Pincushion Mountain and Devil Track River. Superior Hiking Trail. August 6-7, 2015

Part 2

While my feet were airing, I skipped rocks to amaze the children. One skipped across the river and shattered on a rock on the far side (there were a lot of brittle rocks there). By the time dinner was ready, all the kids had succeeded in skipping rocks somewhat consistently and had moved on to throwing big rocks in to make the best splashes.

Dinner was made by soaking the dried food cold in the pot, and once it had rehydrated, warming it up. It seemed to take forever, but food always does when you're hungry. I think it was a successful experiment. We'd failed to get more denatured alcohol and were cooking over isopropal. Man that was smokey! But the soot wiped right off... We inhaled all the food, with no leftovers and nobody still hungry. Perfect.





The kids played "predator and prey", which is hide and seek with animal noises. R has a terrifying growl that startled me every time.I took a little walk back to the bridge, since I'd been tuckered out and missed enjoying that section of trail.

Several other people came down to our campsite and looked a little taken aback at how full it was. We told them all that we would figure out how to fit them in, but the other campsite is close and looked bigger and probably didn't have children. They all moved on and didn't come back. We learned later that the other site had 6 people in it by the end of the day.

As it got dark, we tucked into bed. It started to sprinkle.

When I woke up in the dark for a pit stop, I realized we have some learning to do about the tent. The lightweight fabric gets caught more easily in the zipper. That's a small problem, until it's wet and gets more caught. I ended up crawling out of the vestibule on my stomach and getting it unstuck from the outside. The rain (and perhaps just being new?) also made the tent floppy, so I tightened the ropes.

In the morning we had oatmeal in the rain. While the water was heating up, I made coffee sludge with dehydrated coffee and rain drops. That was not as effective as waiting for hot water, turns out. Boo wanted a sip, as she often does. But I usually pollute my coffee with sugar, and often milk. Not on the trail! Her "ewww" face was wonderful!



Packing stuff up was a little awkward. The rain had drizzled down the trail under the vestibule, so the belt to my pack was muddy. We got most everything that had been dry, into packs dry. We did not add much mud to the tent in taking it down. With the one vestibule muddy, the doors of the tent were a little tricky. If I had a redo, I'd pack up from the vestibule that wasn't muddy! Packing was made a little easier by strapping the tent to the front of Lee's pack, under the compression straps, instead of trying to jam it inside.



As we'd camped at the bottom of cliffs, first thing we had to do was climb up. The rain made things a bit wet, but nothing difficult. (Stairs! All those stairs!)



The fog was amazingly beautiful.  Again, nothing I could get a picture of. The Devil Track River soon was just peeks and hints through the trees. There's some beautiful river down there, but don't bother bringing the big camera. The cliffs are also very pretty. The rain tapered off as we walked.

I haven't been hiking much, or backpacking at all, for 2 years. Turns out I've lost the knack of properly snacking on the trail. I stopped to take pictures off a bridge, and .... bonked hard. Suddenly I could barely put one foot in front of the other. I hadn't snacked when the kids had, and I missed my warning signs. Lee saved me and stuffed food into me, as I was at the point I couldn't even figure out that food would help. Oops.

Shortly after 11 (I think, I didn't have a timepiece with me), we reached the parking lot. Our ride wasn't there, as she was running a rescue shuttle for some folks who'd had gear failure in the rain (tent and rainjackets both). We ate lunch. The girls had peanut butter packets with bread or crackers. Those went well. The rest of us had tuna and crackers.

The hike was very short (I think ~5 miles both days). But that was good for my level of walking with a pack, and it was the first time the girls carried full-sized packs (with room for sleeping bags). It was a lovely walk. The raspberries were wonderful. Pincushion Mountain is easy to get to, easy to summit, and very nice views. The river was beautiful. The rain wasn't unpleasant (though it could have stopped an hour earlier for drier breakfast...). Success.

Part 1

Pincushion Mountain and Devil Track River. Superior Hiking Trail. August 6-7, 2015

Part 1

The regular crew is 3 adults (me, Lee, DvA) and 3 kids (Boo - 7yo, R- 8yo, and J - almost 12). It's my first trip with R, since the 2 or 3 overnights she's been on were all after I wrecked my back and wasn't hiking.

We started after lunch, from 53, just off the Gunflint Trail, which leaves 61 at the north end of Grand Marais. The parking lot has a nice overlook of Grand Marais, where we were carcamping for the week. There were enough of us we took both cars, and left one overnight. Many tails we hiked that week had boot brushes at the beginnings to reduce the spread if invasive plants. The kids were really good about brushing their boots. The trail starts along a cross-country ski trail. So it's really wide. There were a lot of raspberries along the edges!




Between the kids getting bigger and my back, I was by far the slowest in the group.It was lovely and solitary, but a little lonely. And I didn't get very many pictures of peoples' faces!



It wasn't very far along, just in time for the kids to get hungry, that we came to Pincushion Mountain. We left our packs at the bottom, and scrambled up the bare rock face. The kids were almost on all fours. At the top was lots of bare rock and some nice views of Superior and the inland. The Devil Track valley was pretty obvious. The breeze was nice after being in fairly dense woods. There was a big pile of deer scat up there, but I have no idea why a deer would have gone up.





Going back down the bare rock, I scooted down on my bottom. I threw my hiking sticks down ahead of me, which Lee accused me of throwing pointy sticks at her. Pfft, whatever.

We saw several berry-ful bear scats on the trail. I was glad to see that the bears are well-fed this time of year, since Boo still uses her shirt as a napkin more often than not.



Eventually the Superior Hiking Trail turned off the ski trail and narrowed to a more standard hiking trial width. As normal for the SHT, it was in lovely, well groomed condition. Well blazed. And full of steps. Oh god the steps. Down down down to the Devil Track River. Up and Down along the river. So much up. So much down. (I was fine with the up, but the down was kind of awful, even with my sticks.)



Along with the horrible steps, we started to catch occasional glimpses of the river, and more views of the cliffs making the opposite bank. Just like the SHT book said, not much for the camera, but very good for the eyes. There were nice little overlooks and pull-offs to look at the river.




We reached the West Devil Track campsite by mid afternoon and found it already occupied. Since we have plenty of time in the day and oomph in the legs, we decided to check out the East Devil Track campsite across the river and up a bit. DvA signed us in the trail register. The bridge across Devil Track is awesome. I did not get any great pics of it, but I love that bridge.




East Devil Track campsite was unoccupied, so we moved in. The book says it has 2 tent pads, but maybe 4 could squeeze in if some were small or everyone was friendly. We pitched our Big Agnes Copper Spur 3 for it's first backpacking use. We placed it at the corner of the tent pad, as it looked like if it rained, the rain would run down the trail and through the tent pad area. The tent pad was hard and rocky, but there was a convenient large rock to use as a hammer, so we got our stakes in.



The "completely exhausted, couldn't take another step" kids clambered down to the river and spent some time throwing rocks, building dams, and in general proving that kids are sprinters. I gave my feet a nice cold soak and an airing.


 

Part 2: In Camp, Dinner, Night, Next Day

Maplewood State Park, Northern MN

August 20-21, 2012

So we abandoned the kid with Lee’s parents and went off to Maplewood State Park for ~24 hours. 

The Summer Trails map has contour lines, which made for good practice for me (Lee is a fabulous navigator. Me, not so much.) 

The ranger asked if we wanted a long or short hike to camp, and when we did not surprise her by asking for long, she parked us about a mile from the Cow Lake site we’d reserved. So we took a few minutes to plot the best route from car to campsite, which ended up being about 5.5 miles. Much better. 

First we walked around Beers Lake. Some of the sumac was starting to turn red. I really miss that about MN. Much of the trail was dual use horse and hike. So we had to watch our step, which was occasionally annoying. I reminded myself that this way both groups got more trail, which was much better. It obviously wasn’t heavily used by horses, either. 

The day couldn’t have been nicer. The lakes were bright blue mirrors. I saw several dozen frogs. Lee saw none. She claims I was making them up. 

The trail wound through forest and grasslands, with some rolling hills. We had to walk along dirt park roads, but even those skirted the lakes. The first day we saw no traffic, and the second day we saw the same ranger truck three times. 

All the lakes had a ring of dead trees sticking up around the edges. We learned later that the water levels have been rising in the area for the past few decades. 

We stopped for lunch on a shady rise overlooking a prairie area.  It was beautiful. As we were finishing up, I heard voices and horses. I’ve been told by riders that horses are freaked out by backpacks, so I was glad we already had our packs off. I shouted a hello and waved so we didn’t surprise them. The horses stopped. “Hi, can you just chat with us for a while? He’s really skittish.” … So I talk about the weather, because what else can I come up with on short notice to discuss with a stranger I can’t even see? And yup, that is a skittish horse! It took a while for it to even start moving up the hill again, and was barely on the trail as they went past.