Monday, May 24, 2010
I woke up really early in the morning. It must have been 4 or 5 and I had to take a pee. So I got out of my tent nude, and found someplace nearby to relieve myself. Then I went back in the tent. I remembered that I forgot to do my trip report for Sunday, so I grabbed the Voice recorder and started talking. It was a long winded affair, rehashing the Cleawater Campsite Disaster, hiking to the overlooks, the Mountain Lake/Clearwater Lake Portatge, the Clearwater East Campsite, meeting the young bucks on the Clearwater/West Pike Lake portage, and hiking uphill to get to Lake Gogebic.
This was a 35 minute recording, quite the extended message while I was lying nude on top of my sleeping bag. And then there is my rashed up crotch to talk about also. After that I just went back to sleep, because it was too early to get up and do stuff. It was still dark out. I woke up again at around 8:30 am and started to get my stuff together. I boiled some water on my alcohol stove and made my famous Choco-oato breakfast. Two packs of oatmeal and 1 pack of hot chocolate all mixed together with hot water.
My sleeping bag felt a little dewy, so I set it out on a big flat rock near the canoe landing so it could dry a little bit. All my stuff was all spread out. Some of it was spread out in the tent, and some was spread out around the Campfire area. But now it was time to get my stuff together. I unstaked the right side the tent, and flipped it up over the left side of the tent, This opened up the whole side of the tent, making it easier to pack up stuff.
My sleeping bag was dry after breakfast, so I stuffed it into the bottom like I usually do. Most of the clothes that I put into my backpack I wasn’t using. I wasn’t using the long underwear, and I wasn’t using my warm polyester pullover jacket except for using it as a pillow. I leisurely packed up my stuff. I enjoyed my time here at Lake Gogebic, except for getting to Lake Gogebic. But I knew I had a major undertaking in front of me. After I rounded the lake this morning, I would be hiking up a big bluff.
I got my gear packed. I decided not to wear my long sleeve polyester shirt. The bugs weren’t bad so I decided to go with just my vest. Besides, it already was tuning up to be a very hot day. I got my white first aid bandana wet and put it on my head. I poses for a timed photo before I left the campsite. I looked just like Rambo, with the bandana. I put on my backpack and away I went.
It was easy hiking along the shore of Lake Gogebic. As I walked I found some more places down the trail that could be used as tent pads. Also there were some nice spots to go fishing on the shore of the lake. I headed down the shore about 3 or 4 football fields length from my campsite and all of a sudden I seen something blue ahead of me. As I got closer I realized it was a tarp that was strung up. As I got closer, I realized that I was coming up to the real Lake Gogebic Campsite, and it was occupied.
I walked into the campsite and met two men named Pat and Jason from Wausau, Wisconsin. Pat was the taller of the two, with a short beard and dishwater blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail. Jason was quite a bit shorter with black hair and a goatee for facial hair.We chatted for quite some time. I told them that I had camped at a campsite just a short ways down the trail. I saw that their campsite had the official forest service fire grate, and I asked them if the campsite had a latrene and they said yes. I told them about my website, took their photo and gave them an “I saw Tman” card. They sat down on a log under the tarp to have a cigarette and we continued talking.
Pat said they had seen another campsite across the lake, and I might run into it as I walk around the lake on the trail. They also said that a female moose came down to the water every day with a young moose in tow. They asked me if I had seen it, but I said no.I asked them if they had any medicine that would work on a rash. Anything like baby powder or hydrocordisone cream. They said they didn’t have anything like that. They said that they were going on a day trip to some other lake that I never heard off.
They looked like they were packing up and I didn’t see a tent so they must have all ready packed it. I did see some fully packed Duluth Packs and a guitar. They looked to be packing fairly heavily. It must have been a pain getting all that stuff up the portage from West Pike Lake. I asked them what time it was and Pat said 10:30. I asked them how long they would be in the Boundary Waters and they said that they were leaving on Thursday. I wished them well and went on my way.
It was fairly easy walking going around Lake Gogebic. The trail did go up a small hill but then descended to go across a beaver dam, which created a sort of backwater pond back from the shore of the lake. Yes, it was easy walking there, but I knew the real challenge was soon to come. I would be walking up a big bluff after the trail left the shore of Lake Gogebic. I looked across the lake and saw that the blue tarp was being folded at the Campsite. That’s about all I could make out.
Soon I arrived at the foot of the bluff where the trail goes uphill. There is a path there that leads to the shoreline. Presumably, the path to the shore is for people coming from the east. Perhaps this would be the first chance for them to get water that they’ve had in quite some time. I decided to hike my gear up the hill a ways, then take a rest by coming back down with just the water filters and bottles to pump some water.
I took the water path and soon I was pumping water. At this point, I could not see the Campsite where Pat and Jason were camped. But I expected to see them canoe by on the way to the portage. But it never happened. They looked to be taking it easy when I was in their campsite, so maybe they were still taking it easy. When I was pumping the water, I deduced that I had lost the lid to one of my platypus bottles. Damn, I thought. I looked all over in the grass next to the lake and I couldn’t find it. The lid was black in color and blended in to the black areas deep in the grass. I ended up filling the nalgene bottle and just two of my platypus bottles. I had given names to the platypus bottles. They were Papa pus, Mama pus, and Baby pus. Papa Pus and Mama pus were both 1 liter bags while Baby pus was half a liter.
I hiked back up to my gear, put the backpack on and continued up the hill. This wasn’t the worst hill I’ve hiked up while backpacking, but it was damn close to it. It kept going up and up and more up. After going around Lake Gogebic, pumping water, and going up the hill, it must have been around noon when I made it to the top of the hill. And it was a very hot and very muggy top of the hill.
Joan Young, the notable hiker and backpacker, hiked the Border Route last May. I emailed her and asked her what the trail conditions were like on the eastern part of the trail. She wrote back that the bluff east of Lake Gogebic was the worst section of the trail on the eastern half. But Tom Suter told me that it all had been recently cleared except for about 3/4 of a mile. As I walked along on top of the bluff, I soon started seeing freshly cut downed trees that had been cleared from the trail. Boy, I thought, that must have been a lot of fun just getting a Trail Crew in here to work on the trail would be a major challenge.
From the west, the trail crew would have to put in at the west end of Clearwater Lake and canoe the whole 6 miles of the lake. Hopefully, there is a resort that could motorboat the Trail Crew and canoes to the eastern end of the Lake. Up here in the Boundary Waters many Resorts have specially built pontoon boats that will haul several canoes and people. This saves people a lot of canoeing time, especially on the big lakes that can take all day to get across.
Once your trail crew made it to the east end of Clearwater Lake, they would have to portage into West Pike Lake, then take the uphill portage into Lake Gogebic. Once they set up camp at Lake Gogebic, they could then canoe across the lake to the water landing that I pumped water at, and then walk up the hill. Once hiking up the bluff, like I had just done, the elevation changes over 350 feet in about a mile and a half. This was a real killer for me.
A Trail Crew coming from the west to work on this section of the trail would not have it any easier. They would have to put in on McFarland Lake on the Arrowhead Trail. Then they would have to canoe the entire length of McFarland Lake, which is over two miles, and hike the short portage into Pine Lake. Once into Pine Lake they would have to canoe about 3 miles to the West Pike Lake/Pine Lake portage, where there is a campsite. They would then hike up to the portage to the Border Route. The Border Route goes uphill from there. There is an elevation change of over 400 feet within the first mile of leaving Pine Lake, which includes the portage and some of the Border Route.
Plus, it’s a stretch of trail over 5 miles long between Lake Gogebic and the portage, so trail crews might have to hike 2.5 miles once connecting with the Border Route.
As I was hiking on top of this bluff on a very hot day, my crotch region was really getting sore with a very red rash. I wasn’t hiking with any underwear on, which seemed to help the airflow, but now things were getting worse. I decided to hike with my zipper open to further increase the airflow to the nether regions. I felt like a pervert hiking with my zipper open and having no underwear on. And if I saw someone hiking towards me on the trail, I would have to quickly stop and zipper up. But I haven’t met anyone yet who actually hiking or backpacking the trail. The people I had met were canoeists that were portaging or camping in a campsite. Perhaps, I was the only backpacker on the Border Route right now. But, from reading posts on the Border Route Meetup Website, I thought I read that there would be a couple on the eastern part of the trail that I might run into. I continued to hike with my zipper open all day.
The trail kept going and going. It went up and down and all around. It went from shaded woods to massively sunny areas. On one downhill section early on I came across a small stream. I still had quite a bit of water so I didn’t stop. It looked like a very small stream that might dry up in the middle of the summer. Or in fact, it might dry up at any moment now because it was so hot out.
There were several stars on the Guidebook map indicating that I would be encountering several overlooks. And I walked by several places where I could see a glimpse of the lake below. During the early stages I thought I was seeing Lake Gogebic down below me to the north, then as the day continued I thought I was seeing the west end of West Pike Lake below me. The west end of West Pike Lake is long, and that’s what I thought I was seeing. The problem with the Guidebook is that in some places the stars that indicate overlooks are merely glimpses of the lake below, and in some cases the stars on the map are full blown spectacular rock outcrop overlooks. At any rate, I walked past a half a dozen places that might be good enough to be called an overlook by the glimpse standard.
And the trail kept going up, down and all around. The condition of the trail ranged greatly. Sometimes it would be very clear because it was going across rocky areas, and sometimes it would be overgrown and thickety. Soon I met up with another stream. This one was bigger than the one that I previously encountered. I still had over a liter of water, plus I thought I would be getting to that West Pike Lake/Pine Lake portage pretty soon, so I didn’t stop for water. There are 4 overlook stars on the map, and I had already past at least 6 or 7 places that maybe could be overlooks, so that portage should be coming up.
This is the disadvantage of not having a GPS system. I figured that I already have enough electronics with the Spot Messenger, Olympus Camera, Cell Phone and Voice Recorder. And I know how to read maps pretty well. But the problem with walking on this bluff is that there are very little landmarks to tell you where you are on the map. Plus, the Border Route is the only trail around, so there is little possibility that I would stray off onto another trail.
The trail just kept going up and down and all around. Every time I started on a downhill section of the trail I thought maybe this time I would hit the portage. But it didn’t happen. I kept going and going and was starting to get low on water. It's not a wise thing to do. And I had bypassed getting water at the last stream, which now was a long ways back. I was so sure I would be getting to the portage.
I checked my telephone and it was getting to be early evening. I had a couple bars of signal strength listed on the phone, so I tried calling out. The phone showed me the time, but the numbers on the phone didn’t work. I didn’t know if the heat had bothered it, or if somehow it had gotten wet. It was just in a pocket in my vest, I didn’t have it in a ziplock bag. So then I finished some trail mix that was in a ziplock bag in another pocket, and put the cell phone and voice recorder in that ziplock bag and placed them back in a pocket.
I was hoping that soon I would be getting to the portage. At this point I was planning on setting up my tent right at the portage junction. Sometimes at junctions, the area is more cleared out because backpackers set their gear down on the edge of the trail so that they can go get water. So the junctions are usually much wider that the normal trail would be.
But instead of going down to a portage, I was going up to a beautiful overlook. I immediately checked the map to see where I was. I saw a small island down to the left of me. The island was in the shape of a hatchet. It was narrow and then had a wider spot at the one end that looked liked the blade part of a hatchet. So, I started calling it Hatchet Island. I looked on the map for it to discover that I was at an overlook that was about a mile from the portage. Damn, I thought. I looked at my cell phone for the time and it was 7:30 pm. I thought I could make it to the portage because I still had an hour and a half of daylight. Plus the trail looked liked it went mostly downhill from here, but with my luck there still would be a bunch of up and down sections. I was definitely at the high point of this section of the trail at an elevation of 1940 feet.
I set my gear down at the overlook. On the overlook, there was two big rocks about 3 feet tall, and to the left of them there was a small grassy spot just perfect for a wedged shaped tent like mine. I figure some people might have camped here before. But I didn’t see any evidence that someone had made a campfire nearby. That is good, because getting water to put out a campfire that got out of control here would nearly be impossible. If anyone had camped here they must have been using low impact techniques.
I took some photos at the overlook and decided I needed to take a crap. I grabbed my trowel and toilet paper and headed off to find a log to make a cat hole by. I found a log and dug a cat hole then sat down. I was trying to go to the bathroom when suddenly I started heaving up. At first I had two dry heaves, then I actually threw up some stuff.
Wow, I felt like crap instead of taking a crap. This was definitely my lowest point of the hike, and it happened at one of the highest points.
I drank some water to try to recover. Now I had less than a half a liter. As I rested I remembered a scene from the movie Silverado. The sheriff and posse where chasing the lead characters out of town into the rugged desert countryside that had rock formations. It got to a point where the Sheriff, played by John Cleese, got his hat shot off. The Sheriff then said his juristiction ended here. But the deputy said, no your juristriction goes much further into the country. But the sheriff said, “Today, my juristiction ends here.”
That’s what I was saying to myself now. “Today, my hike ends here.” Perhaps the heaving was a sign of heat exhaustion. I needed to stop now, and not push it getting to the portage. If I pushed it, I might not make it to the portage ever. I ate some dried cranberries out of my trail mix. I only ate the cranberries because even though they were dried, the still had some moisture in them. I didn’t want to eat nuts and other stuff that would make me more thirsty, because I didn’t have much water left. I was saving the water in case I needed to take some type of pain pill. But, I could see plenty of water from where I was. Right down below me there was plenty of water in East Pike Lake. But it was a serious drop off to get down to the lake. I believe I was about 400 feet above the lake. And it was what I call a 4:30 angle to get down to the lake. When the hour hand on a clock is at 4:30, that’s what type of angle it is.
So, I set up my tent in the wedged shaped space next to the two rocks. I laid out my sleeping pad and sleeping pad and rested nude on top of them. It was still light out and the sun had not gone down yet. I couldn’t get to sleep so I decided to do a trip report. When I was about 13 minutes into the report, I noticed it was going to be a spectacular sunset. I got out of my tent and noticed the sun had already gone down but the sky was still a beautiful orange/red color. I took some photos.
Then I went back into the tent and laid on the sleeping bag again. I started the voice recorder again and did another 13 minutes worth. Then, while I had the voice recorder, I listened to some off the earlier recording from this trip. I listened to the recording where all the Trail Crew Members where giving their profiles. There was Jim, Dick, Jeff, Illona, Walli, Martin, Paul and our fearless leader Tom. I remember how they encouraged me on top of the bluff east of Stairway Falls when I left them. They encouraged me now that I was at my low point at the high point. I went to sleep knowing that I need a good rest so that I could move on tomorrow.