"Trouble in Paradise."
Thursday morning, I awoke at 5:34am, excited and eager to be off on my solo hiking trip. I confirmed the weather report that said I could expect clear skies and perfect temperatures, so I finished packing the car with all of my gear. After a quick stop at Caribou, and in downtown Minneapolis to drop Kris off at work, I was off. Traffic was light, the sky was clear, and the morning was good!
By 11:00am, I was parked at the Cascade River State Park campground, which is only 10 miles south of Grand Marais, MN. The Park Ranger Station had a weather report up from the day before, which said I could expect thunderstorms after 1:00am on Friday morning. No big deal, I was going to watch the meteors from 9:00pm to 12:00am, so later showers wouldn't kill me.
Hopping on the trail, I decided to take the western side loop of the Superior Hiking Trail, which follows along a 3.8 mile stretch of Cascade River. This section of the trail was almost stupidly challenging. From the trailhead to the end of the loop, the overall elevation gain was maybe 300 feet, which is normally a very easy walk in the woods. This side of the river was almost exclusively up-and-down. Climb 75 feet up, climb 74 feet down. 120 up, 50 down. 90 up, 110 down. I was wearing 30lbs of gear on my back, and carrying an extra 30 lbs around my midsection. And then I discovered the first lie from my early morning weather report. What was supposed to be a day of 76 degrees with a 10 mph wind coming straight off Lake Superior turned out to be a day of 90 degrees with no wind.
The bugs were horrendous. The heat was nearly unbearable. My hands swelled to the size of oranges, and made it nearly impossible for me to open my water bottles to keep myself hydrated, which was especially important because I was sweating so heavily that I looked like I was walking through a river. After nearly four hours of struggling to hike through this section of trail, I was fatigued, overburdened and dangerously close to just turning around and coming home.
At the end of the western loop, you come to County Rd. 45, which gives you a nice, easy 0.3 mile hike to reacquire the Superior Hiking Trail heading north, during which time I decided that I wasn't a quitter. No matter how hard it was, I was going to get to my campsite and watch these grains of sand and debris die a fiery death in the atmosphere of our home planet.
Crossing over 45, I discovered I was still 0.7 miles from my selected campsite. I know, 3/4ths of a mile doesn't seem like that far. When I tell you that it is, please trust me. It was agony to force myself to start moving up the trail again.
An hour later, I had arrived. I hiked through the campsite and back down to the river, so I could refill my water bottles (properly filtered, of course), and relax. Honestly, this was the greatest part of the trip. I spent nearly an hour at the river, alternatively just sitting around enjoying the view, and plunging through the chilly depths of the slow-moving water. I can now say that I have gone skinny dipping, and it was fantastic.
5:00pm rolled around, so I hiked away from the river and back to the campsite, where I spent some time setting up the tent, cooking dinner, changing into my camp clothes (PJ pants, new socks, etc). That lasted all of an hour, leaving me 3 hours to kill before night fell.
I tried to light a fire, since there was a convenient pit for it, and I was bored. Rain the day before had turned every downed piece of wood into a sodden, rotting mass, so it was incredibly difficult. An abundance of birch bark let me get a few flames going, however, and it was then that I discovered the Superior Hiking Trail has a Chipmunk Fire Brigade. As soon as I had a very small fire going, a chipmunk approached within 10 feet of me, and started yelling at me. When the fire died out, he left. Later, when I tried again, he came back and yelled at me again.
Around 8:00pm, the bugs, which had been a major irritation, came out in full force. It was miserable. The repellent I had with me didn't work worth a damn. I finally discovered that if I pulled my sleeping pad from the tent, and went to the rockiest area of the campsite, and lay very still, I only had to kill one bug every 15-20 seconds, instead of 6 at a time every second. I spent an hour trying to keep my blood inside of me, watching the sky darken.
At 9:00pm, with the sky still relatively bright, the first star came out. My heart accelerated, and I settled in for a show. And then the clouds rolled in. Quickly.
Over the course of the next two hours, I stared at the clouds defiantly, hoping for a break where I could see something... to my dismay, all I saw was a grand total of three stars. I went to bed, an exhausted, angry, frustrated and disappointed mess of gelatinous muscle-goo. And then came the storm.
I don't know if you've ever experienced severe weather while huddling in a piece of plastic wrap, but it can be quite inspiring. You can be awed by the power of the wind and raid. You can be afraid of the groaning, creaking trees overhead. You can be shocked by the lightning strike only a half-mile away. However I felt at various times throughout the nearly-sleepless night, I survived with no injuries.
At 6:45am, I awoke to a steady, heavy rain, without the thunder-boomers of the previous hours. By 7:15, I had finished my slow breakfast and the rain gave no signs of letting up, so I set to the task of breaking down camp. Rolling up the sleeping pad, stuffing the sleeping bag, changing into my hiking clothes, gathering up and packing away all of the food and garbage, and packing down the tent. It was a dirty, wet adventure that left me soaked to the core and grumbling about the trials and tribulations of hiking. But I thought to myself, "At least the rain will keep the bugs down, and help keep me cool."
8:00am, my pack was packed, and I hefted it onto my shoulders. Taking one last look around to make sure I hadn't left anything behind, I stepped back onto the trail... and the rain stopped.
Silently raging, I started hiking, fighting my way through swarm after swarm of biting insect, while trying to maintain my footing on the now-wet root system that makes up the vast majority of the trail. If you've never been hiking, roots are slippery in the best of times. They've been worn smooth by generations of hikers and weather and are incredibly dangerous. I am sure that roots account for 90% of hiking injuries, though I have no facts to back this up. Today, however, these roots were also wet, making them triply dangerous.
Halfway back to the car, 2.1 miles to go, I slipped on a root. Flailing wildly, trying like mad to make sure that if I fall, I'm going to fall in such a way that results in the least amount of injury, I end up slamming my knee into a tree and then into the densely packed earth. It could have been worse. A lot worse. I could have sprained something. I could have broken something. I could have been bleeding. As it was, however, I just in pain.
Luckily for me, the eastern loop that was my route back to the car was significantly easier than the western loop of the day before. There was one major uphill hike, and then a very smooth downward slope for the following 3.1 miles. I managed to stumble and limp my way back to the car, take a few moments to catch my breath, and then begin the five hour drive home.
After fighting construction traffic, lack of music (I forgot my CD collection, and my MP3 player) and a throbbing in my knee, I made it home shortly after 4:00pm.
In a day and a half, I drove 550 miles, hiked an extremely challenging 10 miles, killed millions of mosquitoes, slept in a violent thunderstorm, and fell down like an idiot.
I got about 40 minutes of time to sit on a couch and recuperate after I got home, before I had to put on dress shoes (my blisters were not happy about this), and go to a thing. After the thing, I fell asleep... and slept like the dead.