Lake Superior (Now Complete with Ice Caves!)

A set of Hoofers headed up to Lake Superior for some excellent pre-thaw adventure this past weekend.  We gathered our gear and started our trek Saturday morning.  That evening, we were going to head out on Lake Superior for the Book Across the Bay 10km snowshoe.  BATB is an annual ski/snowshoe race/meander that starts in Ashland, WI and ends in Washburn.  Though we planned to swing by our cabin on the way in and make our way to the bus shuttle in a rather leisurely manner, we ended up barely making the last shuttle and were literally the last people to start the course.  (Alas, we had forgotten the Ps - Proper Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance.)

 

 Luckily, once we were on the course, things went relatively smoothly.  There was a storm system in the area that dumped snow both before and after the race, but during the race we really only had to deal with wind and occasional fog.  The full moon provided some light, but the course was largely marked by some really pretty ice-luminaries.  There were good-sized bonfires (yes, large fires on the iced-over surface of Lake Superior) every kilometer, and what the rests lacked in cocoa, they made up in oreos and animal crackers.

 Superior has the best ice coverage (94% as of this weekend) in at least 20 years, and since the ice caves along the Apostle Island National Lakeshore were accessible for the first time in 5 years, we took advantage of the conditions on Sunday for another bit of exploration (with 11,000 of our closest friends).  The ice caves are a huge draw for folks in the Midwest.  Last year, the Apostle Islands had ~150,000 visitors over the course of the year.  This month alone, the Apostles have had >50,000 people coming to see the ice caves (and that wasn't even counting this past weekend, which was expected to bring in another 15,000+ people).

 The ice on Superior opened around January 15, and since then, a small army of rangers have been monitoring the ice, keeping an eye out for the visitors, and trying to manage parking near the shore.  Local municipalities have started shuttles with nearly every vehicle they can find, and boy is it worth the trip.  The southern shore of Superior has some amazing rock formations, and when the wind and waves conspire with frigid temperatures, the shore develops some spectacular jewelry.

A Hoofer trying to avoid wet feet

 There are a bunch of nooks, crannies, and tunnels that are just full of different ice formations.  Tons of adults were having their fill of climbing, crawling, and sliding, but the kids were in hog heaven since 90% of the openings were just the right size for those under 13.

Ice Slide!!

 We found one overhanging rock draped in ice that had enough room for 4-6 adults in the chamber behind it, several small rooms that were glazed in the smoothest ice imaginable, a couple of low caverns covered in nubby icicles, and (my favorite) this cool little tunnel that connected two inlets - the far side had spiky icicles where baby icicles were growing sideways off the original piece.

 The trip from the parking lot to the first of the ice caves is a mile long; the ice caves go on for something like 2-3 miles; and though we didn't have time to see the entire span, we still had a good long meander from our parking spot.  There were a couple of guys who had even hiked out to one of the islands for some winter camping.

 The conditions have been perfect this year, and if I'm ever in the area again when the ice caves open, it'll definitely be on my list of places to go for the year.

Heading into the overhanging-rock cave

Behind the ice

The alternate entrance

Spiky & Fuzzy Icicles

Skiing @ Kettle Moraine - Lapham Peak Unit

Around sunset, this patch of trees turned blazing red.

Lapham Peak is a lovely state park/XC ski area just west of the Milwaukee 'burbs - about an hour's drive out from Madison.  This past weekend was the first time I got to see the entirety of Lapham Peak (as opposed to the small, manufactured-snow loop that I've visited in past, crummy-snow years).  I get the impression that every skate-skier who lives on the west side of Milwaukee spends all of their time at Lapham Peak since there was some pretty packed ice under a thin layer of recent snow.  There are at least 16 miles of (groomed) trail, and since the park runs along the edge of a moraine, the trails spend most of their time zigzagging up and down a small ridge (e.g. a great place to train for events like the Birkie).
 I ended up skiing somewhere around 17-20 miles with breaks for lunch and tea.  The classic track was in need of a good grooming (thanks to some skate skiers and a ton of oak leaves), but the hills kept me out of the track a fair portion of the time, anyways.

Skate skiers climbing Asthma Hill

Some community members have rather expertly annotated the trails:  you start with the "Gut-Buster" climb, pass "Target Tree" on a curvy downhill, and are bound to run into other spots like "The Wall," "Asthma Hill," and "Stairway to Heaven" - which sends you on a double loop of the hilliest bit of trail in the park.  "Roller Coaster" lived up to it's name, though it took me a second pass before I was willing to careen down some of the rollers with enough momentum to get up the next hill.  I've also got to admit that "Big Slide" is now my favorite XC downhill.  It's a somewhat gradual grade and a largely straight shot, but it just keeps going and going.
The temperatures were pleasantly in the teens (+ sun), but the 20+ mph wind certainly kept us moving.  The guys in the warming hut maintained a pleasant fire, which also served as a great glove warmer and breath-sicle thawing machine.

Late-afternoon

The group of folks I rode out with were the first ones there and the last ones left.  Two of us even had the good luck to crest the ridge just in time for the sunset (which was spectacular).  All in all, a lovely ski.  It's definitely worth the drive when there's fresh snow, and I imagine it would be just as good when freshly-groomed.

Snails Trail & Interlaced Star

I've finally stopped crashing during my weekend down-time and re-started my quilting with a couple of easy 12" blocks.  There are great tutorials out there for both blocks (http://theelvengarden.blogspot.com/2012/02/snail-trail-block-tutorial.html and http://www.haveyoumetus.net/michelle/blog/?p=1796), so I'll just show off the finished products.

Snail's Trail

Interlaced Star

The quilt is now 15% complete by # of blocks and 43% by area!

Skiing in Ironwood

In preparation for the American Birkebeiner, Ali and I have been skiing all over the place: Gov. Nelson State Park on the far side of Lake Mendota (debris-filled trip w/ Hoofers), Stoney Swamp and Gatineau Park outside of Ottawa (spectacular scenery w/ Ali's family), Blue Mounds State Park (once w/ Therese after a good snow, once with Hoofers after a bad sleet), and a couple times to our after-work/bus-accessible favorite, Elver Park.  In lieu of Christmas presents, Ali & I decided to take the MLK weekend and head up to Ironwood, MI (which is on the NW side of the UP, spittin' distance from the Wisconsin border).  We planned for two days of XC skiing, and since the snow is plentiful and soft along the UP, one day to introduce me to downhill skiing. 

Chilly morning

There's this fantastic private XC ski area in Ironwood called ABR that  has nearly 70km of well-groomed XC trail.  With the 54-kilometer Birkie in mind, we were hoping to ski at least 20 miles on Saturday, and though the last several kilometers were exhausting, we made it!  I can't begin to describe how lovely it was on Saturday.  The morning started off a little chilly, but we had our thermos of tea and a day-pack full of warm layers and world-famous pastys.  (Seriously, the iron-mining regions of Wisconsin and the UP are known for their pastys.)  The sun was out, and the woods had recently been filled with really big flakes of sparkly snow.  If you paid close enough attention to the mounds of snow on the evergreens, you could still see individual flakes.  Additionally, ABR was far enough out that there wasn't the usual rumble of snowmobiles.

Awesome ABR Tracks

We covered approximately 37km/23mi of ground, including nearly all of the classic-only trails.  The track was laid a bit too curvy on some of the classic trails (I'm looking at you, Otter Slide), and if I really wanted to complain, the classic+skate trails could have skipped classic tracking on some of the steep and twisty downhills.  (There are two type of cross country skiing techniques that require different skis and different snow grooming.  For classic - aka striding - technique, there are generally two parallel tracks that you keep your skis in while you move your legs vaguely like you might be walking or jogging.  For skating, you push off with one foot and glide at a ~45 degree angle before planting the next foot and gliding off in the other direction.  If classic track is too sharply-curved, your ski won't fit in the track, and if there's track going down a steep and winding hill, it takes a fair amount of skill to not careen off of the track and into the woods.)

Aptly named "The Wall" - we had to sidestep up most of this one

Kibitzing aside, ABR was awesome.  They groom nearly every day; they have enough trail for several good days of skiing before you have to repeat any route; the terrain is varied, quiet, and beautiful; and they have all the amenities you really need.  I would go back in a heartbeat.

Thankfully, though cross-country skiing can make you tired and sore, you never feel like you've been hit by a semi the next day.  We had a leisurely morning on Sunday, and made it out to Whitecap Mountains Ski Resort (30min west of Ironwood) for their half-day ski.  The edge of the UP does have some pretty nice hills, but this is the Midwest.  At a place like Whistler, you can expect ~5000ft of vertical; it's closer to 3000 at Vail/Breckinridge; and the best place in the Midwest (the Porkies, an hour east of  Ironwood) weighs in at a whopping 600-something feet.  According to my in-house downhill expert, this just means that the easy/intermediate runs may be similar in difficulty, but corresponding runs will be much shorter in Flatlandia.

Going really slow

Until this year, I was not thrilled about the prospect of downhill anything.  Skiing and snowboarding are notoriously injury-prone sports; I don't like going fast; I haven't been very good at snowplowing on cross-country skis; and I'm not a huge fan of mountains that have resort-induced stripes.  Within the past year, however, I've become much better at stopping and steering on XC skis, so I decided to give downhill a try.  I'm kinda glad that I did.  (And I'm really glad that I learned XC first.)  Thanks to some stellar instruction, I could handle the green runs pretty quickly.  (You might just want to ignore my assessment; I could avoid falling, but I'm still probably terrible.)  And though I may not be great at staying upright on blue runs yet, there's definitely a glimmer of hope.  Every time we hit a Goldilocks hill that was steep enough to be fun but not steep enough to be terrifying, I would descend yelling "Whee!" at every turn.  I'm sure that Ali was quite thrilled to be associated with me.

XC Skiing:  Hot & thirsty work

Though my muscles weren't complaining much about downhill skiing, the weekend caught up to me on Monday.  We headed part of the way home before picking up our second XC ski day at Nine Mile Rec Area outside of Wausau, WI.  They also have a large, well-groomed trail system (about 30k).  Nine Mile isn't too hilly, though they do have a small loop nicknamed "The Alps" that zigzags up and down a ridge.  The weather had gotten chilly for our last day, and since the terrain was largely flat and definitely set up for logging, the winds cut right through us.  After 15-18k, we decided to call it a day.  I felt a bit bad cutting our ski short, but there are several more weekends before Feb 22.

Christmas Tree Skirt!!

Ali and I started Christmas-crafting last year, and we actually finished our big project (a gorgeous tree skirt) in time for this year's holiday!  We designed the skirt after finding some cool samples/caricatures online.  I sketched most of the figures out and took care of the quilting/binding.  Ali did the brunt of the work; she took care of all of the felt work, sewed all of the figures on to the skirt, and made some amazing decorations for our woodland critters.

Check out those mitts, scarves, and hats!!

Crafty owls

This was the first time that I did anything approaching decorative quilting (diamonds which Ali traced on for me) or a proper bias-strip binding.  The finished product looks awesome, and I'm really impressed that it turned out so well!

Merry Christmas!!

2 degrees and no snow...  Silly Wisconsin.

Storm at Sea Block (18")

I finally got one more quilt block wrapped up this weekend:  the Storm at Sea block.  Storm at Sea is an optical illusion of a block;  though every seam in the block is a straight one, the final block makes you think there's a bit of curve happening.  Though I've seen really multicolored versions of this block, I decided to stick with a classic 2-tone version (warm pinks/purples and cool greens/blues)

There are 3 main components of the block:  a diamond-y rectangle (you'll need 4 for one block), a large square which kinda looks like the start of a pineapple block (you'll need 1 for the center), and a smaller square with the same pseudo-pineapple design (you'll need 4 for the corners). 

Little corner squares

For all of the corner squares in the block, I cut 4 x 2-1/4" warm squares (A), 4 x 3-1/2" cool squares (B), and 8 x 3-1/8" squares (half warm and half cool -C).  The A squares go in the center, and quarter-square triangles made from the B squares are the first ring out.  Half-square triangles from C squares round the corner blocks out.  The final squares (before sewing them into the rest of the block) should be 5".  Once these are sewn into the final block/quilt, they'll measure in at 4.5".

Big central square

The large central square is similarly constructed.  This time, the A' square is 5", the B' square is 5-3/4" (only need 1), and the C' squares are 5-5/8" (need 2).  The completed square should be 9.5" before it's sewn into the center of the block (and 9" afterwards).

 

The diamond-filled rectangles are probably the trickiest part of this block, and they can either be paper-pieced or just well-measured.  Since I had a wonderful assistant converting this block pattern to make a 18" final block, I went with a hybrid of the two.  I got two paper templates:  a 9" x 4.5" diamond and a right triangle with 4.5" and 2.25" legs (both templates had 1/4" seam allowances).  I cut four diamonds, 16 triangles, and sewed everything together.

Once all the components were stitched, it was just a matter of sewing a couple more seams and voila!

Brule River State Forest Backpacking

All of October, Ali and I have been waiting for the slightest weather window to open up in the UP so that we could get some fall-colors backpacking in before the season comes to an end.  Thanks to another rainy autumn, that plan just didn't work out well.  Since the Hoofer's Whitewater Fall Colors trip (where the leaves were a week or two shy of their peak), the Porcupines and the Bayfield area have been thoroughly drenched and unfortunately chilly.  If we were only dealing with one of those conditions, this post would be about hiking in the Porkies.  With 60-80% chances of rain and highs in the 30s, there was no way we were making the 5.5 hour drive.

Since the best hiking/biking options were out, we started looking into other options.  The North Country Trail holds a special place in our hearts and minds.  The only section we'd previously been on is highly touted and is a mosquito-infested swamp.  After the jaunt up there a couple years ago, the bites on the backs of my legs had fused into one giant, angry, itchy red sheet (and that is no hyperbole).  Perhaps usefully, we were willing to overlook that experience and the complete lack of information on the DNR website and head up to a section of the NCT that goes through Brule River State Forest in NW WI.  This 20 mile section is just a bit west of the last section we attempted, and all the blog info we found suggested that it too was marshy and tick/mosquito-filled.  Thank goodness we were heading up in November!!

Bug-free on the NCT

Friday night, we grabbed our gear and started the 5hr drive up.  We ditched our bikes at the southern terminus of the section (for us, County Road A ~4 miles NE of Solon Springs) and drove up to Brule, WI for the night.  In the morning, we grabbed our muffins and bananas and hit the trailhead on Samples Rd, where we found a pack of trail runners.  After some hemming and hawing about the proper way to get on the trail, we headed off in the right (thank you Ali) direction.  Now, when we were preparing for our hike, we spent 2-3 days trying to find a map of the trail with distances and campsites listed.  It took forever, but we eventually discovered this.  You might notice that the only campsite with a calculable distance is the Highland Town Hall Campsite at 13 miles.  Luckily, that's the one we were aiming for anyways.  For any other hikers' reference, Winneboujou is ~0.9 miles in; Paul Schoch was around 5; and Jersett Creek was ~16 miles from Samples Rd.

We were hiking through a mix of recently-logged, mixed coniferous, ready-to-be-logged, scrubby young oak, and currently-being-logged woods.  The old cut blocks have been growing on me since moving up here; there's just something oddly serene about the needle-covered ground and straight rows of older trees.  The water sources at the first couple of sites looked like they'd be lovely bug-breeding grounds in warmer seasons.  We were hiking on a slight, Wisconsin-style "ridge" that provided some quite pleasant vistas.  Though almost all of the deciduous trees have dropped their leaves, the stripes of conifers, birches, and eastern larch were rather striking (particularly when set against a lake).

Claw truck

Thanks in part to the chilly, overcast weather, we made great time in the morning:  roughly 10mi by noon.  The first several miles I was taking frequent breaks to fiddle with my boots in an attempt to (a) find some sort of support for my joints and (b) not start bruising my foot/getting hotspots.  I've probably complained about this before, but I'll complain about it again:  if you intend to take your shoes on any kind of outdoors adventure, do not ever get Keens.  Neoprene in a water sandal is really unfortunate/foot-funk-encouraging, certain toe guards on boots just apply toenail-bruising pressure, and no one who hikes long distances in Keen boots ends up with happy feet/joints.  Ranting aside, we reached Highland Town Hall Camp by 2:00 and decided to keep moving so (a) we wouldn't be so close to the road, (b) we wouldn't hear the weird industrial sound coming from the other side of the road, and (c) we would be able to stay warm.  That turned out to be a great decision; the water source seemed to be turned off for the year at Highland.

The weird industrial sound turned out to be the "lumber sale" that the permit-issuing ranger had mentioned.  ("It shouldn't really affect you.")  Apparently, "lumber sale" is code for active logging.  We had hiked by areas full of slash and areas with marked trees, and we finally came upon the interesting (and really scary) little machine doing the logging.  We watched for a while as it would grab the base of a tree, lift the tree away, set it down sideways in between the rows of other trees, strip the branches, and chop it into 8ft(?) sections.  Then, a second little truck would come over and shuttle the logs over to a big ol' pile. The pile was about 2m off of the trail, the logging machine was about 80m off the trail when we passed.  The slash suggested the logging machine had been within 5m of the trail earlier that day.  I don't mind the logging in State Forests.  WI has a big paper industry, and similar to the National Parks/Forests splits, the Forests are expected to have some industrial productivity.  I do find it a little amusing that this was the best place for a National Scenic Trail.

Peeking out from our campsite (There was a lovely sunset the night before)

The last three miles into camp took us 2 hours; my ankles and now knees were feeling miserable!  The terrain hadn't been challenging in the least, but the meandering (and slight) ups and downs started feeling pretty bad, even if they did help us lose the lumbering noise pretty quickly.  Camp was a welcome relief; the chili pie and hot jello drink helped stave off the cold, even if our weak fire couldn't battle the cool, damp conditions very well.

Our early bedtime helped us get enough sleep for the next day.  We had wolves, owls, and distant coyotes serenading us through the night.  The wolves definitely came as close as our water source, but they were wandering around a fair amount.  Though the forecast said we wouldn't be below freezing, our hydration pouches told a different story in the morning.

We tried to stay in our tent for a while on Sunday morning and let the sun do its job.  We were well awake by 9 and on the trail as soon as we got the ice melted for breakfast.  Our four miles out took a while, but the sky was clear, and the woods were lovely.  We got off of the trail before the 2.3mi boardwalk, but we had enough hiking for the day and a 19mi bike ride to look forward to.

Jersett Creek

The first 6 miles of our bike shuttle was spent on a "packed" sand road.  We fishtailed at least once every 100m.  I think the area was pretty.  When I could tear my eyes off of the sand, the scenery made me feel like I was in some exotic Adventure Cycling write-up.  The isolated feeling continued even when we turned onto a (paved!!) county road and then a (beautifully paved!!) state highway.  There was no traffic and very few developed properties.  I really, really couldn't ask for a better bike ride to end a hike.  (Did I mention that it was largely downhill and that my knees didn't mind the ride?)

As soon as we loaded the bikes onto the car and grabbed our packs from the end of the hike, we headed off to celebrate as all outdoors-folk should:  with Norske Nook pie.  Even though the leaves had already disappeared for the year, there are certainly worse ways to end a not-snow season in Wisconsin.