Monday, September 03, 2018 7:10 pm
Grub Lake site, Snowbank Trail, 6.5 miles (8 miles total)

My feet stink already, and Colin’s stink worse. We only hiked 6.5 miles, but they were hard, fun, exhausting miles.

I slept 10 hours last night and woke to a cool morning, and mist rising up over Snowbank. The loons had a party at midnight and woke Colin up. I rose around 7 a.m., started filtering water, and made the first delicious camp coffee of the trip.

I took some video of the red squirrels eating their breakfast of pinecones, which they were harvesting by chucking them down around our tent. They landed like a little pinecone bombs. Colin and the mosquitoes got up together around 8 a.m.

We set off at 9 a.m., pushing through brush, crawling under and over downfall, losing our way and finding it again several times over. We took a late morning break at a campsite listed on none of our maps.

We crossed a beaver dam very carefully, then swung north from the lake to go around a marshland, then north of Wooden Leg Lake. I was already exhausted by this point. Each mile out here feels like three on the Superior Hiking Trail. I was hot, sweaty, covered in debris from bushwhacking, and my feet were barking from the punishment of the trail. Every step on this trail is uneven, and extra hard work for toes and ankle muscles constantly stabilizing you. I jumped in the lake for a glorious swim, washing the sweat and stink from my body and the soreness from my feet.

Our goal for the night was to reach a campsite on a cliff on Snowbank’s northeastern corner. About a mile into our post-lunch hike, I started getting a headache. Today will be our hottest day, Colin said. With great swaths of the forest torn down by straight-line winds, there are a surprising amount of sunlight-scorched stretches. I feared heat exhaustion, and didn’t want a repeat of a forced rest day like on the BRT, so we decided to stay at the site on Grub Lake, just north of Snowbank and a couple miles short of our original goal.

The forest here is a maze of downfall. It took us 20 minutes just to find a way down to the lake to fill water. Climbing our way out of here will be our first task of the morning. We’re already in the tent, plumb wrung out. But it is gorgeous territory, and the trail is possible to do. We’re having a great time.

Moss lines the trail on Snowbank