By Joe Crain
The updated Mill Ruins trail and culvert
With a warm start to the month of November, I was able to stay out of the shop and get quite a bit of work done on camp’s bike trails system. The first chore I undertook was to walk the entire four miles of trail with our new 22-pound back pack blower. Now, I know that to you seasoned Camp Nebagamon trip program veterans a 22-pound pack might not seem like much of a burden. As well, you Isle Royal Big Trippers probably all burst out in giggles when I mention a mere four miles of hiking under such a weight. Well, you’ll all have to give these 60-year-old bones and muscles the benefit of the doubt when I tell you that when that pack has a three-inch hose coming off of one side of it that is shooting out 677 cubic feet of air at a velocity of 238 MPH producing a blowing force of 32 Newtons, that four-mile walk turns into a chore in a hurry. (My inner nerd thinks that might be the coolest sentence I’ve written this year!) Whenever I stopped for a bit and took my finger off the throttle, my whole body would involuntarily twist in the opposite direction of the suddenly interrupted force. With all of the trails cleared of their thick blanket of leaves and downed branches, I next focused my attentions to chopping stumps on the systems newest trail that I cut last November, the Mill Ruins trail. Having cut it in last year’s early season snow, the Mill Ruins trial had a lot of small toe catchers and quite a few larger stumps that needed to be chopped and pulled out of the ground. Stump chopping is a lot of hard and satisfying work. Some take a few strokes of the Pulaski axe and pop out easily — others are a five-minute battle of chopping, tugging, and brow mopping. It took several days to clear all of the big and little stumps out of the corridor of the ½ half mile long trail. It was well worth all of that work: the Mill Ruins trail is now a much more ride-able and hike-able path. The final chore I had to accomplish was to put in a culvert where a small seasonal drainage crosses the trail a couple of hundred yards from the trail’s end at Lorber Point. With 10 feet of 8-inch corrugated drain tile piping and several loads of tractor hauled gravel the crossing is much improved. Now that all of this work done the trail should be much more enjoyable to both hikers and riders of the CNBT (Camp Nebagamon Bike Trail) for many seasons to come.
On a more personal level this November brought the opportunity to reach the end of a big goal I set for myself and started hiking toward back in January. I completed the “Hike 100 Challenge” on the North Country National Scenic Trail, which consists of hiking 100 miles on the NCNST in one calendar year. The North Country National Scenic Trail is a 4600-mile-long trail that stretches from Middlebury in central Vermont to Lake Sakakawea State Park in central North Dakota and is part of the National Park Service administered National Scenic Trail system. The trail passes through the eight states of Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota. We are very lucky that about 100 miles of the 200 miles of trail that pass through Wisconsin are right here in Douglas County (the home county of Camp Nebagamon). The “Hike 100 Challenge” is a program sponsored by the North Country Trail Association. Besides bragging rights hikers that complete 100 miles on the NCNST also receive a certificate and patch upon completion. This was my second try at the “Hike 100 Challenge,” because I under estimated the commitment need in 2020 and was only able to make it 47 miles that year. So, in January I reset my sights on the goal and hit the trail hard in 2021 and with my 5-pound hiking buddy (my pet Yorkshire terrier, Zigs) at myside crossed the 100-mile goal on November 7th! My next NCNST goal is to complete every trail mile in the state of Wisconsin, because what fun is a life without goals!
Hoping all of you are out there reaching for and achieving goals no matter how many times you have to try, it’s Caretaker Joe At Camp!
