Snowshoe odyssey

So way back this past summer Matt and Alan began doing some talking about the destination for our winter camping trip. Matt took the reigns and got us into a Yurt in the porcupine mountain state park, way up in the North Western end of the Upper Peninsula. He handled all the reservations and stuff, and also did all the driving, saving us a cramped warm, Weird Al trip in Alan's escort, of a cold no muffler trip in my truck. Yay Matt (and yay Tanya for letting him borrow the van).

There were various setbacks I encountered whilst packing, most notably I couldn't find my damn gloves. I managed to find my missing cowboy hat, missing since last fall. We were leaving at 5am for the drive up there and most stores I was familiar with would be closed. We planned on being in Marquette about noonish so I did a websearch for sporting goods around there and one hit turned up a link for the Eben Ice caves.

They looked pretty cool, weren't too far out of the way, and would make a nice warm up loop/driving break on the way up. they were well worth the detours.

You can see light shining through from the outside, the floors of the cave were really slippery, and there were small holes in the ice you could step in, as well as little bits of trickling water forming new ice. 30 foot tall sheets of icicle's spanning about 100 feet of cliff face with little openings and nooks and holes.

We spent a fair amount of time taking pictures and trying to get Alan to do things that might inadvertently bring him harm, but as usual he let us down. That and I would guess it would be our responsibility to either get his broken body out of the canyon, or disfigure it enough so as to render him an unknown vagrant drifter.... too much work and not enough time. and there is still a few days left in the trip.

We stopped somewhere along the way for some gas and a bite of fast food (so we could steal condiments to get us through the weekend) and made it to the parking spot at the park headquarters just before dark. Don the gear, secure some supplies, look at the map and take off. We figured we could take the short woods route, then jump on a fairly straight snowmobile trail and make it just under a few miles to get to the Yurt... mind you this is in deep snow, uphill getting dark and with loaded backpacks.

The trails were easy to follow and about 3/4 of the way to the yurt I realized that like a total dumbass I hadn't properly secured that evenings dinner to the outside of the pack. Roadkill marinating in Worcestershire sauce. probably dragged off by some hungry wild beast, or tenderized in the studded tracks of a snowmobile..... We opted to get to the yurt, drop the packs and head out on a roadkill rescue mission. 2.7 miles to the Yurt, 2.7 miles in the dark guided by headlamps to find a bag of meat to no avail, and then 2.7 miles back to the yurt for a very exhausted meal cooked over backpacking stoves to the light provided by a couple of battery operated lanterns.

2.7 miles x3 + 2 miles at the caves makes for just a bit over 10 miles, not counting the elevation changes.

We did some looking at the map and decided a good place to visit, and fairly close at three miles would be the Scenic East Vista overlook. it was fairly scenic, miles and miles but I had seen some pictures taken at the west vista overlook, which was about 2.25 miles to the west. you couldn't see the Lake of the clouds, but it would be about as close as we would get to it. 2.25 miles didn't sound bad even though it meant a longer hike back, but a good portion of that trek was up a downhill alpine ski route. It was pretty much the way our grandparents described getting to school. 45 degree incline, chilling cold wind, 4 feet of snow blah blah blah...but we made it to the top.

After the cardiac arrest and exhaustion (and a break on the top of the ski hill we made it to the vista. While we were melting enough snow for our water to get us through the trip home we took some pictures, had fun jumping off cliffs, and pretty much agreed that it would be humanly impossible for us to make it to the Lake of the Clouds this weekend. It was at least 9 miles one way.

We also realized that there was no way in hell we would be able to make it back to the yurt tonight while the sun was shining.

4.1 miles later we were back at the yurt. This day hath been seized. Somehow Alan was still alive.......If nothing happened to him shortly, odds are one of us would become horrible disfigured...I had to take matters into my own hands.

whilst in the warming shelter on the way to the vista I couldn't resist.....

Actually he's pretty handy to keep around, he's got a nice GPS and a Water Filter. You cant beat the comic relief (just google "dry ice bomb helmet") but he could have woken up and tended the fire..at least once......

So far on this trip we have hiked about 19.5 miles on snowshoes through some fantastic scenery. Survived on my well prepared camp cookery and water filtered from streams and melted from snow. We decided to go for broke and venture out onto the Ice rafts of Lake Superior. Big Gitchee Gumee. We were a bit fatigued, and thought it would make for a good day to finish the trip.

Round trip including what we hiked out on the ice was about 5 miles. Lake superior is really beautiful and oddly very desolate out on the ice. Where we were at there were 15 foot tall boulders of ice, little crevasses. caves formed by collapsing ice sheets (big enough that Alan crawled in there.)

If I make it up there again I'll definitely take the Superior trek again, although a more windproof layer would be a great help.

The good news however, on our hike to the lake from the yurt, there in broad daylight just off the trail was our bag of roadkill, now marinating for 4 days, kept chilly cold in a few inches of fresh snow. I knew what was for dinner that night. We also buzzed into town and picked up a couple of celebratory snacks and a package of hot cocoa. On the way back to the Yurt we felt so gung ho we decided to break trail up hill and check out some smaller waterfalls and scenic spots that are nearly impossible to get to in the winter.

28 miles later....All said and done it was an awesome trip, and even if I had been working it would have been worth taking the couple days off.