Its hard to believe in the midst of this thaw that for a day there was some great skiing to be had in Northern Wisconsin. My daughter and I ventured out on the Lumberjack trail in Boulder Junction the Friday after Thanksgiving-A trail that is dear to my heart, since i used to ski that country before there was a "trail".
This is a tricky time of year to ski, since it is during gun-deer season. But it was the second weekend, not many hunters were out, and we wore the requisite blaze orange. The rewards for venturing out was an afternoon of total silence. I should say near total silence-once we did hear a back-up alarm on a truck in the distance. But other than that, we heard no human sound but our own. Pretty amazing on such a windless day.
At one point, we both stopped and listened to an unusual whistling call. It wasn't a whistling actually, but not a bugling either. We didn't know what it was, but it did call attention to how quiet it was.
There was more than enough snow to keep us from scraping the trail, but it was pretty easy trailbreaking. Lumberjack is an ungroomed trail, not very difficult, and not as glamorous as Escanaba, but it has a couple of nice features: Some big pines in the first section, a beautiful crossing over White Sand Creek, a short side trip to Fishtrap dam on the Manitowish river, and a nice figure eight trail. There is also a beautiful connecting trail to the Escanaba loops-(although last year it was closed due to logging so check before you go).
I can't emphasize how wonderful it is to be out in the winter with no snowmobile noise. Why can't we have a quiet hunting season like we have a deer hunting season? Perhaps the first skiable weekend between hunting season and the opening of snowmobile season. I would like to report we bagged some trophy quiet this year.
No comments:
Post a Comment