Day 82: Summit Moraine Segment (Part 3), Langlade County

Day 82: Sunday, July 11th, 2021

Total Miles covered for the day: 2.3, plus 1.5 miles extra hiking 

Location: The Summit Moraine Segment between Campsite 47 in Jack Lake Campground to the west and the nearest parking area on Pence Lake Road to the east. 

2.3 miles of trail covered.

Sometimes, in our push to cover as much trail as possible as fast as possible, we forget to take time to relax a little and enjoy the beautiful surroundings that exist along the IAT. Last night we talked and decided that if we felt too tired today we would just hang around camp and take it easy, then go home. 

To be perfectly honest, the long grass hiking is getting the best of us. We've been told, and it's absolutely true, that you need to pick the right time to hike in different areas. And hiking Langlade County in July is... not the right time. 

Don't get me wrong. It's a gorgeous area, and the three (only three!) volunteers who make up this chapter are doing everything they can to maintain the trail. But it's a whole lot of trail for just three people, and we're resigned to the idea that we're just not going to close out this gap this year. We believe the right time to hike out here is in the early spring, and we're definitely going to be back.

I woke up today a little earlier than Theresa did, and I decided I'd just walk the trail out of camp a little bit, in the opposite direction from the way we went two nights ago, just to see what I would encounter. I walked through the campground, everyone tucked in their campers, and listened to the birds trying to wake up the world. As expected, the trail was wide and heavily used, and very easy to walk. I took it all the way to the arboretum entrance, and thought, 'Well this is absolutely beautiful!' I decided to keep going and i hiked just until I reached the end of the road where they store the red canoe to be used by the cabin campers, then walked back up the road and back to camp. At the very least, I wanted to take that loop with Theresa.  

Of course we had breakfast and of course we talked about if and where we were going to hike, and I told her that I wanted to take her out and show her the cabins that are available for rent at Jack Lake campground. She saw right through this ridiculous ruse, but was nice enough to go along with it. 

Together we walked along this same path again, taking in the easy walk through camp and then the slightly longer but equally nice walk through the arboretum. The arboretum, by the way, gets my vote as one of the nicest places we've walked, just for the joy of being able to see what all those trees and shrubs are called. I know many of them, but I was stumped a few times, and was flat out wrong on the Serviceberry tree, mistaking it for 'some kind of cherry'. 

We soon found ourselves at the canoe, and came back up the road and back to camp to finish planning the day. After some deliberation we decided we would at least find out what the 2.0 mile hike would be like from Pence Lake Road into camp. 

We parked at the trail sign on Pence Lake Road, and to our delight and chagrin, we found that the trail had been recently mowed in both directions, both east and west. That meant the hiking would be fairly easy today, but it also meant that if we had come here yesterday afternoon it might have been possible for us to cover the whole remaining 5.8 miles this weekend. 

There I go pushing again. {sigh}

So once more we geared up, touched the sign and started walking back to close the gap. It was 2:15 in the afternoon, and it was 75 degrees. We were in no hurry.

What I have to say about this hike is that the conditions were idyllic. A soft, black trail with mowed grass, a cool breeze in the air, singing birds, and level, easy terrain. You could have pushed a stroller through most of this one. 

When we reached the pond that looks a bit like a set of deer antlers from the satellite view but actually has the name "Narrow Neck Pond", we found a bench and decided to sit there and enjoy the frogs. 

Amphibious Bistort

We sat at this bench a very long time, much longer than our usual stay. Today was a day for relaxing, and we were rewarded for our sloth-like pace. We saw frogs, and beaver-chewed stumps. We saw a floating water plant with pink flowers. We saw that the water level was down at least three feet from recent high-water marks. And we got to see a predator in action. 

In the picture below is an American Bittern. You'll have to believe me - I can't see it in there either, but I did see it when I was sitting on the bench, and it's only the second one I've ever seen in the wild. Better yet, we got to watch this one pounce upon and eat a frog, then fly away after a good, long wait. Sadly, we didn't get to hear this one make its otherworldly call, but it was fun to watch it hunting. If you've never heard an American Bittern call, look one up on YouTube. You won't believe that sound is coming from a bird. 

Eventually, though, we did have to keep moving, so we reluctantly picked up our packs and started down the trail again. 

Fly Amantia mushroom

Blue Bead Lily

Blue Bead Lily in greenish-white stage (the flowers are yellow)

From the long-ago land of the giants

European Hornbeam

I have mentioned that the hiking conditions on this part of the trail were fabulous. In fact, as we passed the 90 degree turn next to the remote camping site by game lake we joined a nature trail, complete with signage where you can learn about some of the many animals that inhabit these woods. Oh - and all along the way the trail was beautifully marked with yellow blazes. 

In fact, the walking was so easy that when we passed this log and continued walking along the nature trail, we completely missed that yellow arrow on the left that indicated the trail took a 90 degree turn to the right. 

You see it there in this picture, right? No? Look harder. We missed it, too.

And if you're out there and you see the sign for the muskrat, you've gone too far. Go back and look for the turn. It's just after the mink sign.

Of course - we didn't know that. One of our first hints was that the yellow blazed dried up completely and disappeared. This should have made it obvious, considering how well marked the section had been until that point. Another clue was that the trail was no longer the perfect, easy walking trail it had been, but was now an overgrown, grassy mess. And there were lots and lots of footprints leading through that long grass, so it's obvious that we weren't the only ones to have missed that turn. But given that we were on a very obvious nature trail we kept going forward for another two or three tenths of a mile hoping, then giving up hope of spotting another blaze. 

By that time we knew we missed a turn somewhere, but neither one of us felt like going back and finding where we went wrong. Besides that, we were following the Nature Trail, so we knew we would end up back at Jack Lake Campground eventually. The signage was useless, by the way. All the trail signs out there are old, showing the trail going the wrong place, and are far too small in scale to be useful. We relied on satellite imagery on our cell phones and our skills in navigating to coordinates to get us out of there along the best route possible. Also, the Guthook app would have told us we were off-course, but we don't have that one. 

So we hoofed it for quite a long ways until we found ourselves approaching the road on the west side of the arboretum, about a half-mile west of where we thought we would come out. This annoyed us so much that we decided to head back down the trail from this direction and find out where we went wrong. 

For a while, the trail heading east out of camp goes along a road, and then right at the point where it used to go along the north end of Game Lake, there's a 90 degree turn to the right and you have to follow a twisty, bumpy little deer-trail of a path to cut though the woods and reach the other 90 degree turn pictured above.

Several things went wrong all at once to make this an easy turn to miss. The biggest reason was two large fallen trees, one of which obliterated the fact that the trail was there at all. The other was a lack of maintenance at that precise spot, and there were trees and foliage covering the trail and the signage. 

I took out my hand-saw and got to work, cutting down or ripping out of the ground about 75 small trees that were camouflaging the correct trail. Then I cut down a bunch of branches that were hiding blazes and trail signs. Finally I stomped down some of the foliage that had grown up in the way and used a couple of rocks to prop up the sign pointing to the right. Hopefully future hikers won't miss the turn like we did. 

I'm not sure what time we finished, and we forgot to get a picture of ourselves at the end. But when we were done we had extended our line from Polk County all the way to Pence Lake Road. We hadn't quite turned the corner yet, but we were getting close. Our Northern Gap is down to 24.3 miles, and we're looking forward to coming out here next spring to cinch that down to zero.

Running Total: 584.2 miles of trail covered; 66.3 miles 'extra' hiking/biking. End of Day 82.

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