TR: 5/2022 [Windigo to RH via Minong and GRT]

[torpified]

This is going to come in installments. Tl, dr: a super-duper fun early season trip, just on (or over!) the verge of what I could handle. The more time I spent on the island, the happier I got. I am not going to claim that I was always warm. Intersecting with fonixmunkee and his crew (including someone who's been frequenting IR since a boy scout trip in 1963!) decidedly enhanced the experience.

May 18: Grand Portage to Washington Creek via Voyageur and Huginnin Loop.

The Voyageur’s second outbound voyage of 2022 was nearly full. I spent most of the passage in the bow. This gave me a chance to consult Captain Ben about contingency plans, in case it looked like I wasn’t going to make it to Rock Harbor in time to catch my ride back. I think it also gave me mild hypothermia. And I think that predisposed me to be unduly grumpy when the ranger conducting the orientation used the dippy “HOW WILD IS IT?” script that debuted in 2021. It didn’t help that this ranger was one with whom I have a history of monumental miscommunication. When she permitted me last year, there was nothing I could do to get her to list the campsites I intended to visit, in the order I intended to visit them. The itinerary she wrote up, in addition to omitting two dates entirely and listing another twice, had me ricocheting erratically around the island like an inflated balloon that escapes before you can tie it off. At the time I figured that she was new or nervous. After interacting with her this year, I think it’s more likely that something about how I talk trips a switch in her head that makes me sound to her like the teacher sounds to Linus and Charlie Brown in the Peanuts cartoons.

I walked to Washington Creek and back to calm down and warm up, got a permit accurately reflecting my intentions from the backup ranger, and moved into Shelter #8. Then I headed out to day hike the Hugginin Loop before the predicted rains began.

Unlike the Superior shore, the loop itself was snow-free. It was also easy enough to follow, despite some deadfall and insufficient foot traffic so far this year to carve a stark path through the leaves blanketing the forest floor. There was an attention-getting amount of wolf scat--- at least 6 instances that I noticed, and I wasn’t looking for wolf scat.



I wasn’t looking for a guy walking down a trail waving an antenna either, but I saw one. “Are you searching for cell phone reception?” I asked. He was not. Instead, he constituted a one person Hare Watch team. Moose Watch teams scour the hinterland for carcasses of moose, and bring back their most telling bits for biologists to analyze for information about age, diet, cause of death, and so on. This fellow had radio-collared 17 snowshoe hares in February, and was now scouting the hinterland for 5 presumptively deceased (because persistently unmoving) hares, so that he might reclaim their radio collars. Under cross examination, he admitted that he was curious whether Isle Royale hares suffered lower predation rates than mainland hares, due to there being fewer kinds of predators (mainly owls and foxes --- wolves, he reported, hare-hunted only opportunistically) on IR than on the mainland. Ruing my failure to ever see an owl on IR, I left him to his hare corpse treasure hunt and carried on---but spent the rest of the trip thinking of other questions I should have asked him.

My typical IR baseline mood of ridiculous giddiness was restored by the time I strolled back into Washington Creek. And it got even better when I met a gentle lady moose making her way into the group campground.




Water wasn’t yet flowing from the taps at Windigo /Washington Creek. This made it vivid that there aren’t many unmucky places to get water from Washington Creek. As I headed toward Windigo in search of a Washington Harbor watering spot without so much aviation fuel in it, I encountered an octet of beaming senior citizens laden with moose bones. The ones carrying skulls were grinning widest of all. “This looks like a Moose Watch team!” I exclaimed. “What gave us away?” one replied. About 36 hours later, I realized what I should have said instead: “It’s a skeleton crew!” (It was considerable solace to get to use the line on fonixmunkee and his crew as the Voyageur pulled into the Hat Point Marina 4 days later.)

May 19: Washington Creek to Little Todd via the Minong

It rained all night. Also it seemed like gangs of sandhill cranes and Canadian geese were having rumbles. During several of the rare moments of silence, a seiche (a concept I first encountered on these forums but which one of fonixmunkee’s crew helped fix for me) would surge up Washington Creek from the harbor. The first n times I interpreted the subsequent sloshing as moose cavorting in the creek outside my shelter---and bolted into the rainy night only to see the aftermath of an astonishing wave.

I repurposed my soggy socks from yesterday, rather than putting on precious clean, dry socks that would within minutes be saturated with greasy trail muck. Leaving the campground, I greeted another denizen tending her stove in front of her shelter. The next person I’d see would be in Todd Harbor, at lunchtime tomorrow.

The Windigo end of the Minong traverses open deciduous forest. The trees making up the forest had, without prejudice to the distinction (decidedly salient to me) between trail and not-trail, dropped leaves everywhere. While this didn’t make the trail impossible to follow, it did mean that, often, I couldn’t articulate how---what cues I was tracking or how I noticed them --- I was following it.




Interestingly, negotiating deadfall (of which there was some, not all of it trivial but none of it profoundly daunting) seemed to derail my tracking mechanisms, whatever they were. It would take me awhile to re-identify, and resume following, the trail. Twice, I flat out lost it, long enough to worry whether I’d find it again. Both times I did, within a few minutes, and without activating navigational aids.

A very disgruntled sandhill crane occupied---then vociferously departed--- the very first open ridgy knob I came to. I saw two moose, and crossed two beaver dams---in each case, dry-footed in the sense that if my feet had been dry when I embarked on the crossing (which they were not, due to tons of swampiness on other stretches of the trail), they’d have been dry when I exited the crossing. I wondered why I was bothering with the balancing act. For practice, I decided---the same reason I knock on privy doors before barging in, even in campgrounds I’m sure are deserted except for me.



I had lunch at a knob from which both Lake Desor and Superior were visible. Carrying on, I saw 2-3 more moose (two of them might have been the same moose twice), negotiated another beaver dam (teetering to keep my wet feet from getting wetter for practice), broke a strap of my hiking pole when the goop in which it was mired proved to be stronger than the fear-sweat compromised material of the strap itself, and had a pratfall, where having triumphantly rockhopped across a tricky creek, I got my feet tangled in roots on the dismount. Fortunately my violent crash to the ground was cushioned by a deep layer of mud.

(Concerning the beaver features, by which I mean stretches of the trail that have been disrupted by the admirable labors of those most psychotic rodents: for some of them, the NPS have tied tapes to trees to indicate how to breach the gap. For others of them, they have not. For the tapeless beaver features, a rule of thumb that worked for me was to find a safe place to cross downstream of---not over!---the dam causing the problem, then head slightly upstream and dramatically uphill looking for the trail.)

By the afternoon, I was travelling the ridgy section of the Minong ridge. With embarrassing frequency, I’d get off trail---either because the trail stuck to the ridge and I left it, or I stuck to the ridge when the trail left it. Most of the time, I’d recognize right away that I was off course, and backtrack a few steps to get on course. Each instance of getting on course rested on presuppositions about how I’d gotten off course---about, for instance, whether the actual trail was to my right or to my left. A few miles short of the Little Todd junction, I lost the trail for more than a few seconds. When I found it again, my presupposition about how I lost it dictated that I turn left---which I did. (In my defense, I’ll report that I couldn’t see water from the point where I regained the trail.) A while later, l was strutting orgulously along the trail I was so adeptly following, admiring Pie Island to my right … when I twigged that something was horribly wrong, and reversed course. (I honestly can’t reconstruct what went awry. My two leading hypotheses are (i) I am a total idiot, and (ii) some sort of Mobius strip anomaly befalls this bit of the Minong. I’m afraid that (i) is a leading contender.)

Trail floods and deadfall made Little Todd hard to reach. But it was worth reaching!

[torpified]

Before another barrage of words, here are a few more pictures from Days 1 and 2:

Leaving Hugginin Cove:



Boardwalk on Hugginin loop:



Superior snow:



Minong Ridge (with moose!):



the spur to Little Todd:

[torpified]

May 20: Little Todd to McCargo

The steady rain that commenced around 7 last night continued into the morning. With extreme deliberation---both because I was trying to kill time and because the undertaking amounted to playing a three-dimensional game of tetris, sometimes involving flaming objects, in a cramped space---I cooked breakfast and packed up in my tiny tent/vestibule. (Packed up everything but the tent, that is---a great merit of my backpack is that I can fill it and batten it down inside the tent, then exit and shove the tent into its exterior pockets.) Just as I was running out of ways to postpone walking off into the rain---it stopped raining!

Some stretches of the spur trail into Little Todd were tiny creeks yesterday afternoon. They were only getting moister. Chanting my “wool insulates even when wet” mantra, I pulled on the sodden socks I’d worn for two days already, and headed out.

The Minong east of the Little Todd junction is better defined and ---apart from an inevitable handful of deadfall and beaver features---almost cruisy. Things went both trippingly and triplessly for half an hour. Then I encountered this, which was to preoccupy me for a half hour more:



It’s the second creek on the Minong east of the Little Todd junction. And I think what’s pictured is the official bridge across it---a structure, even at the best of times, lacking key bridge attributes, including stability, evenness, breadth, non-skiddiness, and continuity. And this was not the best of times. The creek, enhanced by a spring’s worth of rains culminating in last night’s, boobled over and under the structure, so deep that I couldn’t reach bottom with my trekking poles even stooping as low as I could on the bridge. I decided to look for another way across.

Just upstream there was a promising snag that looked like it outperformed the official bridge on some of the key bridge metrics. Unfortunately, what caused the snag ---a tight cluster of creekside saplings, now partially submerged--- impeded access. I think, backpackless, I could have wriggled by them, but I couldn’t see how to squeeze myself and my backpack through while retaining my balance. So I scouted even further upstream for a gentler, shallower place to ford. The deep central channel persisted, however, and with the temperature around 40, I didn’t want to commit to an armpit-deep wade.

Captain Ben had told me that he could collect me on Sunday in Windigo rather than Rock Harbor --- but asked me to activiate the Windigo ranger to alert him of the change in plan, if that’s what I decided to do. I sat down next to the official bridge and weighed the options of (i) attempting to cross it, or (ii) backtracking to Windigo. In the end, two considerations (beyond, I'm afraid, a stubborn resolution to complete the walk I'd set out to do) favored (i). The main one was the thought that I was more likely to self-rescue if I fell into the creek than if I broke my ankle on the Minong. (I retreated to this consideration because I couldn't figure out how to gauge the relative likelihoods of each mishap.) The minor one was dread of what exactly would wind up communicated if I asked the ranger, to whom I sounded like the teacher from Peanuts, to tell Captain Ben that I was meeting the Voyageur in Windigo rather than Rock Harbor.

So, figuring that this is what all the gratuitious beaver dam balancing acts had been practice for, I crossed. It wasn't the most pleasant minute of my life --- I had to pause at one of the less teetery bits to collect myself --- but it was free of close calls and I made it. Uncharacteristically emitting a whoop, I carried on through woods made eerie and lovely by a heavy fog that had descended when the rain lifted.



There followed a very pleasant morning of walking, with 2 instances of wolf scat and a few beaver features.


(you're looking at the Minong)

There was also one startled hare, who bounded away too rapidly for me to tell whether it was radio-collared or not. One question I should have asked the one-man Hare Watch: how large are their territories??

Stopping at Todd Harbor to take on water and have an early lunch, I encountered the first two humans I'd seen, two separate solo walkers who'd stayed at Todd the night before.

By the time I got to the ridgy bits between Todd and McCargo, the fog had crept away, in order to blanket the Sleeping Giant in the distance.



McCargo Cove was deserted. I installed myself in trusty shelter #7, and set about exploiting the brilliant sunshine to begin to dry out myself and my gear. Although pair of bald eagles conducted some sort of dog fight overhead, I felt that the wildlife could have been more forthcoming. It seems like people are always posting about McCargo stays where they observe moosecapades from the dock, or a family of otters performing some sort of Busby Berkeley routine for grateful onlookers. What I got instead: 6 disgruntled Canadian geese who also hung out around the dock, projecting distaste either for humans in general or for me in particular.

Dinner, also conducted on the dock, featured an epic leave no trace fail. I set the lid of my cook pot down, the better to access my delicious ramen dinner --- only to watch in horror as it skittered across the surface of the dock like an air hockey puck and sailed into McCargo Cove, never to be seen again. (Forum regulars may recognize that this isn't the first piece of gear I've had blow away while loitering on docks. A previous instance involved a pack cover some quick thinking newlyweds retrieved for me in what I hope was a lastingly successful act of early matrimonial team building.)

The threat of a moose-free day was lifted on a twilight trip to the privy: I almost collided with one browsing outside my shelter. My 3:45 am trip at first seemed even more rewarding: the northern sky was glowing a pale blue. Reflecting that the aurorae of my youth weren't so static, and thinking a little more about which way the inlet that is McCargo Cove pointed, I reluctantly recognized that I was merely seeing a sunrise. Still, it was something to see!

Fauxrora:

[torpified]

May 21: McCargo to Rock Harbor via East Chickenbone, GRT, Mt Franklin, and Tobin Harbor trails

The sun finished rising and devoted the day to making up for brilliance lost to the rains over the last few days. The rainscrubbed air was the clearest I'd ever encountered on IR: textures on the cliffsides of the Sleeping Giant and Pie Island, textures I'd never noticed before, jumped out at me across the lake. I don't think the temperatures ever crawled out of the low 50s, but the gestalt was such that I spent part of the day walking in a t-shirt. And, even though I was covering trails I'd travelled before, and in directions I'd travelled them, it might have been the most immediately pleasureable day of trooping across the island I've ever had.

My opening move was to trigger a raptor stampede. As I left McCargo, at least 5 large eagley/ospreyey creatures flapped out of trailside trees and out over the bay. I startled a snowshoe hare (uncollared) on the climb away from the creek, and over the next stretch admired the beaver handiwork organizing the terrain through which the trail rolls. A party of 5 enjoying breakfast greeted me at East Chickenbone. Nestled between the Greenstone Ridge and the Chickenbone Basin and bathed in the early morning light, it was a lovely place. We all agreed that it didn't deserve its bad rap. (Has anybody actually *measured* the walk to the watering spot? The half mile figure that often gets quoted seems wildly exaggerated.)

The ECB party, plus the pair I had seen at Todd Harbor, plus the pair I met on trail between TH and McCargo, brought the total number of human observed since leaving Washington Creek to 9. The moose count also stood at 8-9, pending the outcome of a question of moose individuation that arose on Thursday. But it didn't stand there for long. I repeatedly encountered singleton moose browsing in clearings along the Greenstone ridge. In each case, they'd lazily look me over, decide that I was no concern of theirs, and continue to go about their business. I found this immensely reassuring. By the time I reached the fire tower, the ratio of moose seen to humans seen would be 14:9.





But before reaching the fire tower, I got to enjoy one more IR beaver feature. East of the ECB junction, I'd guess within a mile of gaining the ridge, it's a reboot of a beaver feature from last year. I remember last year's version mainly because of how comically minor it was compared to what I'd been led to expect by the dire reports issued by oncoming hikers. Beaver features tend to occur in places where the trail is wet anyway, and because beavers have dammed, and thereby amplified, whatever was causing the original wetness. Last year's version of the beaver feature required a brief jaunt through ankle deep water---where you could see exactly where the trail went, if you looked for the submerged stepping stones the pre-beavered version of the trail used to cross the wet bit the beavers amplified into the beaver feature.

This year, either because of higher water or what beavers judge to be improvements, the beaver feature was more extensive. This is looking toward Rock Harbor from the point where the (much more submerged) stepping stones petered out:



Aiming at the break in the woods on the far side that I took to be the continuation of the trail, I picked my way across the shallowest parts of the pond I could find. Some places were knee deep (admittedly not much of an accomplishment--- I'm 5'5" and short-legged). None of the other sloshy parts on trails I travelled this year were more than calf deep.

My aim was true: I emerged from the pond exactly where a boardwalk on the RH side barrelled into one of the dams (it was very elaborately terraced, a regular beaver Rivendell) causing it.



Beaver feature negotiated, some smooth and moosy sailing delivered me to the fire tower, which I enjoyed on my lonesome, climbing as far as was allowed for the traditional shot down the island, and starting lunch.



Then the human population density underwent some sort of phase transition, as the Daisy Farm trail began spewing parties of day hikers. Soon I was sharing the fire tower with 10 others. And I'd see another 15 people on trail in the next few miles---including a scrum of backpackers, the IR counterpart to a bear jam, who'd pulled off the GRT to admire moose #15, possibly the most aesthetically-positioned of the lot.



Pausing at Mt Franklin for the traditional selfie, I chatted with the bellwether pair of fire tower day hikers, who turned out to be NPS employess, billeted at Mott Island, and enjoying their first day off. The scenic bear jam moose was the first for each of them. They were hoping, I believe reasonably, they'd see many more this summer.



The run in to Rock Harbor was, as always, bittersweet, the bouyancy of a wonderful walk tempered, as I neared its end, by premature nostalgia. I settled into Shelter #3. By extraordinary luck, fonixmunkee's crew set up upon arrival just across the road. I passed the afternoon/evening visiting with them and scouring the environs for wildlife. The trail to the privy for the tent sites was the closest I came this trip to seeing a cow moose and her calf.



Before committing to a ramen dinner, I did a sweep of the Rock Harbor nerve center, just in case the park concessionaire was conducting a soft opening of their new coal-fired pizza operation. But no such luck.

May 22: RH to GP via Voyageur

With all present and accounted for, the Voyageur chugged off well before the official departure time. At Windigo, we collected (most of) 4 Moose Watch teams, who themselves had collected the remains of 55 moose. A few Moose Watchers were staying behind to enjoy more of the Island; they and the backup ranger gave us a traditional IR sendoff as we set out for Grand Portage.

[fonixmunkee]

WOW, your trip report is thorough. And the pics are fantastic...that one of Sleeping Giant is beautiful, as well as the ridge pic from the firetower.

That creek crossing looked harrowing. A lot of your trip looked interesting. I like how when I asked you how your hike was, you just said, "it was good." It was pretty intense, I'd say! You are quite modest.

Thank you for sharing; I think anyone looking to do the Minong ridge hike is going to be appreciative of your TR too!

[torpified]

Fonixmunkee! I am ashamed to have omitted--I'm doing 82 things at once right now---one of the highlights of trip, which was taking advantage of the relative quiet that prevailed at Chippewa Harbor when the Voyageur called there to interrogate you about the lighthouse. Folks, an exceedingly cool aspect of this is that there was some shipwreck--Fonixmunkee can name it---that delivered a large number of survivors to the lighthouse. Their various accounts of what they saw inside are being used to triangulate the restoration---an unbelievably cool congruence of attention to the past and future action!

[dcclark]

Great TR, making me chuckle and feel envious simultaneously. It's been 3 years since I was on the island, and every report makes me want to plan that next trip (hopefully next year).

I think the half mile distance for ECB water is reasonable if that's round trip. From a map, I estimated 1/4 to 1/3 of a mile one way. It's really the hill that's the biggest problem.

[Ingo]

Thanks for the great read, as always! It seems that impressions of ECB and Island Mine are correlated with the season. I found IM to be quite pleasant this time of year, but I can see how being there later with everything grown in, 80 deg, and swarms of skeeters could sour that impression.

[Kelly]

Thank you for your entertaining and timely trip report! It has been useful as we consider some route changes.

[Bobcat1]

Thanks, Torp, for your usual entertaining report. Since I will be starting my trip in July with the Minong, I am grateful for the info. Note to self: consider a 10-ft pole to assist with the LTH-vicinity creek crossing if water levels are high........

[torpified]

Note to self: consider a 10-ft pole to assist with the LTH-vicinity creek crossing if water levels are high........

When I walked the Minong in the other direction, exactly three years ago, this crossing wasn't an issue. I mean, given the rickety bridge, there was a significant chance you'd have to step in the creek---but one wet boot was the worst case scenario. I think I just caught it on a very bad day. But since a lot of days can be very bad, contingency plans (I bet pole vaulting poles are at least 10 feet and lightweight) are a good idea!