Prologue

I left for the Greyhound terminal with enough time to spare so I could get a bite to eat and some money. As I walked through downtown Ann Arbor to the Espresso Royal Cafe to fetch a calorie rich, sweet tooth satisfying, cavity producing cinnamon roll I am sure I became the object of many curious looks. After all, it isn't every day you see someone walking around town with a backpack on carrying snowshoes in one hand and collapsed Leki hiking poles in the other. As I stood in line to get my roll a fellow quipped, "is there a blizzard coming I don't know about?" Being the forthright direct sort that I am I didn't say I had divine knowledge of a winter version of Noah's flood or something equally amusing, I just said I was going on a snowshoe trip up north.

The bus ride to Grand Rapids went easily enough. I arrived pretty much right on time to find Paul waiting to greet me. We sorted out a small luggage snafu and were on our way to his home shortly thereafter. I decided not to join him at the NCTA (North Country Trail Association) meeting and instead spent the evening chatting with Julie, reading Graham Greene, and in the fullness of time enjoying a pizza.

Paul returned from his meeting and Curtis came in a little while later (he had come up to attend the meeting and go on the trip too). We finished off the evening with a pleasant beer or two , packed things up, and shuffled off to bed. We had planned an early start for Friday.

February 9

The fog of the previous day had not departed when everyone woke up. Julie had long since departed before I even made it downstairs right around 07:00, but Paul had been up for a while and had griddle eggs with feta and coffee ready for Curtis and I to enjoy. What a wonderful host. We ate breakfast and discussed our options for the day given the lousy weather report. We were waiting for Chris to arrive (or not) and we were going to give him until 08:00 to show up. He arrived just before 08:00 and we set off towards Cadillac, Michigan. The weather steadfastly refused to improve. It was warm, perhaps 46*F, cloudy, cooling down, and raining or sleeting. None of us wanted to hike in conditions like that. People at a gas station near Cadillac told us they had heard the weather was supposed to drop below freezing and snow was expected to fall sometime after 14:00. We decided to wait and hope for the best. We hung around the gas station for a couple hours and then changed venues to a local little diner that must be one of the major local hang out places for town. They make good sandwiches, salads, and the like. If you have meat that needs to be smokes they'll do that for you too. We had a fine lunch there and must have spent a couple hours there.

We drove out to the trailhead around 14:00 and found a couple in their vehicle stuck in the parking lot. Brian and Kerry (Carrie?) were grateful for our help in getting unstuck. Curtis' Meigher's shovel proved its worth for the first of many times as he dug the tires out. Brian and Kerry were also going out on the same trail as us, but weren't coming on the same trip as us. We said goodbye to them pretty much straight away.

I had the first real field experience with my Northern Lites snowshoes. The bindings will take getting used too. But then all bindings take getting used too so that is hardly surprising. The snowshoes seem to float quite well. We slowly trod down the NCT around 15:00. Going was slow through the fluffy un-compacted snow. It was especially slow for me, but I plugged right along after futzing some with my snowshoes with Paul's able aid.

The weather was gray, cold, damp, and sometimes flurrying. The weather was certainly much better than it had been, but it was still a bit dreary. This was a new part of the NCT (of course, the vast majority is new to me) for me. We rose and fell through mostly leafless forests with occasional stands of evergreens (pine, hemlock?). It was a slow and tough day of hiking.

By 17:30 we had found a campsite in a depression on a ridgetop that was surrounded with white pines. It was a good place to settle down for the night even though we had probably only hiked a couple miles or so. Curtis, Paul, and Chris got their tents up in reasonably good time (Paul and I had decided to share his two man tent). We all started cooking, or trying too around 18:30. Everyone else's stoves worked fine. My Primus canister stove, the same one I had used on previous cold weather winter trips, completely failed to ignite. Curtis let me heat water (melt snow) on his Whisperlite and I was able to enjoy my freshly made spaghetti and meatballs. I was quite displeased with my stove's performance. I don't like having to rely upon others.

Everyone shuffled off to their sleeping bags almost immediately after finishing dinner. We had had a good, though short, day of hiking and even learned a few things in the process. For example, canned tuna freezes and really lowers the temperature of a steaming hot meal rather quickly.

February 10

One thing about winter camping that everyone has to learn and learn quickly is that you get plenty of sleep. You curl up in your sleeping bag, maybe with a book to read if you aren't too wiped out, and you go to sleep. Maybe you get up in the middle of the night, after struggling with the urge for a period of time that seems longer than it almost certainly is, to answer nature's call and go to the bathroom. I know I fought that battle for a long time. It is, after all, far colder outside your sleeping bag than it is within it and you have to expose some flesh to the raw elements when going to the bathroom. During my nighttime foray I didn't really notice much around me. I know the moon had been out some during the night because a couple times I would awake from dreams and the tent seemed inordinately bright, but when I went out of the ten around 00:30 it was cloudy, cold, and silent. I dove back into my sleeping bag and did not get up until right around 08:00 with Paul and everyone else. I had slept quite well.

My stove still did not work so I had to use Paul's to get hot water for my Nalgene water bottle and oatmeal. Curtis had the bright idea that maybe what was afflicting my stove was the same problem that sometimes Whisperlite owners encounter: a clog. He checked out the valve assembly and indeed it did seem clogged. We'll learn at dinnertime if his attempt to unclog the stove worked and whether it will indeed work at all. We struck camp at a sedate pace. Everything takes longer in the winter than it does under warmer conditions. The day was looking like it would be vastly better than the day before even though it was also going to be quite a bit colder than the day before. We had partly cloudy skies and were expecting temperatures to settle into the 20s. I made my first serious error that morning: I did not remove my VB shirt.

Everyone had decided, well Chris had not choice, that this portion of the trail was compacted enough that snowshoes were not really necessary. As we hiked steadily along, mostly in a groove a couple or so feet wide (made by god knows what: hikers, bikers?) I noticed that I was really beginning to sweat. Sweat, sweat, and sweat I did. The VB shirt was definitely overkill. I vented as best as I could, but I really should have just stopped, removed my clothing and changed into different stuff entirely. I wasn't cold, but I was definitely sweating allot and that sweat would would cool my somewhat at breaks (though perhaps less so if I had been sweating that hard wearing a non-VB shirt that wicked it away thus causing "flash-offf" rapid cooling).

The trail wound its way through the forests of white pine, hemlock, and bare trees whose names I do not know. Every now and then you would see a tree that had some brown leaves on it (how this could be I do not know) and the spot color was a joy to behold on the partly cloudy day.

After surmounting one particularly tough hill the snowshoes went back on for everyone. I found the binding easier to work with this time and that is heartening since it shows they just are going to take some getting used to. As we continued we encountered some flurries and saw signs of numerous animals. I'm sure I saw, without recognizing, tracks for fox and coyote. There were deer tracks beyond counting. The deer make some rather extensive trails of their own: deer highways.

I don't think we were moving that quickly and I was actually entertaining serious doubts that we would complete the 20 odd mile loop before dark on Sunday. After all, we had only gone a couple miles the day before. But, we kept chugging along. We paused for lunch at a nice stream around 15:00 and then the group slowly strung out. Chris and I were in the lead at this point since Paul and Curtis were finishing hot meals. We were zipping right along and Chris was out of sight (and I was out of his sight). We followed the tracks that seemed to mark the trail quite clearly. I caught up with Chris at a stand of evergreens by a stream (the same one we had had lunch at) and he commented that he had not seen a blaze in some time. We decided to continue on keeping a weather eye for a blaze. The trail seemed so obvious that we felt we must be doing all right. We kept going but did not see a blaze. Then, just as we were about to turn around and go back to where we knew a blaze was we heard Curtis call out, "wrong way!" We had been following a deer highway for the past quarter to third of a mile. Curtis had dropped his pack so he could run down the trail to catch us and let us know of our error (I learned later that he had in fact almost made the same mistake and was corrected by Paul and since he wasn¹t wearing his snowshoes he got the task of chasing us down). No trip is complete without loosing the trail at least once.

I should note that everyone has been super to hike with. People look out for each other and I never really felt like I was a burden , slowing the hiking down, since I was definitely the slowest hiker in the group. Of course, I could be wrong, but I think I am not.

The rolling hills of the NCT were about to be replaced by the rolling hills and river views of the Manistee River Path. We had reached the Little Mac (short for Mackinaw) suspension bridge that fords the Manistee River. When this bridge isn't covered in mounds of snow it has a substantial upward bow, but today it was nearly flat. Of course, it bounced just fine like any suspension bridge does as we shoed across it. It really is quite a nice bridge and the river was looking quite pretty too even though the clouds had not really departed.

We continued on through forests, steadily climbing towards a ridge, for the next hour or so. We had decided to pitch camp at least a half hour earlier than yesterday so we wouldn't be cooking our food in the dark. We found a good campsite in the lee of some trees (evergreens) on top of a bluff overlooking the river. Not long before we found our campsite we came access a river view that had something a little different: a winter canoeist. He was alone and just rounding the bend when we spied him. We exchanged greeting and went our separate ways. He was the first person we had seen since we parted company with Kerry and Brian near the trailhead on Friday.

The trees would, we hoped, provide a good windbreak should the wind pick up. And since we were on a bluff the temperature should not get quite as cold as it would, as cold air sunk, in the valleys below.

Lo and behold, Curtis' repair of the valve assembly on my stove seemed to work. I had a flame. It wasn't a very hot flame, but it was a flame. I was very happy. I really don't like being a burden on others. I don't like feeling un-prepared and I suppose I am a little extra sensitive about such things because of my vision. I don't want people to think, "the handicapped guy is needing help again....see...I told you so." Maybe people don't think that. I don't think anyone on this trip thought that (hope not), but I still feel the things I do. That's why a part of me is secretly pleased if someone else slips on a hill just like me or looses the trail just like me. I know that people do that all the time, but when it happens to me it focuses attention that I don't want upon me.

The stove never seemed to get my water boiling so I still had to use Paul's a little bit, but it worked well enough that I was eventually able to enjoy my two boil-in-the-bag omelets. They needed more spices and I probably should have dropped some cheese and salami into them (I was afraid those items would prevent cooking since they would lower the temperature so much, but I should have tried). The meal, along with some mint tea, was still quite fine and reasonably worth the wait. I crawled into the tent happy feeling proud that I had done such a long day with everyone else. We had probably hiked around 10 miles. It was just after 20:00 when I got into my cold sleeping bag. The VB shirt was rigidly squished into a back pocket of the backpack, socks and other damp clothing were in a stuff sack inside my sleeping bag where I hoped they would dry out, and I had a hot water bottle in their too. For some reason, beyond the fact that the night was definitely a bit colder already than yesterday evening it took me quite a bit longer to warm up the sleeping bag. I kept feeling cold spots and breezes, but in time it warmed up and I drifted off to sleep.

February 11

Another long winter's night. Some people can go the entire night without having to get out of their warm cocoons of down or synthetic filled sleeping bags to go to the bathroom, but I am not one of them. At about the same time as the previous night I took leave of the warmth and comfort of my bag and crawled outside for a brief excursion to relieve bladder pressure. This time I paid more attention to the surroundings. The moon was barely visible through cloud cover, the river below was rushing smoothly by, and off in the distance I could hear the yips and howls of what surely must have been coyotes. I also heard, as I drifted back to sleep other campers (but not Paul) lave their tents to do the same thing I had done. And, again in the distance, I heard the sound of what I assume was someone out for a midnight snowmobile ride.

What a sharp difference from the nights I spent in the Irish Wilderness where we saw and heard practically no wild life. Here we know that fox, coyote, deer, and various birds abound. We've seen or heard them all over the place. I don't know why, in the far colder climate, there seems to be so much more active life but it does seem to be the case.

I slept pretty soundly after my midnight excursion. I had some strange dreams that I don't intend to recount and certainly can't explain. Although Curtis and Chris were up and at 'em before 08:00 neither Paul or I could muster the desire to get moving before 08:00. Paul got out of the tent a little before I did. I suppose I emerged around 08:15 (it is hard for two people to be moving about in that tent at the same time). My stove again more or less worked, but I gladly accepted the extra hot water Paul had. I did not feel like having oatmeal so I just had mint tea (the tea bag I had left in the cup had frozen solid, but the hot water fixed that and I still got warm mint tea in the bargain) and plenty of snack foods. I settled on my pop tarts, which were pretty edible once warmed slightly in my down vest pocket and several Reces sticks, which are surprisingly good. I poured the remaining hot water into my water bottle that had cooled off rather quickly it seemed to me (Paul's remained good and hot all night) and then slowly began to pack my stuff up. If I had to pack a tent up things would take so much longer than they already do. It is hard to work with gloves on and some tasks just suck the heat right out of your hands. Manipulating a cold, wet, sleeping bag is one such task. I could not keep my hands warm even though the rest of me was feeling just fine.

I soon discovered that my Solomon Raid WInds were a victim of the cold. I really had sweated an awful lot the day before and the shoes had gotten moist. They proceeded to freeze over night and were as stiff as ski boots. It was impossible to slip my feet into them. I would have to wear my down booties and NEOS for the day. Much less support.

I was all packed up and ready to go when I made my next sad discovery. My water bottle seemed unaccountably light even though I had poured nearly a liter of water into it. I pulled it out of the cozy to find that over two thirds of the water was gone. Apparently the lid wasn't as well sealed as I had thought it was. Perhaps some ice had clogged the screw threads and although it felt like I had securely tightened the lid I really had not. This would have been a more serious concern if this was not our last day and other people had water that they would be willing to share if the need arose. Still, I found it irritating that such an event would happen to me.

By the time we broke camp the temperature had risen from the zero, yes 0, degree mark to the teens I believe. The day was devoid of clouds and the sky was that brilliant blue you only associate with winter camping. The quality of our campsite was clearly evident today. Below us the river made a sharp bend and you could see its emerald green color almost as well as I could the day before (made me think of lakes I have seen in Scandinavia). The sun was shining off the far bank of the river illuminating the deep greens of evergreen tress and also throwing browns into sharp relief. I think one of the best things about a day like this one is the study in contrasting colors.

It was cold but the air, thankfully, was still, and I knew once I began to move even my hands would warm up. I set off with everyone else in my improvised footwear and I found it acceptable. We departed just after 10:00 and it was estimated that we had 8 miles to hike. No one was using snowshoes today since the trail was expected to be covered in more compacted snow. The MRP is certainly more popular than the NCT in this area. In some ways it is far prettier than the NCT section that follows the river on the other side. The Manistee River Pathway spends much of its time within sight of the river. On a clear day such as this one you can see the deep green water standing out in sharp contrast to the snow covered white banks which are topped with hemlock, white pine, cedar, and maybe fir (or are they spruce?) trees, and the browns of trees that have lost their leaves during the winter.

We left our pristine (well nearly so, I imagine we left a few crumbs behind that critters like coyote may find in the night) campsite just after 10:00. We said goodbye to the high bluff with its trees, bending river below, and some tweeting birds and sallied forth around 10:15. We felt we had about 8 miles to go to the trailhead and then there is another fraction of a mile off road walk back to the cars after that (where the famous outhouse that sometimes harbors birds like owls is at).

Some people can hike and hold a conversation really well. I am not one of them. Maybe I am concentrating on my hiking or perhaps my hearing is just fading (I hope not) but I can't hold a conversation while walking single file through crunchy snow like the others can. I don't mind the quiet though. Quiet is what I tend to think winter requests of us in any case. If you are quiet you have a better chance, s you crunch through the snow, to see and hear animals. And, in my case, hearing animals is about the best I can hope for. I never did hear any (besides birds) on this trip. Others saw some deer on the far side of the river and Curtis and Chris spooked a couple when they were in the lead at one point. I just moseyed along in my own quiet fashion trying not to loose the trail.

For the first couple of hours we walked along ridge tops that sometimes dipped into hollows that rarely strayed out of sight of the river. We passed some incredible scenic views like the one where the river makes a very sharp, I think it's called an ox bow, turn and change direction 180 degrees.

The terrain was gentler than the NCT. The North Country Trail had many long steady ascents and descents that really could take it out of you. The ascent we did just before putting our snowshoes back on Saturday was an excellent case-in-point. It just kept rising and it really pulled the energy right out of me. The MRP features short and steep ascents and descents. The climbs force you (well me) to slow down and try and kick step your way up the path (when Chris and Curtis' steps made steps I took full advantage of them) or shuffle and slide step your way down. Sometimes the pathway was quite narrow with a steep drop off on one side. Walking those narrow paths was slow going for me since it was hard to gauge where the edge was. I probably went slower than I would have if they had been free of snow, but not much slower. Those narrow paths would have been a real pain in snowshoes (so would many of the stream bridges which you would have to side step across if you were wearing snowshoes). The NCT seems like it is an easier trail to snowshoe along, but the MRP can be trod wearing winter boots and that is sometimes easier.

We paused for a snack and lunch break on a ridge around noon. While Chris, Curtis, and I just had our cold snacks Paul indulged in a hot lunch and long rest break. The three of us forged on leaving Paul to act as the sweep. I think we all felt certain he would catch up to us within a couple of hours. Curtis and Chris walked ahead of me, usually out of my sight, chatting. I moved along through the hardwood forests at my own pace sometimes having to pause to locate the trail (sometimes aided by a call of "over here" from up ahead). I thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon and the chance to walk through the amiable silence on this cold yet crystal clear winter day.

Paul eventually caught up to us just as we were about to begin an ascent of one of the MRP's short steep hills. It was around 15:00 and he had taken an hour lunch break and I expect he enjoyed himself immensely. He had been hiking a touch over two miles per hour to catch up to us which suggest we were moving a little over 1.5 miles per hour since we had taken a couple of breaks ourselves (I finally gave in to nature and added some semi-solid deposits to the landscape - suitably buried of course). We climbed up that hill and shortly thereafter took a rest break on the ridge above the river for snacks and the like. This would be the last view point that did not include the road bridge and we had just about an hour or so of hiking left. It was good to sit down and enjoy the view and a bite to eat one last time.

The trail rolled on and towards the end as we were climbing what would be the last real hill we came upon two ladies out for the day coming down. We chatted briefly and said goodbye. They were the only other people I saw that day though I'm told I started to follow a path that lead to a campsite where some other people were set up before realizing (with some audible aid) my mistake. Paul and I brought up the tail of our foursome and we eventually popped out on to the road. A few minutes after that we arrived at the cars, packed things up, got straightened out, and headed towards the gas station we had spent a couple hours at on Friday to enjoy a hot drink or some hot food and to feed the cars some fuel. I think it was just a little after 16:20 when we drove away from the parking lot

Eiplogue

The drive home was enjoyable. Curtis and I found many things to talk about and at some place where it made sense for Chris to turn off and head home Paul piled into the car and we all finished the drive back to his house quite comfortably. Curtis discovered the joy of re-directing heat in his car up through his seat and now he too is a seat warmer convert. I think we all had a lovely time. I know I learned some things about winter camping and how best to do it. I was happy with y clothing choices, the sleeping bags system worked out well (it ought to work just as well if I'm in a tent by myself), and when my Solomon¹s aren't frozen they work well with the NEOS although I bet I could get away with an even lighter tennis shoe. I definitely need to use a different pack than the G4. The REI would have been OK if it wasn't in such a strange state, but I think I will invest in a better pack. And, I need to learn to love Whisperlite stoves or find something that works comparably well.

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