Part 2: The First and Uncertain Trip of The Low Adventures: Trekking Superior Hiking Trail

The Low Adventures: Trekking Superior Hiking Trail

Part 2: The First and Uncertain Trip

By Tim Krenz

July 18, 2017

After convincing me on the “day of the Pinto” in November to trek the entire Superior Hiking Trail from Two Harbors, MN to the Canadian border, Craig made various ideas of planning over the course of that winter, 2001-2002.Time available, our age, and our physical conditions would mean we could do it by stages, in short trips, and take leisurely lollygagging time on the actual trail.

We would start in June, but I feared for my mortality and several very irrational things in the whole ordeal to come—heart attack, primary among them; bears, equally worrisome; and everything from UFO abductions to getting eaten by Big Foot, both of those last surprisingly notable in my list. I had no idea what to expect. I knew I could not deal with bears, so I tried to ignore that potential problem. Aliens and Big Foot, I pushed out of my mind, with some remarkable difficulty for a paranoid and imaginative guy like me. To avoid the heart attack, I had some solutions.

Beginning that Thanksgiving, I decided to train physically for the trip. A heavy smoker, and never too enthusiastic about exercise, I started my regimen small. Over the next several months, I walked all over my hometown of Osceola, Wisconsin—up the hill on County Highway M, around the circuit of the village, and down and up the massive and steep stair cases to the Cascade Falls. Even with a back pack full of heavy crap to accustom myself to the weight, I trudged those steps to the falls immediately below my apartment above the main street gift shop.

I thought I took big steps to strengthen my body, and dispose the irrational thoughts like ET and Sasquatch from my mind. I did push ups, sit ups, ate healthier, lost weight, gained self-respect, and all that jazz. I did it on my own, without paying a trainer, but I imagined I looked pretty vagrant walking through a normal semi-suburban idyllic town wearing cheap hiking boots and carrying my gear. All the while, Craig had made me one promise when he convinced me to do the trail: No matter what happened to me, he would get me out of the woods, even if it took several trips, and I came out in pieces (HA!). By mid-spring, armed with a poorly outdated Superior Hiking Trail guide book, Craig had the trip mapped out and we set the date, June 18, 2002, to mark our beginning.

I had a work commitment the day before, so we could not leave before the appointed morning. I packed heavy stuff—too heavy, like a novice would. I had a good, a very good back pack, but old, rotting, war surplus gear I inherited and collected at sales from several wars back (though all still made in the Twentieth Century). I slept well. That morning, Craig picked me up in his mini-truck around half past seven o'clock. I felt ready, but disguised a dose of trepidation. What to expect? Would I even enjoy it? I did not know. I had to go find out. We headed into Minnesota, and we turned north for a three hour ride.

After a quick breakfast in Hinckley, MN, we made it just past Two Harbors, MN, which sat on the big lake, Superior, before 11 AM. At that point in time, the trail started north from there, although years later it extended southward to Duluth. We parked at a parking lot on some lake country road, a place ominously called Castle Danger. We unloaded our packs, and stripping heavy crap out of them, we then threw out more crap. Finally, still heavy, we put the packs on and headed north on the Superior Hiking Trail (S.H.i.T). Right away, we encountered a tall and rugged hill, straight up and steep, called Wolf's Rock.

The hill trail went up, and up; up; up. Way up. Just starting this trekking, this low, spirit-crushing adventure that first half mile, really, really discouraged me. At the top of Wolf's Rock, before the leg-shortening, crunching walk down the other side, we did see the nice but distant view of the lake. In fact, my journal calls it a “breath-taking view.” I think “breathtaking” might have referred to the fact that my smoker lungs raged in pain. Either way, after only one-half of a mile, I really, really wanted to quit this entire adventure. Done, finished. Puss out. But we had not really started, and Craig encouraged, and might have threatened, me to go on to the campsite. We still had over three-quarters of a million steps to go to finish the trail. (We estimated the total steps years later). Those first steps, on the other hand, made me painfully aware that I needed a lot of training, some inspiration, and lighter gear.

At three miles into the hike we ate lunch, a simple and heavy-to-carry mix of food Craig packed—summer sausage, cheese, PB sandwiches, crackers, and apples. We moved out from our lingering lunch rest at 2 pm, and encountered another “S.O.B. Hill,” called Mike's Rock. Again, we saw the spectacular, panoramic, hazy summer view of Lake Superior off to our east, closer now, but still over the horizon of a green, thick forest.

At 3:15, we reached West Gooseberry Campsite, on the creek of the same name, but only after we had walked right through some type of wood tick nest. Craig and I each found over a dozen ticks on us, on our clothes, on our skin—everywhere. Before we set up his four-man blue tent, we spent fifteen minutes picking the little fuckers off of us. Eww! We thought the tent worms all over the roads and trees, and in webs across the trail bad enough. To deal with these ticks proved more intrusive, personal, and tricky.

Five miles into a rather quiet forest, but with the calming sound of the creek trickling below our site, we pitched our camp and drank coffee for two hours. I smoked cigarettes, to catch up on that “breathtaking” view ahead of time. Like I discovered camping with Craig before he left for the Peace Corps in 1997, he had a lot of stories. Of course, I would hear many of the same ones several times over the next six years. I brought a book to read, too, on this trip. I could read and ignore his stories for years, it turned out. As I noted in my journal before supper that first night, “I couldn't believe it. I made it.” We settled into camp, and I enjoyed every minute.

Craig's commercial backpacking gas stove did not work properly. It never would. It spit out gas all over. I unpacked our supper, which I cooked over the small fire Craig built in the rock-lined fire ring. We ate reheated, pre-cooked chicken breast, rice, cheese, cooked baby carrots, and drank flavored powder mixed with filtered stream water. (We used the mix to make the water somewhat palatable).

I filtered more water after supper while Craig did dishes. I became highly suspect of the creek. After washing my arms in the creek once we set up camp, my arms began to get little bites and bumps. They itched horribly, so bad that I scratched them raw and red that night and the next day. I had to drink this stuff? The camping filter, with a nozzle, two hoses, and a very sticky pump took forever to fill bottles.

Did all that cross contamination of the hoses, or the clogged charcoal filter inside of the filter really take out the impurities? Novice me, I decided to ignore it, like I ignored the thought of bears attacking me, flying saucers taking me to the mother ship, and Big Foot eating me for a midnight snack. I just learned on this trip that while I could take precautions against bad water and bears, I just had to live with it by not getting too paranoid. I drank the filtered creek water, reluctantly, and scratched the hell out of my arms the rest of the trip.

The rest of the night, we sat by the dwindling little fire, feeding it what slim pickings of fire wood we managed to find around the heavily used campsite . I wrote a journal entry. Craig told stories. The sky at 9 PM still looked blue, although the sun had set. I contemplated the soon to come summer solstice two days away. I always felt a little spirit crushing remorse the days after the June solstice. It meant shorter days. I did feel, and write about, a certain reward in many ways by the past nine months and the recent turn for fortune my life took in that time. I managed, with some very hard work and honest, introspective thought brought to my existence on earth some new and enlightened understanding every day for the past nine months. Just into my thirties, I had a choice between life and early death. I chose right.

In my intemperate twenties, I always wanted to do more, act for a purpose in things, and not live aimlessly and mindlessly. I also wanted more pleasant adventures, and happier ones, too, than the decade of the 1990s brought to me. Did I have any chance? I thought I did have one, to live “as a person lives life, to feel, to breath, to experience, without negative defects. . . ,” I wrote in my journal around that fire. “. . .This is what I meant,” I continued, “. . . and to do with the rest of my time; live without fear and live doing—an active life.” So go the optimisms of a youth at age thirty-one.

After a night sweating in the tent on a warm and dark night, we packed and left for the last 5 miles of our short trip. Near Gooseberry Falls, itself a wonderful and beautiful waterfall no different than many others, we passed an old state park building near the highway before entering Gooseberry State Park proper itself. The building, one of the old Great Depression era structures built by civilians in the construction corps, still had its rather stolid, solid presence. Rock and timber built, with wood shingles, the park, however, had all the windows and doors boarded and nailed shut.

The building, while insignificant in its presence near to the modern park building a half mile away, represented something beyond: It carried a venerable presence of wisdom, natural material, and stout construction. We would return to this theme a lot on this adventure. What wisdom would I learn? With what material did I have to work in my life and on the trail? How stout did my god construct me?

At the new park building, we became worried. We expected a ride back to Craig's little truck, nine miles south. A park worker came up to us, and gave Craig a message to call home. It turned into no real emergency, nor even an inconvenience. Poor two-year old Anya, Craig's daughter, had a severe rash and Jen, his wife, could not meet us at Gooseberry State Park for the afternoon. We had no ride back to the car. We definitely needed an “Alternative Contingency Scenario Bravo,” a “Plan B.” Craig decided to leave me at the park with the gear and walk and hitch hike back to Castle Danger. I thought it sounded a little risky, but Craig and I could see no other way.

Surprisingly, he came back a half hour later, with the truck, for me and the gear. “Retired pastors are our new best friends,” he declared in beaming relief. Apparently, a retired pastor picked him up and drove him from the park gate to the truck. Lucky, we thought, at that point, after a very successful and satisfying short lollygag through the forest and hills of northern Minnesota. In a way, the retired pastor that day seemed to give us a little blessing for my existential exercise of trekking the Superior Hiking Trail with my friend Craig.

With around three-quarters-of-a-million steps to go, all the way home from Two Harbors, MN, to Osceola, WI, I wondered, “What part do we do next? And When?”