Day 24
Location: Jay Cooke State Park
Distance: 21 miles
Weather: foggy morning then sunny and warm!
Mood: Grateful for the trail & tired from the trek!
Last night we met a northbound thru hiker (who by the way gave me two slices of pizza, what a good guy) and spent the evening chatting at a picnic table between our campsites. He confided in us that he was pretty nervous about bears and was trying to be really careful with his food storage. We work hard at that too, but we assured him we hadn't seen any bears or recent signs of bears so far, and most seasoned SHT hikers told us it was unlikely to encounter one.
Well, we saw our first bears on the trail this morning! They scurried across our path through the fog about 150 feet away. First one then two more that looked a little smaller. A mama and cubs we thought... not anyone we wanted to meet much closer! After a pause, we cautiously continued up the trail trying to be loud and came across a woman walking her dog who said the mama growled at her before the woman got out of there quick. Yikes! I've never seen a bear while backpacking before so this was a neat first for me!
Today is bittersweet because it's our last full day on the SHT. We had a big day today: 21 miles and 3600 cumulative feet of elevation gain. Our toughest day yet by those metrics. The fog cleared out and sun began to shine as we climbed over Ely's peak, and the St. Louis river valley opened up below us. This whole section was like a reprise of what we experienced up north, the rocky scrambles, the scenic ridge tops, the heart pumping climbs. It was a little weird to look out and not see lake Superior, but I was really happy to experience this unexpected return of the SHT we came to know further up the North Shore. A few days ago I was pretty convinced that the right direction to thru hike this trail is northbound. We hiked south because of our plans to cross Wisconsin, but I had begun to feel like hiking sobo made our journey a bit anticlimactic. But after experiencing today, I'm feeling like it was the perfect end cap to our SHT journey and I'm really grateful for a reminder of some of the things that made this trail so special.
Over the weeks I've been working on optimizing an ice breaker question to make the most of the brief interactions we have with other hikers on the trail. I quickly abandoned questions about distance or duration (comes off too judgy), and then gave up on "did you see anything interesting today" (put on the spot, most people answer with some variant of no). Finally I arrived at one that seems to work: "What made you decide to do this hike?" Many of them said they had been coming to the North shore their whole lives and wanted to see it in a different way, or had hiked sections of this trail for decades but finally decided to hike it all. Some were finishing the journey in two weeks, some were completing it over the course of many years. Most were Minnesotans, and it was clear how much they love this trail. We came to love it too, and I feel privileged that we got to share it with them for a few short weeks.
Tomorrow we reach the end of our SHT journey and start the next phase on Wisconsin's North Country Trail. Thanks Minnesota for the adventure! And as we say in my home state of Wisconsin: Forward!
