February Wrap Up + March Goals

Well, my ambitious idea to hike 100 miles in February (made on a rare spring-like January day) was thwarted by freezing cold weather much of the month. When we finally got a weekend with decent hiking weather, I didn't feel well. I needed two long days that weekend to even get close to 100 miles, and in the end, I had just over 50, but I've now lost 10 pounds total, so even though I didn't get much walking in, I did stay mostly on track with my food.

I'm hoping for better weather in March, but the immediate forecast isn't looking too good with both ice and snow in the picture starting tomorrow night. If we get iced in for too long, we might have to break into the giant stash of granola bars I have stocked up for my trip.

March goals:
5 pounds to lose
100 miles to walk (we'll see how that goes this month...)
1000 body weight squats
1000 body weight calf raises

9 mile hike: Silver Lake

Past the middle of February, and I was nowhere near halfway to my February goal, and while temps were still in the teens, the wind had disappeared and I decided to hit the trail for a couple of laps on the 4.5 mile trail at Silver Lake.

I made pretty good time for the first couple of miles since other people had broken trail through our recent snow, but around mile 2, whoever had broken trail had turned around, leaving me to work harder through the snowy trail, but the snow was dry and fluffy without much ice underneath, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been.

It had been 17 degrees when I hit the trail, so I was hiking fast to stay warm. I shed my windbreaker and hat and tucked them into my fleece like a kangaroo to keep them warm for when I needed them again when the wind picked up.

About 3/4 of a mile before I got back to the trailhead at the end of my first lap, I saw a small group of boy scouts out for their first major hike of the year. They were all bundled up and in high spirits, but I wasn't sure how long that would last.

I picked up the pace quite a bit after that, knowing that I had a cup of coffee waiting for me in the car and hopeful that it would be at least lukewarm after my first 4.5 miles. I spent a few minutes at the trailhead enjoying the tepid coffee and downing a few snacks before hitting the trail for lap #2 and a check on the boy scouts.

I still hadn't seen them after two miles on the out-and-back section of trail, so I knew they weren't moving too fast, but I caught up with them when they were almost done with the lollipop loop at the end of the trail. I was going in the opposite direction around that loop, but they thanked me for breaking trail for them earlier. After their group had mashed down more of the snow, I was able to go faster, too, and it wasn't long before I finished that loop myself and headed back toward the trailhead.

I was tired of being out in the cold, so it was full speed ahead for me. I picked up some sunglasses dropped by one of the scout leaders and passed all the boys and leaders one by one. Most of the guys seemed to be doing ok, but I felt bad for a few of the boys. One had an overbearing father who was trying to speed up the boy by getting him to lengthen his stride. I offered the kid some Oreos, but he said he was ok. Another leader had told them to make their hiking poles as tall as their shoulders, so those with poles were struggling to keep them under control. Between the cold and the less-than-helpful advice they had from their mentors, the kids weren't quite as perky as they'd been when I first met them.

Soon, I was back to the trailhead. I had thought about going back out to add a couple more miles before heading home, but since temps were still in the teens, I headed home for a hot bath and a beer instead.

Minimal Progress

Well, my ambitious February goal was set when the weather was nice and before I knew that February would be cold, wet, windy, and cold. Did I mention cold? I made minimal progress toward my goal in the first days of the month as rain, snow, ice, and wind kept me inside and off the trails.

A highlight of the first half of the month was that Jeff got me a musubi maker straight from Japan, so I can make real musubis now instead of the Big Musubis I was trying to make with a small loaf pan I had.

February 8, I decided to take a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to walk on a new interstate bridge that hadn't been opened to traffic yet. The Stan Musial Veterans Memorial bridge now carries I-70 from Illinois into St. Louis, but it opened for pedestrian traffic the day before it opened to cars. 

I thought that temps in the teens and windy conditions might keep people away, but people came out and my shuttle from downtown was full of retirement-aged white people bundled for a blizzard, a couple of grandchildren they'd dragged along to this historic event, and one possibly homeless dude blasting Sandi Patty's Star Spangled Banner on repeat through a tinny speaker for the duration of the ride. Sandi Patty was still going to strong as he crossed the bridge.

All the people coming onto the bridge from the Illinois side were dressed in camo. Those from the St. Louis side more commonly sported North Face or even fur. 

 I had planned to walk at least a few miles while in StL, but the wind drove me off the bridge, back into the warm shuttle, and into a cozy bar to enjoy some duck tacos before heading home.

10 mile hike: Pyramid State Park

I've set a goal to walk 100 miles in February, but nasty rain and sleet kept me inside on Feb. 1, so I needed to get out on the 2nd and headed to Pyramid State Park for a lap around the 10 mile trail there.

My husband and I first went there over a year ago for a short hike when I had just gotten the lightweight trail runners that would change my ability to hike. I went again in the summer to try a trail with some weight in an old backpack and found that the old pack didn't fit so well, that hundreds of ticks crawling up my pant legs makes for an unpleasant hike, and that wasps in the outhouses (coupled with those ticks on nearly every piece of vegetation) meant that it was a good time to figure out a way to pee standing up. The trails here are wide and easy, and I wanted to come back when the ticks weren't out.

It was 26 degrees when I hit the trail. Dressing for hiking in cold weather can be a challenge because you don't want to get sweaty since that leads to chills. I decided on just a T-shirt and fleece jacket on top and lightweight wool long johns under my regular hiking pants. I was chilly for the first ten minutes or so but soon warmed up. Everything but my face was staying warm, so I pulled out a bandana to get my nose warmed up. I think I'm going to spend my REI dividend this year on a wool buff/balaclava to keep my face warmer and so I don't look like a bandit, but that dividend won't come in until most of the cold weather is gone for the year. 

Pyramid is a reclaimed mining site, so it's full of little lakes. In the summer, I saw fox, a snake, and deer, but today, I see only birds, though I hear a few deer crashing through the woods. This site is popular during hunting season, but I've never seen another hiker here. I saw mushroom hunters, a few fishermen, and a couple of equestrians during the summer, but today I saw just one person in a truck (maybe a ranger), and no one on the trails. There was another set of footprints from today on the shortest loop in the area, but it had been at least a few days, maybe more, since anyone else except deer had been on the longer loop.

Most of the trail surface was covered in leaves, with a few sections of rocks and gravel. The rain and sleet from the day before meant that everything on the trail was ice covered and crunchy. If bubble wrap were made out of ice and you stepped on it instead of popping it with your hands, that would be the kind of surface I walked on today. You could see every footprint in the crackled ice I broke with every step. I did slip and fall one time when I hit an icy rock. My left foot hit the rock and slid down behind and across my right foot in a move much like that of doing a crossover in speedskating, except I didn't get my right foot picked up in time to catch myself, so I went down on my hip but it wasn't too hard of a fall. I had a few falls like that when I was learning speedskating, so the fall felt familiar and I just popped back up and kept going.

There's not much to talk about scenery-wise in the winter when everything looks brown and dead, but this rock sort of looks like Minnesota if you ignore the upper left corner.

I don't spend a lot of time on breaks when it's this chilly out since that means breaking out another jacket to stay cool while I'm stopped, so the only time I sat down during the trek was for a 3-minute break to grab some snacks at a picnic table under a shelter (one of the few non-ice-covered surfaces I saw today), but I quickly decided to keep moving since I still felt pretty good. I was also trying out a new pair of shoes (Saucony Peregrins), so I wanted to beat up my feet pretty good today to see how they worked. The jury is still out on them, but they did ok. I'll test them out more before I review them here.

Pyramid has a number of walk-in camping sites that get almost no use as far as I can tell. This one is a bit over a mile from the regular campground, which also gets almost no use. I did an out-and-back to this furthest campsite to be sure I got a full 10 miles in since I think the regular loop is closer to 9 miles instead of 10.

The cold and lack of breaks started catching up to me in the last mile or so. I kept up a pretty good pace just to stay warm, but I was starting to drag and was ready to get back to my car. Thankfully, the last mile is easy and goes through an area with pine, so the trail is softer because of the needles.

This isn't a demanding trail, but I enjoy it for the solitude and because once you start the long loop, you're committed to doing the miles, so there's little temptation to bail out like I did at Pere Marquette last weekend. I'll try to come back here again before the ticks come out in force and/or use Permethrin on my clothes when I do come back.

February Goal: Walk 100 miles

My primary goal for February is to walk 100 miles.

All walking counts: street, treadmill or trail and with or without the pack.

50 trail miles done!

It looks like I've done 50 miles of trail since I started this blog, so that's a good start given the temps this winter. Yesterday, it was 60 degrees here, but the Polar Vortex is back and now it's 10 and will be 0 tonight, so I'm glad I got out yesterday.

Current temperature in Grand Marais, MN, near the northern end of the trail is -26, not counting wind chill from a 20 mph wind. Ugh. Extreme wind chills have shut down much of MN today.

I definitely don't miss the cold or darkness of Minnesota winters. In northern Minnesota, there are more than 15 hours of daylight during the longest days of summer, but only about 8 during the shortest days of winter. Long daylight hours in the summer means lots of time to cover miles, but the sun will come up around 5 a.m., so I'll have to get up early if I want to see many sunrises from the trail.

7-ish (?) mile hike: Eldon Hazlet State Park

After feeling down about yesterday's hike, I thought I should get right back on the trail, especially since temps were supposed to be in the 50s today but drop down near 0 later this week. However, I didn't feel like driving very far to find hills, so I thought I'd explore a state park over on Carlyle Lake.

Jeff and I first experienced Carlyle Lake on the first night of our bicycle tour in 2012. We'd left our brand new home just two weeks after moving there from Utah in an ill-fated attempt to ride our bicycles from home, around Lake Michigan, and back. That first day of our trip, we left later than planned. I was clearly out of shape and ill-prepared for midwestern humidity after three years of living in the arid west. The previous weeks had been filled with the usual relocation stresses, and I was coming down with a bad cold but it was 96 degrees when we got to Carlyle, and I was ready to be off the bike. We did find Dairy Queen that day, but we also found out about the misfortunes of trying to sleep in our tent while the RV just behind us decided to host a showing of Footloose by setting up a projector and a sheet hung on the side of the RV as a screen. Here is an account of the rest of that night...

Needless to say, my opinion of Carlyle Lake and the campers it attracts is not high. Additionally, the hiking trails are open only two days per week during two months of pheasant hunting in the park, so I'd been avoiding the place. However, I wanted something nearby that wasn't Silver Lake, which would be very muddy on this warm day, and that wouldn't be too challenging since my ego was bruised after yesterday's encounters with the cold wind at Pere Marquette, so I headed out to Carlyle.

Thankfully, almost no one was around. There were no impromptu showings of movies or other things to interrupt my time outdoors. There were still a couple of signs up saying that the trails were closed for pheasant season, but that was to have ended during the first week of January, so I headed out.

This park has a number of small loop trails, and the mileage on some of them seems to be a bit off. Either that or I hiked super fast for the first mile and a half. By the map, I did 8 miles, but I think it was really more like 7, so I'm going to say 7.

Early in the hike, I came to the Burnside Cemetery, where early pre-Civil War residents of the area are buried. A geocache box was near the cemetery.

Since I hadn't seen anyone yet, I decided that this place isn't half bad when there aren't annoying people around. There was a sign at the entrance saying that you couldn't bring in alcohol in containers larger than 1 gallon, so I doubt I'll come here when the campers and boaters are here, but when the lake is frozen, it's an ok place to visit. Most of the trails were covered in a thick layer of leaves, so the trails weren't too muddy, either, which was nice.

I thought this twisted stump looked like some swamp creature. Rawr!

After a few miles, I had looped back to the parking area where I took advantage of a nearby platform to enjoy a good snack in the warm sun. It was much more relaxing than my snack break yesterday since the wind wasn't buffeting me at every turn.

I then headed back out for another loop of about 3.5 miles. The two trails that made up this loop weren't as nice as the ones by the lake since they were muddier and often had plenty of these gumballs from Sweetgum trees littering the ground. Gumballs are pervasive in these parts, and they're kind of a pain to walk on because they roll and/or slide like loose gravel when you step on them. I just pretended like they were the rocks and roots of the Superior Trail and kept moving. I lost the trail a couple of times in the leaf litter before looping back to the parking lot, but I still had a nice walk in the woods on a day that felt more like April than January.