Day 110: Lumbercamp Segment (Part 1), Langlade County

Day 110: Friday, October 15th, 2021

Total Miles covered for the day: 6.9     

Location 1: The part of the Lumbercamp Segment between Otto Mauk Fire Lane and State Highway 52

3.1 miles of trail covered

This morning Theresa and I woke up before dawn in our spectacular accommodations at Jack Lake Campground. The air temperature was 35 degrees outside, but in our snug little cabin it was warm and toasty. 

The name of the cabin is 'Timberdoodle', a word with which I was wholly unfamiliar, but Theresa sussed it out. "I wonder if Timberdoodle is another word for Woodcock?" she asked. 

"I highly doubt it," I said, with my usual overconfidence borne of being a a lifetime logophile ad never hearing the term before. "But I've been wrong before."

And with the aid of our good friend Google, Theresa was quickly proven right. 

"How the heck did you figure that out?" I asked, genuinely perplexed. 

"There was a picture of a woodcock on the sign above the door."

Credit my wife for her powers of observation, and for knowing what a woodcock looks like. 

Today was another day where we thought it was possible that we would cross paths with another hiker looking for a snail patch, so we had to stay with the schedule. By 9:00 am it was 40 degrees out and we started getting vehicles in place. This took some time, because the section we were hiking today was more than a half-hour away. 

The first thing we did was go park at the East Trailhead for the Lumbercamp segment, which is actually just across the road at the head of the Kettlebowl Segment. I can't remember exactly why we pulled over a tenth of a mile down the road, but there on the side of Hwy 52 was this awesome boulder, about the size of a large watermelon. It had a hole 'drilled' through it that wasn't clean and sharp enough to be man-made. I thought at first it may have been some kind of fossil, but as I look again at the photos I wonder if this isn't remnants of a pothole. We were certainly in the right place to find such an artifact. 

Next, we took another trip up Otto Mauk Fire Lane to park at the trail intersection. This would effectively cut the long part of the Lumbercamp segment into two pieces, and if we managed to do both halves in one day, we wouldn't have to drive the Prius back up there ever again. (Spoiler: we were successful!)

By 10:16 am, we were geared up and on our way.

Today was another picture-perfect, gorgeous fall day. The skies were gray, and it was 45 degrees. Not exactly sunbathing weather, but fabulous for hiking. 

Immediately east of Otto Mauk, the trail runs on a terrible logging road, full of mud holes. It's level, but recent logging has taken its toll. I believe the logging is probably also responsible for the near total absence of yellow blazes for the first mile. 

Eventually, though, the trail got off the logging road and onto a single-track running through the woods. This was right about the place where we went from the Town of Price to the Town of Langlade. We had less water (though still some), and more blazes, but the footing became somewhat terrible, with steep, rocky inclines and descents. 

The trail meandered along on an uneven and winding path. There were a few rugged sections where the trail was more or less a suggestion running between the trees where someone might want a trail to go some day. It was littered with boulders, and only the yellow blazes kept us on track. 

I love fungi.

Theresa was still having fun. Her feet didn't hurt too badly yet.

I still love fungi.

By 11:30 it had warmed up to 49 degrees. After topping one more small hill, we could see the entire trail falling away in front of us, plunging down a long, steep ravine and giving up 160 feet in elevation. It was the ravine that led to Baker Lake. 

We were actually glad to have reached the bottom, because the footing wasn't great going down that hill. And when we got to Baker Lake I noticed this boat launcher, suitable for canoes. 

From here, the trail headed back uphill again, regaining about 80 feet back from what was lost further west. Here we were literally walking on a drivable road that led all the way back up to Hwy 52. This would have been good information to know if we had wanted to cut the segment in smaller pieces, and we may well have chosen to hike this part at some point earlier in the year. It was only 0.7 miles, but that would have made the whole segment just that much more hikable. 

The last 0.7 miles along the road from Baker Lake contained about three trail blazes, if you count the ones visible in both directions. If we didn't know for certain that we were on the right path, there was almost nothing by way of guidance to tell us we weren't lost. 

As we were nearing the road, I noticed that a lot of the Red Oak leaves were covered in little brown spots. As near as I can tell these are photos of a common fungus called Tubakia dryina. It causes Tubakia leaf spot, and red oaks are particularly susceptible. Maybe I don't like all fungi. This one seems kinda mean. 

Looking back, this part of the Lumbercamp Segment is an amalgam of everything I don't like about the IAT. Mud. Poor blazes. Roots and Rocks. Sudden turns. Needlessly steep inclines with erosion. And poor cell phone reception. Getting lost out here could lead to genuine problems. 

We ended the first half of the hike at 1:17 pm, temperature 55 degrees. We crossed paths with no one, so no snail patches were given out. Theresa's feet hurt. Fun was in short supply.

Location 2: The part of the Lumbercamp Segment between County Rd S and Otto Mauk Fire Lane

3.8 miles of trail covered

Typically, I wouldn't count this as a separate "Location", as it's really just a leapfrog hop in the same segment, but we had always looked at the piece between County Road S and Hwy 52 as two separate hikes, and despite the mud and struggles we encountered on the eastern end, we decided to hike the second half today. 

Leaving the van sitting at Otto Mauk Fire Lane, we drove around to County Road S and sat in the parking lot to eat our lunch. 

At 1:54, we started walking east again. The skies were a cotton-filled deep cerulean blue, and the dry and colorful leaves were dancing in a light breeze. Life is good. 

After flirting with a single-track through the field for about a tenth of a mile, the trail jumps onto a drivable gravel road and stays there for nearly the entire hike to Otto Mauk Fire Lane. 

Seriously. If not for the the initial crossing through the field, you could take a stroller down this lane. Tykes on Big Wheel plastic tricycles could motor unimpeded along the leaf-strewn fall wonderland without so much as losing traction. The only thing missing was a mom in Skechers and a sweater walking next to a brawny dad with a two-year old boy on his shoulders and a labradoodle running around having the time of his life. 

If was surreal, given what we had just gone through on the other side of the road, not four miles away. 

But in all honesty it didn't stay that way for 3.8 miles. Walking this road was like walking through time, every quarter mile or so representing another few years of decline. At first it was hard to notice. The edges of the road weren't quite as crisply defined. The grass a little grassier. 

At some point, a few blades of grass started appearing in the center of the road. The path, which was once wide and proud now boasted a gentle passage for only a single vehicle. 

And, inexorable as time itself, the road became a two-track lane through the woods, with a bump in the middle rising up like a dowager's hump. Gone was the gravel, replaced by hard-packed dirt, and even, as in the picture below, a tiny bid of standing water here and there. 

I was never able to put my finger on the exact spot where it changed from Grade A to Grade B, to dirt track to... mud. But it definitely did. And yet the transition was not unpleasant, or even unexpected. This four miles of the Lumbercamp Segment went by like a forty-year friendship, where you never notice the stooped shoulders and wrinkles that have developed. It just all seems natural, and even comforting. At least that was my experience.

And, lest anyone reading this think I completely missed the part that was paved with potato-sized rocks that were decidedly unpleasant to walk across, I didn't, and they were still there. But that part wasn't very far, and could easily be forgiven after strolling several miles down an idyllic path through the woods. 

All of this was level, easy walking (except for the potato rocks) with almost no change in elevation. It was pretty, there was only a very light breeze. There were lots of birds to enjoy as they chattered noisily about the changing weather.

Just before we reached the car, we saw a large open field, where the miracle of regeneration was playing out its final act before dormancy. Some form of flowering plant was casting its host of lighter-than-air seedpods into the breeze, carried aloft on white pappus umbrellas and filling the meadow in a scene calling to mind the Cottingley Fairies of old. 

Which brings us to the evil gnome in the story. The one that sits on an oversized toadstool and talks to hikers as the pass by, dazzling them with stories of a beautiful cottage in the woods, where hikers can lay down their burdens and take refuge for the night. 

Just to the right at the beginning of the video above, you can see a small hill rising from the level of the meadow. In the foreground is a pathway that leads only a few feet off the trail. Behold, the "Hillbilly Hilton".

The structure is, or once was in a former life, a root cellar. It is underground. It is quaint. If the front door was round one could almost picture hobbits. As is, with its shabby plywood and concrete facing it looks more like a place Ted Kaczynski might have built. 

The Ice Age Trail Atlas shows an icon for a Shelter at this location. It shows up on the online Hikers Resource Map as a a 'Shelter/Hut'. The Ice Age Trail Guidebook states, in straight-faced Times New Roman font:

The root cellar has been renovated, and is affectionately called the "Hillbilly Hilton". Inside are sleeping platforms, a small table and shelving to welcome hikers out of the elements. 

This is a lie, or at best, a terrible joke, and if you come here thinking you might be able to stay overnight the joke is on you.

Whatever hospitality was once offered by this abandoned structure has given way to mold, decay and animal feces. If the bunks were ever level, they are now rotted and canted at unusable angles. The window is broken. The wood stove, once apparently usable, now has a stovepipe that leads only to the top of the ceiling, so that if lit the fire would simply fill the cramped space with smoke. That might explain the broken window, now that I think about it. 

The shelves still exist, and they even have a few items remaining. Canned goods teeming with unknown pathogens accompany a haphazard assortment of kitchen ware and utensils, all equally unusable. Bare wires hang from the ceiling where I suppose it was once possible to connect a 12-Volt battery, providing power to a single light bulb, long since gone. 

I found this 'signature' left behind by a former guest. Despite any similarity to the Snails on the Trail logo, I can affirm that this was not us. 

The IATA should remove any mention of this "shelter" from their literature. The best thing one could hope for by sheltering here is a good case of blastomycosis. I think they know how bad it's gotten, too, because the Guidebook has a small caveat in italics, 'Note: This structure is not sponsored or maintained by the Langlade County Chapter.' Not good enough, IATA, not good enough. 

Less than a tenth of a mile later, after crossing a few mud puddles, we found ourselves back at the van, ending our our hike at 4:18 pm. We weren't sure how we would feel about hiking both of these pieces on the same day. I'm glad we did, because we got it over with, and I guess I'm glad we did it in that order. If we hadn't ended with such an easy walk I don't know how Theresa would have felt by the end of the day. As it was, she was feeling a little tuckered out. And of course, her feet hurt. 

I snagged a geocache that was sitting there at that intersection, and we packed up to leave. I decided to drive back to the other car using the northern route, finishing Otto Mauk Fire Lane to the north and and turning left on Augustyn Springs Road. I wanted to know if this route was better or worse than coming up Otto Mauk from the south. The entire route is drivable, but I can't really say if it's better or worse. Both halves sport sudden potholes, and the northern route is a bit longer. Take your pick.  

We picked up the car from our starting point on County Road S and headed back to camp, with two thirds of Lumbercamp behind us. This left only the dreaded "March through the Marsh" to be tackled later in the week if all went to plan.

Brock's Progress on the Mammoth Hike Challenge: 42.1 miles, DONE!!

Theresa's Progress on the Mammoth Hike Challenge: 43.6 miles. DONE!!

Running Total: 777.7 miles of trail covered, 10.8 miles of trail half-covered; 126.6 miles 'extra' hiking/biking. End of Day 110.

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