Day 27: Wednesday April 29th, 2015
Location: Newwood Segment (Part 2), Lincoln County
We
last visited the Newwood Segment exactly 19 months ago on a simply gorgeous fall
day in 2013. (Read about that hike here.) Today was a day just as pretty and a hundred
times less buggy. Our target: the
western half of the segment.
It’s
a little hard to gauge just how far it is hiking the eastern half or the western
half of this segment. If you look at the
2014 Ice Age Trail Guidebook, the whole distance is 6.5 miles. The 2011 Ice Age Trail Companion Guide listed
the segment as 6.6 miles. If you look at
Google Maps, the whole route is 6.0 miles.
Hard to know whom to trust. My
feet told me it was 6.54 miles. Prove me
wrong.
Anyway,
we had hoped to get a much earlier start and possibly hike more than one
segment today, but real life keeps getting in the way. Just getting to this remote area in Lincoln
County is a challenge, and actually getting a vehicle to the westernmost trailhead
is, uh, not for the faint of heart. If
you’re looking at the 2011 Atlas, it doesn’t look possible to drive to the west
end of this segment. If you look on
Google Maps it doesn’t even look like a road exists that will get you to the
west end. But in the 2014 Trail Guidebook,
and the 2014 Atlas, it correctly shows that it is possible, without driving
through streams and crashing gates, to drive all the way to the end of
Conservation Avenue from the east, and get right down to the trailhead.
I
don’t know who called this two-rut cow path an ‘Avenue’, but that was like
putting lipstick on a sow. If you’re
going to drive in there, use the most rugged vehicle you own. It’s not like you’ll bottom out if you’re
driving a hybrid 2-door, but you wouldn’t want to get stuck out there, either.
To
prevent having to take two vehicles down there, we dropped one car at the
mid-point of the segment (our end point for the day) and drove our hybrid Prius
(yeah, I know – do as I say, not as I do) down into the heart of the Newwood
Recreational Area. About 0.2 miles from
the actual location where the trail crosses the ‘Avenue’ is a very nice place
to park with a large turn-around. Use
it. The trail is just a little further
down the road, about two curves away. Oh
– and if you’re coming from the west and you’re using your GPS device to get
there – don’t believe that Conservation Ave goes all the way through. Neither does Whisky Bill Road. They’re called gates, and they don’t allow
cars through that way.
So
here we were, 4:46 pm at 61°, bounding off into the woods. It has been a long time since we last hit
real trail, and we’ve missed it. About 2
tenths of a mile into the walk (we were hiking west to east) we got into a very
marshy area, which helps to explain why this section is so full of mosquitoes
later in the year. It has been utterly
dry around here for weeks, and yet there was open mud, running streams, and
positively boggy bits of trail. This
lasted for about 200 yards, making me appreciate even more all the times I’ve
walked across long boardwalks through stuff like this. But – hopping from grass clump to tree limb, taking
a few rapid steps, and once in a while an authentic leap of faith, we were able
to get through with minimal mud to show for it.
Once past this area we never truly got out of the wet zone, but
everything else was just minor water hazards.
Actually, there were long bits of the walk that were atop charming eskers,
and with the temperature so low and the bugs so few, it was an incredibly nice
time to make the journey. I wouldn’t
want to do it during a wet spring, but during a dry one this is a fine
walk.
The
only real notable things were that some parts of the trail were groomed by the
Mobile Skills Crew and I noticed that the porcupines had been eating the
hemlock trees, leaving curious piles of cut branches on the trail. The forest itself was an odd, evenly
mature northern hardwood mix, clearly having grown up after a clear-cut. All the trees were approximately the same
age, and there was surprisingly little understory and new growth. This makes for a park-like appearance, but
also makes it hard to discern the trail from the many, many animal paths
cutting through the woods. Fortunately,
there are plenty of blazes to mark the way, so it’s hard to get lost. Except for the part where the mobile skills
crew did the blazes. They have a tendency
to not put enough of them out. That’s the
one part of what they do that leaves me puzzled.
As
the light was getting low and the temperature getting cool, we found our way to
the car following a troad along the last bit of trail. We left the woods at 7:27 pm, at 55°, another
3.5 miles covered, happy to be back on the trail. I'd rate this section a Class B trail, only because of the amount of mud and water hazard. Otherwise it would be an 'A'.
You
may ask how it is that we didn’t have to drive down to get the car we left in
the woods. For that you’ll have to read
about Day 28. As for Day 27, we drove
our trail-end vehicle to a new destination and camped out overnight.
Running total: 225.4 miles of
trail covered; 22.6 miles ‘extra’ hiking/biking. End of Day 27.
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