By Joe Crain
The warm and dry weather pattern continued for another month here in the far Northwoods of Wisconsin. With barely 10 inches of new snowfall in January and a day of rain as well, we left the month with approximately 12 inches remaining on the ground, a bit less than the 15 inches we came into the month with. It’s an odd 12 inches for a January as well! This is usually a month of deep fluffy snow, but this year the snow is thin and sugary with a quarter-inch layer of ice about three inches down. The poor snow conditions are due to the fact that it wasn’t until the middle of the third week of the month that we saw a high temperature that wasn’t 5 to 10 degrees above average! We were forced to endure temperatures in the upper 20s and mid 30s for days on end. Finally on the 18th of the month, it looked as though we might get a taste of actual winter when the mercury dipped into the mid-teens. But, that was dashed as things shot up into the lower 40s for the two following days. Thankfully that was short lived and things have finally, truly gotten winter-like for the final week of January with temps getting close to normal for this part of the season. Unfortunately, it looks as though the snow drought is going to continue for our area into February, with little snow forecast for the next week or two.
Things were so bleak on the snow front that as we went into Christmas break I was worried that I would have to postpone my annual back country ski adventure, scheduled for the first part of January. Luckily, the big pre-Christmas storm gave us ample snow and my vacation plans were saved! This tradition started back in 2018, the year I went to Yellowstone National Park for a week of guided back country skiing. In 2019 I returned to Yellowstone again to explore more of the park with guided treks into that beautiful remote wilderness. After a second year in Yellowstone I came home with a boosted confidence in my abilities (and also the realization that my chosen career as a boys camp caretaker wasn’t lucrative enough to sustain an annual trip out West to the mountains with hired guides every year!). My confidence helped me start soloing closer to home in order to continue this new annual tradition. Fortunately, as many of you who have taken advantage of camps tripping program know well, I live in an area with endless wilderness within easy driving distances (although lacking in the inspiring mountain vistas…). So last year I did my first solo trip to the Sylvania Wilderness in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and had a delightful and challenging four days of trekking that remote wilderness. For this year’s adventure I decided to trek some miles on The North Country National Scenic Trail (NCNST). For those of you unfamiliar with this trail, it is part of the National Park Services portfolio of national treasures and (upon completion) will be the longest continuous hiking trail in the United States, clocking in at 4600 miles. The NCNST starts in the east at Allegany State Park in New York and passes through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and ending in Lake Sakakawea State Park in North Dakota. The Wisconsin section passes just 10 miles from Lake Nebagamon as it winds its way along the Brule River and through the Brule River State Forest. I started to ski and hike the Wisconsin section of the NCNST in the spring of 2019 and had skied or hiked about 50 miles on it up until this year’s back country ski vacation. The trail is administered and protected by the National Park Service
but is built and maintained completely by volunteers coordinated by North Country Trail Association, a not-for-profit entity that is headquartered in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I was able to trek 43 miles of trail over four days during the first week of January. Three of the trips I did as out-and-back and one I did as a through ski with the shuttling help of caretaker Andy. The trail passes through some rugged forest as well as some working forest, so the tree density varied greatly from dense and fully grown to sparse and logged over. Thankfully, the trail passes through state and county lands where the foresters practice sustainable forestry, so I did not pass through any clear cuts. For the most part the terrain is rolling and the hill climbs could be tough but not grueling. The trail design uses modern trail building techniques and incorporates switch backs, so I had very few fall line climbs to make. All in all, the trail is challenging but not overwhelming. It’s well marked in most of the sections and the North Country Trail Association has published GPS maps that I used on my cell phone so navigation was never a problem. I highly recommend that any of you who live in a state that the NCNST passes through seek out your state’s trail section — it is definitely a national treasure!
Thinking this will be the year that I achieve my North Country Trail Association’s “Hike 100 Challenge” patch, it’s Caretaker Joe At Camp.