Superior

This is long overdue, I realize but, you know, life.

A couple quick thoughts post trip. 1 - This was considerably less wilderness-y than I had expected. Not that it was a bad thing but I had not expected latrines and nice campsites. I had expected people especially on the weekends. Though we only saw one other pair of long distance hikers during the entire trip. Everyone else was day hikers. 2 - I would do this again. I would like to try this same section again. Other parts of the SHT. I would like to try winter hiking up there. AND I want to try hiking other areas. This has awoken a new love for me. I love my bike and this won't replace it, but this was a lot of fun. The whole thing. It was hard work sometimes. But I learned alot. And I would like to push myself to do more and to do some harder stuff. I could see a trip out West to cover some of the Rockies for sure.

The crew for the trip consisted of Jeff, Scott and myself. That’s it. A hearty trio!

Anyway, enough of that. Without further delay, here's the day by day run down on the trip.

Wednesday Oct 22 - Took off of work around mid-afternoon to meet up with Jeff and Scott. I felt completely unprepared but I knew that no matter what we would be OK. Even if it wasn't OK. It was OK. Saddled up and left from Hopkins and made our way north. There was a brief but lightning-filled storm just south of Duluth. We stopped in Duluth to eat at Little Angie's. After that stop we hit the road again and drove in the pitch black for what seemed like hours and hours and hours before we finally hit Tofte. I was getting a little buggy at the end and it felt good to get off the road. We all did some last-minute organizing of our gear, watched a little late-night TV and turned in.

Lastly and perhaps most important is I apparently had chopped and packed the world's second smelliest onion. I would smell more or less like onion the entire rest of the trip and was also dubbed "The Onion Knight" (a Game of Thrones reference).

Thursday Oct 23 - Our first official day on the trail. Up early and a hot breakfast at the AmericInn.

It was grey and foggy with some light rain. We parked the cars and took our first steps onto the trail. We put in at Temperance River State Park. The Temperance River was pretty damn fantastic. It is a fairly deep basalt canyon. Had I been smart I would have gotten pictures, but, alas I didn't. Next trip! 

Spring Creek in the mist

Otherwise we were fogged in for the day. We skipped hiking up Britton and Carlton Peaks. It would have been cool to check them out had the weather been nicer. Carlton still had a bit of a challenge climb. There was a section of climbing that was strewn with large granite boulders. Alongside us to our left was a sheer face of granite. I would have loved to spend a little more time there but that first day we had to cover a fair amount of ground to get to our campsite. I didn't want to be the guy who caused us to stroll into camp in the dark. We camped that night at Springdale Creek. It was a good little campsite, Right next to the Springdale Creek up on a bit of a ridge. By the time we hit the camp we were all tired and ready for a warm fire and not having heavy-ass packs on our backs. 

Our night at Springdale Creek was grey and damp. The food was hot and the whiskey went down easy. Jeff and I stayed up and talked and stared probably too damn long at the coals in the fire. Jeff and I hadn't really ever spent a ton of time together prior to this trip so it was really good to start to get to know him.

Last thing of note on our first night at the site was Jeff and I realized fairly soon after crawling into the tent that we were on an angle. And I was sliding into him. There wasn't much we could do except rearrange ourselves from time to time. It was mildly annoying at the time but now of course I have to laugh at it.

Friday Oct 23 - The start of our second day on the SHT proved to be even foggier than the previous

day. It was muddy. Spirits were dragging a bit as were our tails, despite a solid hot breakfast. The morning felt like very slow going. Finally, around Noon the sun burst through and our trio's attitude improved considerably.

Finally sunshine!

We improved even more once we hit  Mt Leveux. We ditched out packs and hiked up  Mt Leveux. The peak provided our best views to that point of the hike. The Sawtooth Mountains were in full view that day and were gorgeous.

It wasn't a long day on the trail as we camped at the Onion River campsite. It was gorgeous. You could hear the steady rush of water from the Onion River below. We had another great night of whiskey and cigars. Despite the fact that we knew we had a long day ahead of us, we stayed up too late, drank too much and smoked too much. It was fantastic. The day was capped off with a star-filled sky. We lay on the ground and looked at the stars waxing philosophical about God knows what.

In short, an amazing end to an amazing day.

Saturday Oct 24 - An early start to our day. There was plentiful sun. Also there was plentiful wind. Overnight the wind had picked up considerably and blew hard the entire day. While it wasn’t dangerous it was a bit unnerving for me. I don’t much care for heights and being along the edges on Oberg Mountain rattled me a little bit. We could see how being on Oberg or any of the other peaks during an even stronger wind storm could be hazardous. The soil is thin and there are lots of evergreens as well as white birch trees which means lots of blow down in a strong wind.

That night we camped at Mystery Mountain, near Lutsen. It was easily the worst of all of the campsites we stayed at. We suspected that it probably gets a lot of day use since it was so near Lutsen. There was garbage that had been dumped in the woods near the site. The site itself was just shabby and unkempt. Between the wind, the ugly campsite and the rabbit that ran AT Scott twice I felt a bit off that night. We went to bed early and I hoped that the next day, our last full day on the trail, would be a better.

Finally Lake Superior

The third day finally provided us with our first view of Lake Superior.  We had lunch along one of the rocky faces of Oberg and soaked in the sun and the Superior view. It was certainly my favorite lunch spot. Oberg also provided us with a steep (and short) climb. I thought it was fun and wished we would have had a few other climbs like that on the hike.

Lake Superior sunrise

Sunday, Oct 25 – The wind, which blew most the entire night, finally let up a bit and there was lots of sun to start our day. The skies had cleared up overnight and it had turned considerably colder. I got to watch the sunrise on Lake Superior, which more than made up for the shabby state of the campsite.

Sunday was the only day we saw other multi-day hikers. The rest were day hikers. We didn’t have much for views the majority of the day as we had no peaks to climb. It was a combination of lowlands along the Caribou and then open woodlands as we climbed and descended the hills to Lake Agnes.
Lake Agnes would provide us with easily the most beautiful campsite of the entire trip. Situated on a small peninsula along the shores of Lake Agnes the campsite was perfect for our final night on the Superior Hiking Trail.

Caribou River

That gorgeous sunrise set the stage for our last full day on the trail, which turned out to be stunning. We hiked along the Caribou River for a chunk of the day. The Caribou is known for regularly having moose seen nearby but we didn’t see any signs of moose. There was some debate to make the hike exceptionally short and camp along the Caribou, but we opted for one of the two sites along Lake Agnes.

After we settled in with what was by then our nightly routine (firewood, bear bag, tent set up) we sat down to a bit of drink and smoke. Felt amazing to sit down and talk and laugh with two good friends. I don’t remember what we ate (I think it was freeze-dried beef stroganoff) but I do remember it tasted so good that night. Unfortunately we all called it an early night as the wind picked up and a storm was blowing in from the west.

As I lay down on the softest ground I have felt in a very long while I watched and listened to the

Lake Agnes sunset

thunderstorm  roll in. I felt like I was being cradled by the Earth. It is something from the trip that I will always remember. Just sinking into the Earth all soft and inviting while above and all around lightning flashed and thunder crashed. There is something calming about lying on the ground and knowing that at some point that is where I will return. If you've never just stretched yourself out on the ground, I would recommend it. No books. No music. Just lay there and exist.

Anyway, eventually the rain kicked in and not long after I fell fast asleep for hands-down the best night’s sleep of the trip.

Monday, Oct 26 - Our last day on the trail. After the longer hike on Sunday Monday's hike was very short. Back to where one of the cars still sat. We made a short climb up the scenic overlook just before we left the trail. In true to myself fashion, I almost fell on what was literally my last step on the trail. Almost. 

And then, just like that the hiking was over. It felt weird to me for several hours, heck even the next morning. It was a bit of culture shock. Things that I had gotten used to not having in a handful of days seemed strange. Things like hot water. I remember running hot water over my hands and my face at a Holiday gas station. It felt so amazing.

We did make our way back with a stop again in Duluth. We hit up Grandma's and then saddled up and finished the drive back home.

As I write this months later, I think the same I need to do more hiking. I've done some this winter but it has been short day hikes. Still, it has been nice to mix up. Even throwing in a few trail runs!

As the song says...

Happy trails! Until we met again!