Isle Royale National Park
Trip Journal: June 11 – 18 2004
Windigo, Island Mine, Siskiwit Bay, Feltmann Lake (31 miles)
Boy Scout Venture Crew 13
Holy Family Church, 701-775-5310, Grand Forks, North Dakota
 

Day 1, Friday, June 11, 2004:  “The Adventure Begins” – Jason Lillibridge

A quarter to noon, I throw my last article of clothing into my pack and started to head out the door.  As I roll into the parking lot of Holy Family Church, the clock on the dash of the car hits noon.  During the past several weeks/months we have been planning this trip (7 scouts and 4 adults) and the plans have been: Pack trailer at noon and drive out of the parking lot at 12:30.  But as we load the trailer, we realize that we are missing a few people…. Jim and Jon Porter…. And we couldn’t really leave without those two since Jim is planning on pulling the trailer.  We tried contacting them several times, but we couldn’t get a hold of them.  Most of us ate lunch and ran home to collect a few things that we forgot.  Parents started leaving to get back to work.  Time ticked slow as we rested in the cool grass.  And finally at 1:30 p.m. Jim and Jon drive into the parking lot (exactly 1 hour late), once they rolled in the trailer was attached and pictures were taken, and without wasting any more time, we started our adventure.

The drive was also slow, and I fell asleep instantly.  Waking up to the van slowing to a stop… I opened my eyes to be staring at a gas sign that read $1.74 per gallon for unleaded ….. Wow…. Exciting…. Much cheaper than the $1.94 back home.  After a few minutes of asking questions, I found out that we were in Bemidji, Minnesota.  The short break was enjoyable… but we quickly all piled back into the cars to continue to Cloquet.  In Cloquet, we refilled gas and ate some food.  The gas station that we stopped at was full service ($1.71 cents per gallon), where the attendant filled the vehicle and washed the windows.  The choices for a fast food supper were McDonald’s or Super One grocery store.  The trip continues through Duluth with rain, lightning, and thunder.  Finally we pulled into the Grand Portage campsite at 10:30 – 11:00 o’clock ish (it took a few extra minutes while we got lost near the casino).  A few tents when up, but a lot of people slept in the vehicles because it will be a very early morning!!

Day 2, Saturday, June 12, 2004 – Bobby Dusso

12:02 a.m. – It’s raining.  Wake up call is at about 5:00 a.m.  I wake up every hour on the hour since 12:02 a.m.  Finally got up and changed clothes.  We ate breakfast, I had some apple cider.  Everyone made their hiking lunch sandwiches.  Then we weighed our packs again (40 pound pack limit on the ferry), and broke down camp.  At about 6:50 a.m. we left for the ferry (Voyageur II).  We arrived a little after 7:00 a.m. loaded our packs onto the boat and waited for it to leave.
About 8:00 a.m. we leave the dock for Isle Royale National Park (Michigan).  We went to the front of the boat to look out at Lake Superior.  It was really bouncy today with the wind…. Jordan fell down on the deck.  Then the Captain told us that we had to sit down or hold onto the railing.  A little later we went back inside and some people took naps for a little while or the rest of the ride.  We arrived at Isle Royale (Windigo) at a little before 10:00 a.m.  The Park Ranger (Lisa) gave everyone on the boat an orientation about how to act on the island, what to do, and what not to do.  Then at about 11:00 a.m. we had finished filling water containers (2 liters each plus an extra 6 liters for breakfast tomorrow), and started our 6.8 mile hike up Greenstone Ridge to Island Mine Campsite.  We got off to a rough start, needing to stop to fix packs.  Jim’s main buckle broke (had help from Don on this) and they mentioned something about the need to bring spare buckles and pack frame pins.  But we eventually we got started for real.  At about noon, we stopped to eat lunch.  A few people had already eaten their lunches and just sat and rested or took off extra clothing.

We had many other stops along the way for people to rest in old cedar trees, sugar maples, and large birch trees…. the hike was mostly uphill.  Tomorrow should be a lot easier though with a mostly downhill 4.3 miles to the Siskiwit Bay campsite on Lake Superior.  We arrived at camp all at different times (got a bit spread out on the trail), but the last of us got there around 4:30 p.m.  This campsite is situated on a hill with a steep ravine on both the uphill and down hill side… not what we were looking forward to climbing after a long uphill hike.  We all set up tents and rested for a little while, and then the dinner crew went to filter water.  About 6:45 p.m. everyone but Brandon and Jon (who ate in their tent) ate dinner around the campfire.  MRE’s aren’t half bad.  Then we went early to bed surrounded by old growth timber deep in the woods.

Day 3, Sunday, June 13, 2004 – Jordan Grasser

6:00 a.m. I wake up with my nose no more than two inches from the biggest spider I have ever seen.  I jumped out of bed and smashed it…. Needless to say I couldn’t fall back asleep.  When everyone woke up, I told all about it, but no one believed the spider was as big as I said it was until we found another one climbing on the outside of our tent.  From front to back, it was as long as a dollar bill is tall.

After camp was broke and we discussed key highlights of the trail down to Siskiwit Bay, we started hiking.  The hike was a lot easier and it seemed to be quicker going because of all the landmarks.  We also saw may signs of moose, some even fresh that day.  We also had some obstacles, like a very large tree across the trail backing up water into the trail.  We found a way across the stream by going up hill and crossing.  We hiked through the trees, past mine tailings and an abandoned well. We ate lunch about noon on the shores of Lake Superior… the wind was a bit cool but refreshing.

Lots of boardwalks through the swampy areas, and a couple of bridges to walk over along with the sand on the beach near the end of this trail.  When we got to camp, we all sat on the park service dock… while the adults slept on the dock.  Jon decided to go swimming in the 36 degree water, and afterwards crawled into a sleeping bag and slept while warming up for a few hours.  We all ate supper down by the bay.  After we ate some of us started to fish with little success.  I had a big fish follow my lure up to the surface, but it never took it.  While fishing, we noticed some dark rain clouds approaching from the northwest, so some of us brought our camping gear into three sided shelters that were at the campsite.  In the end the rain ended up missing us for the most part.  It seems like everyone is visiting us in our shelter and letting in mosquitoes.  I cannot wait to get back to Grand Forks and kill a couple of thousand of mosquitoes.

Day 4, Monday, June 14, 2004 – Jon Porter

As I wake up here in my tent, I look up and see a lot of mosquitoes between the tent and the rain fly.  I’m afraid to go out.  I think today is going to be a peaceful day considering the 10.8 mile hike tomorrow over Feltmann Ridge to Feltmann Lake campsite.  Today everybody can do what they want.  “Ski” said last night that he was going to bring his sleeping bag everywhere and sleep.  As I walk down to the lake, I can feel my legs… and they are sore, but I have to out-run the mosquitoes.  I’m down by the lake and I can see that Don is eager to get his cup of coffee.  Bobby ate his oatmeal.

A fishing boat is coming into the harbor (it didn’t stop).  We just ate lunch and it is starting to rain.  We also see two park service workers (man and woman) who hiked down from Feltmann Ridge Fire tower to drop off some gear and set up a couple of tents.  They are heading back to the fire tower…. We will probably see them heading this way on the trail tomorrow.  They are the first people we have seen since Saturday morning other than ourselves.

Jason, Jordan, Bobby all slept in a park service shelter (open with screens on one side) last night and so they let Jordan Green and Chris Laffen sleep in their tent last night.  Jordan and Chris left their door open in their first tent last night.  Now Jason, Bobby, and Jordan are taking down the tent that Jordan Green and Chris were in last night and moving it to the shelter.  Jordan Green and Chris have to move back into their old tent, and I can hear Jordan and Chris swatting mosquitoes in their tent.  Lunski was repairing a button that fell off his pants on the first day of the hike.  Now he is air freshing the tent with “right guard sport”.  Lunski and I are so bored today that we are resorting to being in our tents blowing whole apples pieces out of our mouths.  Now we are eating the apples we were trying to blow at the ceiling.  I went down to the beach and built dams with Bobby, Chris and Jordan.  A park service patrol boat from Rock Harbor dropped off three people who are going to survey trees in designated areas.  The girl who was with them didn’t look very happy to be here.  Lonnie Laffen was on the dock talking to the boat captain and would have certainly arranged a ride for his backpack to Feltmann Lake if he could …. No such luck.  Then we came back and had MRE dinners.  Some scouts from Michigan came into camp about 5:30 p.m., after hiking the Feltmann Ridge trail since 9:00 a.m. this morning.  They said they crawled up the ridge on their hands and knees… and that there were no mosquitoes once you get to the Fire Lookout Tower on the ridge.  They also said they are going 4 miles past Island Mine camp site after a one day rest… good luck… they all had 60 to 80 pound backpacks.  Now I am packing for tomorrow.

Day 5, Tuesday, June 15, 2004 – Chris Laffen

We got up at 6:30 a.m.  At 7:41 a.m. we are officially out of Mountain Dew.  Leaving at 8:00 a.m. we look ahead to the 10.8 mile Feltmann Ridge trail into Feltmann Lake ahead of us.  As we hiked down a fairly level three mile mining road, we saw the two park rangers that stopped by Siskiwit Bay yesterday.  We climbed a short uphill stretch (about 300 feet vertical) and got to an old falling down fire lookout tower in record time (about 10:15 a.m.).  Some people ate, then after 20 minutes of climbing on the pile of wood we were off.  About 500 yards, we got to a big tall fire lookout tower (Hmmmm….).  So the rest of us ate lunch, took pictures, blah, blah, blah.  Then we were off on the trail and saw a total of 4 moose so far this day.  We saw a cool waterfall along the trail, then a moose really close!  We got to a scenic overview on the far end of the ridge where we took our packs off and rested.  We had a very steep downhill stretch after this rest stop.  We got to camp at Feltmann Lake earlier than we thought – not a bad hike today.  We immediately started putting up our tents and pumping filtered water for breakfast tomorrow and the 8.8 mile hike back to Windigo.

Then we packed up our MRE supper and headed for Rainbow Cove beach on Lake Superior (about .8 miles).  We ate, slept a bit, and then on our way back we practically ran into another moose!  I took some pictures, then continued back to camp.  We got very bored not being able to have a fire at Feltmann Lake.  Jordan Grasser and Al went on a wild moose chase, and, oh wait; they said it is swimming in the lake (10 minutes later)!!  Wow that was cool! We got pictures, and then came back and got bored.  Only 8.8 miles left ……

….. Drawings of Moose standing and in the water, along with a bear climbing a tree appear in the original handwritten journal……..

  Day 6, Wednesday, June 16, 2004 – Jordan Green

Only 8.8 miles left…. We started out by eating lots of oatmeal and left as soon as we could…. looking forward to Mountain Dew.  There were a lot of tree roots in the trail and we were lucky not to have any one sprain their ankle.  Otherwise the rest part of the trek was quite easy.  Our packs are light with only one MRE left and no apples to eat.  My GPS was helpful with telling where we were on the trail until it ran out of batteries.

We came to the last ridge and were getting hungry.  We wanted to eat at the top, but that kept getting to be a longer distance than we expected.  Lunch came after we accidentally overshot the top of the ridge and had to come back about 200 feet uphill.  I could not have lasted any longer.  The day is too hot.  From where we ate lunch, we could see the big ridge we hiked yesterday.  It seems really far away.  I had tuna in tortillas with hot red pepper in it, and I could not have gone much longer without the food.  I have already drunk more water today than any other day.  The sun is hot today.  Luckily, I still have 1 ½ half liters of water left today.  When we left the ridge after lunch it was all downhill.

There aren’t as many roots to trip over, but Jim still did manage to trip and fall face first into the dirt (only his pride got hurt).  When we got to be able to see Washington Harbor, we started going at a really fast rate (Hi Ho, Hi Ho, there is Pop at the Store).  After a quick jog down the hill we were right on the harbor about 1.25 miles from Windigo (and pop)… everyone was going about 3 mph along the shore.  At the part along the harbor where we could see the Windigo dock in the distance, we became really determined.  When got to Windigo, we quickly drank some water out of one of the water faucets and then walked up the hill to the store.  Don bought us all pop (the store didn’t have Mountain Dew), and we sat there for a while before a short .3 mile hike to Washington Creek group campsite.  We all went and took 5 minute showers at Windigo, and then some of us went to the store and ordered sandwiches while the rest of us ate MRE’s.  I enjoyed the salami sandwich and Old Dutch potato chips.  We bought souvenirs from the National Park Service plus a 6% tax from Michigan for a total of 30% surcharge.

We came back to camp for a while and then went to the 8:00 p.m. Ranger talk about the value of Isle Royale National Park.  After that we looked around the visitor center that included the lense from the old lighthouse.  The lense is 9 feet tall and 7 feet wide (made in France in the early 1900’s).  We went back to camp and watch a fox walk right into our campsite.  We went to bed on the last night on Isle Royale ….. only .3 miles to go…

Day 7, Thursday, June 17, 2004 – Brandon Lunski

The long trek is done today. Jon and I woke up at 7:30 a.m., lay in our sleeping bags for a while longer and then decided to roll up our pads and sleeping bags.  When our packs were all packed, I went outside to hear Chris whining about someone taking his boot in the night.  As he looked around, somebody threw the boot back over on top of his pile of stuff, and then he found it.  Then we were lying in our tent, we took a look out the window and saw Jordan Green carrying around his sleeping bag.  We are waiting to get on the boat.  The 12:30 p.m. boat will be coming at approximately 11:45 a.m. today.  When the boat got to the dock everyone grabbed their packs and waited for them to let us on the boat (Voyageur II).

When they let us on the boat, Jason, Jordan, Bobby, and I went to the front section with a table so we could play cards.  As soon as we all got comfortable we started playing.  But, about 5 minutes after the boat got going we decided to go up top to see the harbor and sunken ship from the front of the boat.  We got back and played cards for about 45 minutes and then it looked like everybody was taking a nap or just resting their eyes.  By the time the boat stopped and let us off it was nearly 2:00 p.m.  We threw our packs in the trailer, and then drove to camp, setting up our tents.

We went to Grand Portage National Monument (a museum area with people dressed in historical clothes, cooking in old ovens, and making birch bark canoes) with rangers talking about the fur trappers and Ojibwa people.  We went into Grand Marais (35 miles) to have pizza.  We got done eating at about 6:00 p.m.  After we stopped at a local grocery store to buy some cereal and milk for morning, we left for Grand Portage State Park (right on the border with Canada).  There was an easy ½ mile walk down a paved trail and a nice view of the falls on the Pigeon River --- the reason for the Grand Portage.  When we got back to camp, we made a campfire, saw a black bear walking down the docks below us at the marina, laid back and relaxed as the night came to an end.
 

Day 8, Friday, June 18, 2004 – “The Trip Home” by Jason Lillibridge

As we woke up from our last night of camping outside in tents, most of us have thoughts of civilization…. Grand Forks dancing in our heads.  We crawl out of our sleeping bags during the early 6:30 a.m. wake up call, ate some cereal, and slid into the vehicles after we took down camp.  During the drive several people told stories about their experiences in the last week, while others slept or listened to music.

The long drive (440 miles) was broken up a bit with different stops to get out to sight see, stretch legs.  Some of the stops were Split Rock Lighthouse (you can see it for free if you are there before 10:00 a.m. when the historical society shuts the gates to the lighthouse), Gooseberry Falls, and Canal Park in Duluth to drop off one of the crew members with his parents and to get some lunch.  After a hour and half, we got back on the road.  Once past Duluth, the trip was pretty constant and straight forward, occasionally stopping for a gas refill or bathroom break.  Finally after a few hours we pulled into the Holy Family Church parking lot in Grand Forks, North Dakota (7:15 p.m.).

Everyone was happy to be home, and this trip which included over 30 miles of wilderness hiking and 40 plus pounds of gear on our backs will be a learning experience which we will all remember for a long time.

(C)Copyright 2004 Jason Lillibridge, Bobby Dusso, Jordan Grasser, Jon Porter, Chris Laffen, Jordan Green and Brandon Lunski