Day 114: Kettlebowl Segment (Part 3), Langlade County
Day 114: Sunday, October 24th, 2021
Total Miles covered for the day: 4.4
Location: The Southern half of the Kettlebowl Segment between the south trailhead and the place where the trail first intersects with "Burma Road"
4.4 miles of trail covered plus 6.8 miles extra hiking/biking
Joy of joys, hope beyond hope, success against all odds! Today we managed to go back and hike the last 4.4 miles of the Kettlebowl Segment!
"But it is CLOSED!" I hear you say. "Why would you go there and hike when the IAT and the Chapter have said you shouldn't go?"
To those who would stone us for our transgressions, let me ask the simple question. If a sign says, 'No trespassing without permission', what's the best way to get around that?
Ask permission.
A week ago we stopped by on a Sunday and checked out the condition of the Closed section of trail. We discovered that though there is active logging, the machines are not active during the weekend. We believed, logically, if we asked the landowner to go through on a Saturday or Sunday, we might be given such permission, and thus get around the prohibition.
We wanted to achieve this for the single-threaded purpose of closing out map 36, thus extending our continuous line from the St. Croix River all the way to Devils Lake. This last 4.4 miles was all that stood between us and finishing that goal.
So on Monday morning this week Theresa started the effort to contact the landowner and seek permission to hike on the weekend. I'm going to make a long story short. After a series of steps that involved researching the tax assessors office, Google.com, Findagrave.com, the Wisconsin Society of American Foresters and the Wisconsin Secretary of State (among others), Theresa found herself talking to the landowner who not only gave us permission to hike there on the weekend, but was seriously puzzled why we felt we needed to ask.
As it turns out, the closure of the segment was a decision made by IAT management, not the landowner. There is logging going on, and at some point the fact was discussed between the IATA and the landowner. A request was made by the landowner that signage be put up alerting people to logging activities, and asking them to not hike through an area where there was active logging. The landowner (this person is intentionally being left unnamed) didn't expect that people would stop hiking through there, but wanted them to be aware of the logging activities and use caution while hiking. In fact, the landowner was a little irritated to learn that the segment had been 'Closed', and that the landowner was being named as the person who requested that it be closed.
Theresa learned a great deal while looking for the landowner and how to contact them. What she learned gave us great respect for the landowner, their family, and the corporations they are involved in. In brief, their goal is to acquire and preserve land for the conservation of wilderness and habitat, and for the shared use by the public at large. They want everyone who is physically capable to walk, run, bike, ski, snowshoe, snowmobile, horseback or swim through their land holdings. This largess has been a family tradition for generations, and it is their honor and privilege to be able to play host to the enjoyment of others.
Because we don't want to trouble these folks with phone calls from other hikers, we have left them unnamed, and instead have shared their wishes, to the best of our ability. If you want to hike the Segment while it's 'Closed', be aware that the landowner has given ALL hikers permission to walk through, so long as you take care to completely avoid the logging equipment. If you can be responsible enough to turn around, or take alternate routes as appropriate, then go ahead and hike there. You have to make your own decision on whether our word is good enough to make you feel OK about going there before the warning signs come down.
Onto the hike!
As I mentioned in yesterday's post, Theresa was suffering from the side effects of her COVID-19 booster shot. The fever was gone, though, and she felt like she could tough it out if it meant getting this last piece of Langlade County behind us.
As I have mentioned previously, one of the challenges with hiking in Langlade County is the ordinance forbidding anyone from parking along the County Roads. That meant we would be unable to park a vehicle at the trailhead, or at the mid-point on Kent Pond Road where we chipped off the northern half of the segment a week ago.
So in the end, and after much discussion, we decided that I would drop her off at Kent Pond Road, where she would retrace the steps we took last week to walk in as far as the trail and then head south. I would drive to the other end, park in the designated parking area, ride my bike the 0.35 miles to the trailhead, lock up my bike and walk the other way. That meant that Theresa had to hike an extra 0.7 miles, and I felt that might give me enough of an advantage that I could actually walk the whole segment out and back and catch up to her before she reached the end. This, then, was my plan. Even after putting in 10 miles yesterday at Point Beach, I was eager to walk the 8.8 miles necessary to get it done.
I dropped Theresa off at the gate on Kent Pond Road right at 12:00 noon, and by 12:19 pm I had driven to the other end, parked my car and biked to the starting gate. It was 47 degrees and mostly cloudy with very little wind.
While Theresa was following her set of coordinates that led like breadcrumbs to the place she needed to go to start her hike, I started walking north as fast as my little feet could take me. Little did I know that Theresa would not actually get to her starting gate until 1:10 pm. More on that later.
I started out with a great deal of enthusiasm, engaging in something I refer to as a run-walk. It's the kind of uneven trot one might expect of a person like me who is built more for endurance than for speed, where I'll half-jog for a hundred steps or so, then walk for thirty, then trot for fifty more. The goal was to cover distance without getting too overheated.
The first seven tenths of a mile or so went along an area that was receiving a lot of traffic from logging trucks, feller-bunchers, and similar such machinery. The blazes were scarce, and the going was muddy and rutted. It wasn't so torn up that I had to bypass in the woods, but care needed to be given to the footing as I bounded through like an overfed circus bear trying to run on two legs.
As soon as I reached 'the turn' up on Oak/Sherry Road, everything changed, and the trail became incredibly pleasant. For the next mile, the trail was fabulous. After that, it jut became merely really nice.
There are a number of crossing trails, mostly ATV-type, but for the most part there are plenty of blazes. There are one or two places where it is necessary to keep your eyes open, but nothing too bad. Bottom line - if you're not seeing blazes as you walk, you missed a turn somewhere (and there aren't many turns).
As I hiked (or jogged) along, I took very few photos. In fact, both of them are above. My goal was to get to the end as fast as possible and then motor back until I caught up to Theresa so we could finish together.
I recall going downhill a lot, or at least it felt that way. This doesn't bear out on inspection, though, because the overall hike for me was an increase of 160 feet in elevation from 1480 feet to 1640. I guess the downs just came at me so fast that they somehow dominated the ups. In any case, I was making what I considered to be excellent time, and as I reached the 2.5 to three mile mark I started wondering where I would cross paths with Theresa.
Except I didn't. With every passing bend in the trail or crossing of a hilltop, I got more and more concerned that I hadn't seen her. By 1:20 pm, I was seriously worried, and I attempted to reach her by text, by Messenger, and by phone. No luck. The cell phone coverage out there is terrible, and I was unable to get through.
I had no idea what had happened. All I could do was keep running as fast as I could to get to the beginning, and then do - something - to start looking for her. I had an idea for what I would do to find her, but it would all take so long, and if she was having some kind of emergency - I didn't need to focus on that. All I did was run.
Finally - and I do mean finally, I came over the top of a hill and saw her on the trail ahead of me. She was fine, and I bent over double to suck fire into my lungs for a minute, then stood up to drink nearly an entire bottle of Gatorade. Then I closed the gap between us to find out what had happened.
As it turns out, she had followed the same set of breadcrumbs I had followed a week earlier, and had made the exact same wrong turn that I did. The difference was, she was using yellow tape as she went to tie markers onto tree limbs, so that if she made a wrong turn out there in all those paths she could follow her own trail backwards. And in fact, she had made not one, but two wrong turns. After each one she backtracked, removing ribbons as she went, until she found the correct path forward. Though she only had 0.7 miles to the start of the trail, it took her over an hour to get there. By the time she reached the sign indicating that she had found the trailhead, she was exhausted, discouraged, and her feet already hurt. She was still suffering from side effects of the booster shot, and she was not having fun. Needless to say, she was not 'running' down the trail when I found her. After walking just over 2 miles, she had barely gotten started, and had over four miles left to go. She wasn't in a very good mood, and I helped her sit down to take a break and have a bite to eat.
I asked her if she got my messages. She had not. Did her phone ring? Of course not. Missed call on the log? Nope. Nothing. Some of my messages finally got to her about two hours later while we were hiking. The rest she never received.
I told her to take as long as she wanted, and I would go finish the segment and come back to walk with her as planned. I made it to the end at 1:48.
No rest for the weary, I turned around and started trotting back down the trail, knowing that it would take me at least a little while to catch up to her. One problem I was having was that my toes were starting to hurt. I thought that all that downhill trotting was jamming my toes up against the front of my shoes and causing me some pain, but I learned later that wasn't the case.
My toes were hitting something, that was true, but it wasn't the end of my shoes. It was the end of my socks. You read that right. I was jamming my toes on the end of my socks, and it was causing me pain. Let me just skip to the end of that story so I don't have to revisit it. a while back Theresa needed to buy some black socks on an emergency basis. Never mind, that's a story all its own. Anyway, they ended up being a size small men's compression stocking that fit her feet remarkably well. Unfortunately, they look an awful lot like my black compression stockings, and when I put on the socks I was going to wear for this impromptu jog through the woods, I put on the wrong pair. The socks were so tight and so unforgiving that my toes were getting bruised. I didn't know this at the time, of course, though if I did I'm not sure what I could have done about it. UPDATE: Weeks later I still have bruising under the toenail on both big toes. It's a wonder I didn't lose the nails entirely.
By 1:55 I had Theresa in my sights up the trail, and I caught up to her a few minutes later.
It was only here that I mentally paused to take in the trail and start thinking about what I was encountering as I went. From the north end, where the trail leaves the laughably named 'Burma Road', there are heavy woods and a narrow uneven tread for about 2 tenths of a mile, that is overgrown with berry bushes and riddled with rocks. Then the IAT lets out onto an ATV trail that is far more open, as in the picture above.
This goes on for quite a while, over small hills and through the woods. We were only one grandmother's house short of a Christmas carol. I can't explain why I took so few photos as I walked, and my mind is a little hazy on what I may have seen.
I do remember a quarter mile stretch where the wide trail turns into a single track, more or less. On either end, the broad, easy to walk path rises up and over an intentionally built set of hummocks, here to prevent ATV crossings, I presume. In-between, the trail traverses an open field area, where the footing is less certain, but very passable nonetheless. And all along the way the blazes are great. There is nothing of the weirdness in signage that is found along and north of Burma Road. Everything here is yellow rectangles of the precise height and width of an official IAT blaze.
We hiked this way, Theresa subdued by the booster shot and me subdued by my unexpectedly long jog, for the next hour and forty-five minutes, finally settling down on the ground to take another break. For once, both of our feet were hurting, and the rest felt good.
"Take a picture", she said.
It was then that I noticed a large 'stump' off in the woods that didn't look right. It was about two feet in diameter and didn't match anything I could see around me. I took a closer look and found a hollowed-out drum-like thing, with smaller cut logs around it in a semi-circle.
"OK, one more. Look happy this time."
"Come on - Celebrate!!"
These were all terrible shots. I didn't care.
This rock was the size of my foot, so it was fun to think about everything that had to happen to form that pattern in the granite, then transport it all the way here for me to look at. Literally millions of years of chance all lining up to drop this rock in my path and then have me look down at the exact right moment to see it. I realize only now that you could polish this thing up and drop a Snap-On Tools logo on there, the colors are so perfect.
I loved seeing all the open forest and the many boulders along the way as we hiked. The Frost Pocket was amazing; a huge hole in the ground (best seen from above). A little while later, we ran into another great place to sit down, and Theresa decided another break was in order. And why not? We had all day, and we would never be coming through here again.
It didn't look burned, or at least not the part I looked at. It could have been burned on the other end, I supposed. But what was even stranger was that the log was sitting on top of the dead leaves that had fallen. This thing - which must have weighed at least 200 pounds - had been placed there recently, and for no purpose I could discern. I'm really glad we weren't hiking this section at night, because that would have creeped me out. Even writing about it later gives me the willies. I was happy to leave.
Fortunately, I spotted this late-season daisy to make me feel better.
The trail conditions just kept getting better and better as we hiked south. The day was warming up a little, and we passed a jogger and his dog. Another guy came motoring through on his ATV. This second guy was grouse hunting, and definitely not doing it legally.
For the second day, Theresa was trying out her new running shoes. They were a miracle cure the day before on the sands of the Point Beach Segment, but didn't completely solve all problems here over the good old-fashioned IAT dirt.
It remained cloudy all day. We saw lots of grouse, but didn't hear any banging from the guy on the ATV. Maybe we scared off all the birds before he got there. Theresa's feet were in pain again long before we reached the end.
The last eight tenths of a mile was less easy, because we had to deal with the road conditions left behind by the logging activities. For me, I was reaching the end of 8.8 miles. For Theresa, she was reaching the end of 5.1 miles. Both of us were tired, in pain, and we were more than ready to get away from the mud and ruts as we got to the end. We reached the sign at 5:11 pm, and I biked slowly back down the road to get the car.
These were all terrible shots. I didn't care.
It was done. This was our last major goal for the year, and it seemed so impossible six months ago. We finished the Kettlebowl Segment. We finished Map 36. We finished Langlade County. We finished the Northern Gap. Before that we finished the western gap of over 130 miles and the Central Gap of more than 100 miles. Our unbroken line now extends from map 1 through map 59, including both the eastern and western bifurcation. The 'river' now extends all the way to Devil's Lake.
To celebrate, we ate a trail dinner of pork sandwiches, apples and potato salad with the heat cranked in the car on the way home.
Not that it was still important to track, but we were still logging miles for the Mammoth Hike Challenge, where we were supposed to walk at least 41 miles in the month of October. We blew that number away a while ago. This was just frosting.
Brock's Progress on the Mammoth Hike Challenge: 66.6 miles
Theresa's Progress on the Mammoth Hike Challenge: 59.1 miles
Running Total: 797.8 miles of trail covered, 0.8 miles of trail half-covered; 138.8 miles 'extra' hiking/biking. End of Day 114.
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