October the Forest Management Division of the Department of Natural Resources and Environment announced that due to another cut in general funds all maintenance work would be suspended on the 60 non-motorized pathways in Michigan’s seven state forests.

That includes plowing parking areas in the middle of the winter and grooming pathways for skiers. Or pumping out vault toilets at the trailheads. Or repairing bridges and signage along the trails. Or even painting an occasional blue blaze on trees.

Or removing a tree that has fallen across the trail and stops everybody dead in their tracks.

The only exception, said DNRE officials, are state forest trails where the state has signed contractual agreements to groom them or pathways that have spawned volunteer groups to oversee their maintenance.

“We’re going to have to go in a different direction,” Lynn Boyd, chief of the DNRE Forest Management Division, told the Grand Rapids Press. “We had another cut in general fund. They took $300,000 out of the forest recreation budget. That money went to ski trails and non-motorized trails with no funding source, plus campgrounds.”

The decision affects not only cross-country skiers this winter but hikers and backpackers, mountain bikers and equestrians. Everybody can expect pathways in rougher condition next year with a cloudy future beyond that. This affects some of Michigan’s most popular trails; Jordan River Pathway, Sand Lakes Quiet Area, Mason Tract Pathway and the Sinkholes Pathway.

Some hope that Michigan’s new Recreation Passport program will provide funds to the state forests as well as the state park system. Passports went on sale Oct. 1 and are designed to replace motor vehicle entry stickers at state parks and boat launches.

Some funds will eventually trickle down to the forest recreation program, but not be until 2012 at the earliest and nobody, not even the people who created the program, know how much it will generate for state forest pathways.

Meanwhile trees keep falling on the trails.

A fallen tree on the Warner Creek Pathway.

It’s seems to me that the funding model we have for state forests recreation is badly outdated and no longer meets our needs. The only thing we pay for are campgrounds and despite fees being raised to $15 a night, the DNRE still  had to close 12 more state forest campgrounds last year that may never be re-opened.

Some have advocated turning a portion of the campgrounds and pathways to local units of government but they don’t seem much more endowed with recreation funds than the state. Others urge donation canisters at every trailhead. Maybe some will give, maybe some won’t.

It’s seems to me if we, the mountain bikers, hikers, skiers, the morel mushroom hunters, the birders, want state forest pathways, we all need to pay for it. What we need is an annual state forest permit, priced at $10 or $15 a year and required anytime you enter a state forest.

The suggestion of such a permit will have many screaming “tax increase” but I’ve never equated user fees as taxes. If you want to see a movie, you have to purchase a ticket. If you go out to dinner, you pick up the tab at the end of the meal. You drive across the Bluewater Bridge to Canada, there’s a toll booth waiting for you at the other end.

If you want a pathway that’s been cleared, marked and equipped with toilets and drinking water at the trailhead, there’s a price to pay. If you don’t want to pay the price of admission, you can’t see the movie. That’s not a tax, that’s a ticket.

I don’t have a problem paying for outdoor recreation. This year alone I spent $104 for annual passes to Sleeping Dunes National Lakeshore, Huron-Manistee National Forest, Michigan State Parks and Oakland County parks. Funding the places where I hike, ski and camp is far less expensive than what it costs me to visit them in terms of gas, lodging and equipment.

And if a national forest is worth $30 a year to me or the Sleeping Bear Dunes $20, then surely 5 million acres of state forest land, blessed with more than 700 miles of trails and 133 campgrounds and preserving trout streams and lakes, is worth $10. Or more.

Sadly, in this era of no-new taxes this would be a hard concept to push through Lansing.  But the alternative to doing nothing is a dwindling number of state forest campgrounds and trailhead facilties … and a growing number of trees laying across the pathways.