Superior Hiking Trail Wrap-Up

Yours truly, all but modeling for Superior Wilderness Designs. Admittedly, their Long Haul 40 is a pretty flawless pack.

With the trail still fresh in the memory, I thought a rapid-fire review of some gear and planning decisions might be of use if you’re thinking about the SHT or another long hike in the near future. So here goes:

5-star gear

• Tarptent Aeon Li. Could not imagine a better shelter for the weight—bombproof and so many clever design decisions (magnets??) at only a pound. For an in-depth review, check out what Cam Honan has to say.

• Superior Wilderness Designs DCF Long Haul 40 pack. Likewise, beyond reproach or suggestions for improvement.

• Montbell Rain Trekker jacket. A few ounces heavier than the lightest rain shells, but feels very stout and has big pockets and pit zips for versatility. Mags has a nice review.

• Superior Fleece hoodie, aka the Minnesota Melly. Comfy, durable, odor-resistant, chic. Purchased from Great Lakes Gear Exchange in Duluth (go there!).

• Trail Designs 700mL caldera-cone-style cook system. Perfect for one person cooking once a day, and super light even with fuel weight thrown in (I counted on 25 mL yellow HEET per boil and it was more than enough). Stored the fuel in Listerine travel-size bottles.

• Ursack Minor food bag. Kept the squirrels and chipmunks out, as it has for 5,000+ miles now. Just don’t do something stupid like hang it in a tree, and the bears won’t get into it either.

4-star gear

• Western Mountaineering Flylite sleeping bag. Zipper is finicky, thin 10d fabric doesn’t resist moisture well. Would fare better in an arid climate, but northern MN ain’t that. Still ridiculously light and compact for the (claimed) 34F temp rating.

• Altra Timp shoes. Comfortable, surprisingly durable, but resulted in identical blisters on top of my big toes, which many other reviewers have noted. Clear design flaw.

• Black Diamond Distance Carbon FLZ trekking pole. Perfect except for the foam handle, which isn’t as kind to the skin as cork would be. As those Mainers back in 2011 told me, “You can’t beat the feel of the real coahhk. It just don’t feel right with the rubbah.”

• Gossamer Gear waterproof pack liners. One picked up a quarter-sized hole somehow, one stayed fully intact. Still quite durable and waterproof through some awful rain.

2-star gear

• Sawyer Squeeze with Platypus SoftBottle as a dirty water bag. It takes an extremely deft touch, or just blind luck, to get the threads to seal flush when screwing a filter onto a Platypus; most of the time it leaks. A better dirty water bag would’ve been a CNOC Vecto but I forgot to bring mine. I refuse to use the Sawyer-provided dirty water bags because they’re so flimsy and hard to fill in a shallow stream.

My full gear list for this hike is here if you’re really really curious what else I was carrying.

Planning

For planning and navigation I saw no reason to use anything beyond the SHTA Databook and an offline Google Map of northeastern MN on my iPhone, and that was more than enough. The databook was only seriously remiss on mileage once, at the Gooseberry-Gitchi Gami State Trail roadwalk, but that’s a situation that is in flux so I can’t be too critical about that. The SHTA’s website has all the resupply planning info you need. I sent a box to Cove Point Lodge in Beaver Bay and one to Sawtooth Outfitters in Tofte; both had only kind and helpful folks working there!

I understand why hiking southbound is easier logistically, but northbound sure has a more rewarding conclusion. Everything between the Encampment River and Martin Road toward the southern end of the trail is very uninspiring, and that’s the most charitable way I can phrase it. If considering a thru-hike of the SHT, I’d research shuttle options (look up Harriet Quarles on the Facebook page) to see if a nobo hike is feasible to you.

Cell reception was hit and miss, mostly miss in the last several days up north. I have Verizon.

If you stumble on this and have any further questions, ask away in the comments!

My feet, with the identical blisters on the top of each big Toe base. A calling card of the altra Timp shoes, according to a lot of reviewers on altra’s website.

Superior Hiking Trail Day 13: Sunday, September 6

Finished the SHT (mile 297.8), walked 17.1 miles today

Awoke to sunshine instead of the expected clouds, and instead of scrambling out of camp as fast as possible like usual, decided to sit around the campsite benches having a lazy breakfast with my new frens. Some of the other people at the site, whose names I never caught, had broken camp at first light, but in their haste (“Do not be hasty!” - Treebeard) they left their hammock straps dangling on the trees! That’s going to be a fun realization later, especially since they plan to be out for three weeks on a sobo thru-hike ...

The Hellacious Overlook. Seems alright to me?

On the move by 8am, there was a spring in my step and for the first twelve miles I stopped only once, at a spot my guidebook inexplicably listed as “Hellacious overlook” (gems from elsewhere in the databook include “Spur trail to mediocre view” and “Too many stairs”). There were several friendly chit-chats with the southbounders I kept running into, some of whom had just started thru-hike attempts and looked entirely too clean and happy. I wanted to wag a gnarled finger at them and say, “You kids! The mud, roots, swamps, overgrowth, rain and lack of views will grind you down soon enough!” but I really resent it when people are negative on the trails (“you are allowed to complain out loud once per trail” is a rule I try to abide by) so I held back. And at any rate, on the balance of things I’ve had a pleasant time out here, with the only struggles coming from decisions I made to be alone and to push miles alone and take no breaks—if you don’t do dumb shit like that, and you have/make friends, and you don’t get rained on TOO often, you’ll probably have a great time on the Superior Hiking Trail.

Up in the thin air. Debated bringing supplemental oxygen, ultimately decided against it.

Anyhow. With six miles to go, I passed the highest point on the SHT, at a whopping 1829 feet MSL, in the middle of a forest. With three miles to go, the trail was inundated with shin-deep mud and standing water for 50 yards or so—no way to avoid it, no bog bridges, no nothing. It was a fitting parting gift from a trail that was never far from mud (also a nice welcome for the sobos). With one mile to go, I passed the trailhead parking lot with Dana’s car in it, my ticket out of the woods, and with zero miles to go I reached the trail’s northern terminus at the 270-Degree Overlook, just a whisker away from the Canadian border. It’s about as good of a panoramic as you’ll get in northern MN, and I commend whoever decided to end the trail at that spot. I was lucky enough to avoid the forecasted rain all day, although it did sprinkle as I signed the register with my usual Tennyson thing, making the ink all splotchy. After that there wasn’t much to do but schlep back to the car, hope it started (it did!), and bring it back to Duluth. On the way I picked up Dana and Barley in Lutsen, where we stopped for dinner and I consumed a big slutty double cheeseburger with cheese curds as my celebration meal. Tomorrow I clean up, tie up loose ends and figure out what the hell is next!

One last middle finger from the trail (or the first of many, if you’re southbound). A Nice stretch of slurpy splashy mud three miles from the terminus.

Superior Hiking Trail Day 12: Saturday, September 5

Tenting at the South Carlson Pond campsite (SHT mile 280.7), walked 24.6 miles today

Indulgently slept in and did not start hiking until 8am, at which point the sun was shining bright and the air felt almost ... warm? What a funny concept. The trail rolled cheerfully through the woods and passed a plethora of creeks and rivers and adjacent campsites in the first five miles or so. After six miles, it arrived at the heralded 1.4-mile-long “lake walk” along the shore of Lake Superior, which no fewer than three sobos had told me, animatedly, to skip because of how frustrating it is to walk in loose pebbly sand for any distance, let alone a mile and a half. Once I got to the lake, I sat for a break in the sunshine and to purify my feet in the waters, but even in the 20-yard stroll across the beach down to the water I could see exactly what those people had meant about it being tough sledding. With my break complete, I elected to return to the road paralleling the shore, MN 61, and walk along that instead. Not the greatest alternative, especially not with holiday weekend traffic, but I felt at peace with my decision to skip the lake walk, however appealing its symbolism is.

The southern end of the lake walk, which i passed on in an affront to trail pUrists everywhere. As a teenage anakin skywalker once said, “i don’t like sand.“

Once back in the woods, I could barely think and I felt my physical fitness lagging—I ultimately chalked it up to an especially intense midday lull but other explanations did cross my mind, like: I have covid and this is its first salvo. I have giardia again and ditto. I lactosed myself somewhere in the past 12 hours (what did I eat?? Was it the Grape Nuts?). The sun and brightness on the beach made my body think it was nighttime once I was back in the forest. I shouldn’t actually be walking 24 miles on back to back days. All nonsense of course, except maybe that last one. The point is that I walked most of the afternoon in a mental and physical fog at odds with the sunshine around me, and barely remember a thing about it. I do recall an absolute shock to the system when I got to the parking lot of C.R. Magney State Park, after hours alone in the woods, and suddenly there were about 10,000 people around. I donned my mask and endured hordes of oblivious disease vectors on a trail I’d never heard of til today, the half-mile or so to Devil’s Kettle Falls on the Brule River.

Devil’s Kettle Falls on the Brule River in Magney State Park. Cool spot, way too crowded on a saturday for this lone sheep’s liking.

Once that crowd thinned out and I could release my breath, the last nine miles or so were made manageable by there being three miles of unpaved roadwalks interspersed among them (roadwalks always being faster than trail walks, especially on the SHT, and dirt roads being easier on the feet than paved). Arriving at this campsite at the golden hour, it initially seemed like it might be too crowded, but I found a space for my tent wedged in near some hammocks, and after getting to conversing it turned out that everyone around was great company. There were ... a lot of names that I didn’t catch, but they might be reading this blog. Drew! I remember Drew. Sorry about the rest though. At any rate, it was nice to have my last full day on the trail be a sunny warm one, and my last night to be spent in good society. Tomorrow it’s only 17.1 miles to the terminus, but there’s plenty of rain and storms in the forecast ...