The moon, which we didn't see till we were on our way home after the hike.

Us heading out down the trail in the dark.

Us at the end of the trail, still in the dark.

Moonlight Hike, sort of, at KEF:  Well, call it a learning experience.

We hadn't done it in a while, so maybe we were a bit rusty at this business of planning a moonlight hike.

We did the first two things right.  Well, three things.  Out of four.  We picked the perfect night weather-wise -- crisp and clear, ideal for beholding nocturnal celestial phenomena.  We were at least close, lunar phase-wise -- only about four days off from the full moon, but at least we got a good three-quarters of it.  And we picked a good place for the traditional ritual we in Chief Noonday Chapter observe when undertaking just about anything — we eat.

Fifteen people gathered at Duda's in Augusta, more or less at the appointed time, most of whom shared in delicious pizza or other comestible delights.  It was one of the best turnouts we'd had for any of our hikes in recent years.  The hiking group included Larry Pio, Mick Hawkins, Sylvia Wood, Ron Sootsman, Jeff Fleming, Josephine Miller, Chris Vreeland with his son and his nephew Joshua and Andrew, Mike Wilkey and two grandchildren Zachary and Samantha, and Steve and Josie Hicks.  Jeff's wife Mary also joined us for dinner.  Ultimately there were seventeen hikers.

Well fed, we headed out to the Hutchinson trailhead on Augusta Drive where we were joined by two more hikers, Charlie Broberg of the Kalamazoo Walkers, and Jim Bronson of the KBS staff.

We consolidated people into half the vehicles and convoyed up to the headquarters of the Kellogg Experimental Forest to begin the hike back to the Augusta Drive trailhead.

Did I mention that there were four things you need to take into account when planning a "moonlight" hike?  The fourth thing: the moonrise time.  Very important.  We missed that.  Pretty much completely.

Ron Sootsman (I think) took point and led the hikers down the trail in what proved to be a "starlight" hike.  Mick and Sylvia served as sweepers, bringing up the rear.  We stuck to the spirit of the thing and only used flashlights when we absolutely had to.  And it actually was quite a nice hike under the circumstances — the fodder of stories for years to come, no doubt.  That star-filled sky that opened up to us as we came out at the field north of the Hutchinson trailhead was truly a wonder to behold.

Joe Higdon, our hikemaster, had been held up and didn't make it to the Augusta Drive trailhead until after we'd left, so he hiked north from there, met up with the southbound group on the trail, and hiked back with us.

Our hike took a little more than an hour to complete, and we got back to the starting point around 9:20 or so — right about the time the moon began to rise....

Next year we'll try and achieve all four of those essential elements.  We're contemplating a nighttime hike in July at the Otis Audubon Sanctuary.  Stay tuned.

Our thanks to trail adopters Chris Vreeland and Jeff and Mary Fleming for having ensured ahead of time that the trail was in good shape for the hike.  And thanks to all who took part.

Mick Hawkins
  

November Hike-Workday — a Double Dipper:   Due to lots of people being overbooked last week on a gorgeous Fall day, we doubled booked this Saturday for both a hike and a workday.  Mother Nature wasn’t happy with us and arranged for a forecast of cold, wind, rain and snow.  Amazingly, we had a great turnout with ten of us meeting at Uncle Ernie’s Pancake House in Portage for breakfast, and Joe Higdon joining us at the trailhead.  Whoever chose Uncle Ernie’s for breakfast made an awesome suggestion.  We all needed a hike after breakfast!!

Hikers at Portage: (l-r) Larry Pio, Carla Verbrugge, Susan Bond, Melonie Curtis, Ron Sootsman, Larry Hawkins, Joe Higdon, Mike Wilkey, Steve Hicks.  Mick Hawkins took the picture.  Not available for the picture were Mary Armitage and Janet Schnell.

We dropped the cars off at the trailhead on the corner of Lovers Lane and Kilgore and in the process lost Mary Armitage and her friend Janet Schnell.  Still haven’t figured out how we did that! 
 

More pictures from today can be seen on our Photos page.

In any event, they showed up after we had left for the starting point at the Portage Library.  They hiked south 1½ miles and back while we hiked north from the Library, and we found a note when we arrived back at the Lovers Lane parking lot.

The rest of us started out from the Portage Library.  Carla Verbrugge and her friend Melonie quickly left us in the dust.  They were even out in front of Ron Sootsman, which takes some doing.  The trail is beautifully laid out in sweeping curves through woodlands connecting various small parks as part of the Bicentennial Parks system.  It is paved, well marked and well used, as we met a number of hikers and runners along the way.  It was really hard to realize that we were in an urban setting near major thoroughfares.

With Mick Hawkins, Larry Hawkins and Joe filling their traditional roles as “sweepers” (read that “slowpokes”), we hiked approximately 3.8 miles and arrived back at Kilgore and Lovers Lane.  The hikers left us there to plan out the workday.  As we were still stuffed from Uncle Ernie’s, the work crew, Steve Hicks, Mike Wilkey, Ron, Larry Hawkins, Larry Pio and Mick headed out to Fort Custer.
 

Steve Hicks looking a bit stunned at the mess that awaited us at Ft. Custer.  When we'd been there a week earlier, that tree had been upright like it was supposed to be, and our only task would be to move one end of the bridge up out of the creek and back onto the bank.

At Fort Custer, Jeff Fleming joined us. 

We headed back to the work site to discover that what had been billed as a reasonably easy task of pulling the bridge out of the creek and resetting it on the banks had over the week become very complicated.  A red oak had fallen and lay across our bridge, felling a couple other smaller trees as well.

As we were surveying our project, a couple of women and their dogs came hiking down the trail from the other side of the creek.  When they saw they couldn’t cross the bridge because we were busy clearing it, they sat down on a log, had a snack, and provided an audience and cheering section for our task.

One of the ladies was Grace Hutchinson, a North Country National Scenic Trail land-owner on whose property the Trail passes north from Augusta Drive.

With Ron and Larry Pio on chain saws, we eventually cleared our way to the bridge and cut the oak into sections, floated them to the bank, and wrestled them up onto the banks.  In a spirit of true wilderness engineering, we used a combination of levers, pries, log rollers, brute strength and a more modern “comealong” to lift and pull the bridge out of the creek and reset it on the banks.  The ladies and their dogs then crossed the bridge and were on their way.

Larry Hawkins stares in amazement at the "pick-up-sticks" collection of fallen aspen left on the Trail for us by some very busy beavers.

We hiked back to the ridge over the wet lands to survey the latest beaver mischief.  Our trail wanders through what was once a pretty stand of poplar on the top of the ridge.  Now, courtesy of the beavers, it goes through a pile of “pick up sticks,” a few of which sport blue blazes.

Larry Pio and Steve stayed on to clear some of the downfall that was easy to get at.  Many of the trees, however, were leaners or “widow makers” which would take more expertise and planning to remove.  Ron Sootsman, our certified sawyer, was out of gas from the bridge project.  So the “widow makers” would be a project for another day.

Mick and Jeff went on to Kimball Pines and the Ott Biological Preserve to re-set a couple Carsonite posts, and Mick cleared yet another small downed tree at Kimball Pines.  Your President went home to type this report ... and take a nap.

Thanks to all the hardy souls who showed up to hike in spite of the threat of rain and snow.  Special thanks to Steve Hicks, Larry Pio, Jeff Fleming, Mike Wilkey and Mick Hawkins for extending their day for what proved to be a wet, heavy job at Fort Custer.

Larry Hawkins   
  

New news blog for North Country Trail:   Those of you who have missed the Joan Young's continually updated news links on the North Country Trail Association's home page will be glad to hear that she's back at it again.  She has come out with a successor in the form of a blog dedicated to news of interest to all of us who care about the North Country National Scenic Trail.  Check it out here.  And for future use we've added a standing link to our Trail Log Index box above.  

Chief Noonday Member 2009 Hiker Challenge:   In the First Quarter issue of the Chief Noonday Chapter Newsletter, editor Larry Pio has issued a challenge to Chapter members.

Larry says, "While not officially endorsed by the CND leadership, I am throwing out the gauntlet to see who in our Chapter can hike the most miles on the North Country Trail in 2009.  We will publish the top ten hikers each quarter, as information is provided.  At the end of the year, the hiker with the most miles might get his name on the Chief Noonday Hiker Challenge Cup."

Larry's rules are pretty simple so far:
●   You must be a member of the Chief Noonday Chapter at some time during the year.
●   Only North Country National Scenic Trail miles can be counted.
●   Any segment can only be counted once during the year.  (For example, Trail Adopters can only count their segment one time.  Sorry.)
●   Report your segment mileage and segment ID to Larry Pio in person, or via email, or by postal mail to: 2409 Woody Noll, Portage, MI 49002.

As a bonus, if you hike more than 200 miles on the North Country Trail, lifetime total, you will be listed on the NCTA web site as a “Hiker of Note.” 

Which raises the question: Do we have 10 hikers who can out-hike Charles Krammin?
 

State of the Trail — 2008:   Chief Noonday Chapter president Larry Hawkins recently filed Chief Noonday's State of the Trail report for 2008 to the North Country Trail Association headquarters in Lowell.

Click here to see an illustrated version of Larry's report.  Be sure to click on the images to see them in a larger perspective.

Chief Noonday shines in NCTA's 2008 Annual Appeal:  The interim report on how NCTA's 2008 Annual Appeal is going shows that Chief Noonday Chapter leads all of the other NCTA chapters in Total Dollars Donated and Number of Donors who responded.

Good work, Chief Noonday!

If you missed a chance to make your contribution, you can do it through the NCTA Web site.  Mention that you are donating to the NCTA 2008 Annual Appeal (and it would be nice to mention too that you are a Chief Noonday member...).

We'll let you know the final results when we get the final report.
 

Yankee Springs trail re-route approved!   Charles Krammin, the initiator and Chief Noonday's moving spirit behind the effort to move the North Country National Scenic Trail between Hall Lake and Norris Road away from the horse trail, received notification today from Andru Jevicks that the DNR has approved the proposed re-route.

Andru is the DNR Park Supervisor for the Yankee Springs Recreation Area.

The new re-route not only will permit walking on a much better trail tread but will open up a lovely area of Yankee Springs to the view and enjoyment of hikers.  Some pictures can be seen via the links below.

In his communication to Charlie, Andru said in part, "I am happy to report that I was finally able to convince the Department of the importance and the need of the proposed re-route on the North Country trail here at Yankee Springs.  ... [W]e finally have the approval to go ahead with this re-route as soon as the weather breaks and materials are procured. I appreciate your hard work and dedication on this project.  Without it and your valuable input it would not have been possible."

Andru cited a the new master plan, the 2009-2019 Strategic Plan for the Parks and Recreation Division of the Department of Natural Resources, which must be established before any other changes or improvements are made.  But we have the go-ahead for this particular project.  The DNR is inviting the public to comment on the new final draft 2009-2019 Strategic Plan, which is available for download.

See our Trail Log report of a hike we took last June with Andru over the then proposed re-route.  And see Charlie's account of the hike.

Our thanks go out to Andru Jevicks, the DNR officials involved, and particularly to Charlie Krammin for all his initiative and hard work on this project.
 

Yankee Springs trail re-route flagged:  What a grand day Saturday was for a workday!  Charlie Krammin hosted breakfast at the Hastings Big Boy.  Mick and Larry Hawkins, Steve Hicks, Jeff Fleming and Ron Sootsman all packed in a standard Chief Noonday nutritional breakfast, and then we headed out to Hall Lake where we met Marcia Mellen, trail adopter for the Hall Lake to Norris Road section of the NCNST.

Our goal today was to definitively mark the route for the Yankee Springs Recreation Area reroute which would take us off the horse trail in the YSRA.  Charlie Krammin had scouted out the route before and worked diligently with Andru Jevicks, DNR Park Supervisor for the YSRA, to get the reroute approved by the DNR Parks Division in Lansing.  This was no small feat as there is currently a moratorium on new trail building.

This week's rain had done away with most of the snow, and the overnight freeze gave us a nice icy crust on which to walk where there was still snow on the ground.  Marcia got an early start on clearing the trail pathway, while the rest of the crew fine-tuned the route, marked it with ribbon flags, and placed a few markers where eventually Carsonite posts with route and interpretive information would be placed.

The route is now well marked with a mix of blue and some pink ribbon from where the trail currently intersects with the horse trail south of Hall Lake to where it intersects with the horse trail west of the Little Mac bridge.  The new route is very woodsy with moraines and soup bowls. We marked several potential scenic way points where hikers might want to haul their cameras out of their packs — or stop for a snack.

After the trail was well marked, Mick and Larry then backtracked the trail from Norris Road to Gun Lake Road to GPS it for Matt Rowbotham, NCTA's cartographer and GIS expert at the Lowell office.  The hike from Hall Lake to Norris Road by the reroute was now 1.51 miles according to Larry's GPS — 1.78 miles according to Mick's.

Although it is still unimproved trail, it is not bad walking, and I would invite any of you to go out and walk the reroute as it is now well marked.  As you will see, if you walk it, we are going to have a lot of work to do clearing the way and benching into the hillsides. It is going to be a sweet trail when we finish it.

Thanks to all who volunteered today.

Larry Hawkins
President — Chief Noonday Chapter of the NCTA

To get an idea of where the reroute will lie, check out the blue line on the following, courtesy of Google™ Maps:
●   satellite image
●   terrain map
●   road map
 

Yankee Springs trail re-route maps:  Here is a somewhat more sophisticated way of visualizing the track of the proposed re-route of the North Country National Scenic Trail through the Yankee Springs Recreation Area between Norris Road and Hall Lake.

Produced utilizing an on-line service GPS Visualizer it allows you to see the trail track overlaid on several types of maps and aerial images.  (Thanks to Matt Rowbotham, GIS and cartography guru of the NCTA national staff, for pointing the Webmaster in the right direction.)

You can also lighten the underlying layer so you can more easily visualize details on the ground.  And you can zoom in or out and drag the map/image around in every which direction.

Once the Webmaster collects the data and figures out how to do it, we'll add waypoints along the track showing the various intersections with other trails and roads plus the boardwalk, the Little Mac bridge, and points of interpretive interest.

Once we have included all the desired data we'll provide a PDF version of the map which you could print out on your home computer's printer and take with you on the trail.

And once we've totally got the hang of this, we'll be adding maps of other segments of the Trail, such as the river walks through Homer, Albion and Marshall and the Trail through Fort Custer and the Kellogg Biological Station — just for starters!

Click here to go to the YSRA re-route map page.
 

Spring hike in Yankee Springs:  We were blessed with another beautiful day for our monthly chapter hike.  It started out brisk in the mid-twenties, but we would be shedding layers later on the trail.
 

A "GPS" moment

As per usual, breakfast was at the Hastings Big Boy with Charlie and Verle Krammin hosting and Mick and Larry Hawkins, Ron Sootsman and Mike Wilkey doing a lot of eating.

We gathered at the Hall Lake Access site where we met up with Chris Vreeland, Kevin and Janet Boniface and daughter Jordan.  As everyone was planning on doing the whole loop, we all moved down to the west Norris Road trailhead (Yankee Bill’s Inn) where we met Eric Longman and Larry Pio.

Cleverly standing directly beneath the "tree with no beginning."

Charlie gave a brief rundown on the sites that we would see along the way, and Larry Hawkins reviewed the efforts that brought about the approval of the new Yankee Springs Recreation Area trail reroute that we would be hiking today.

Stopping for a breather to let the slowpokes catch up

We hiked the reroute (the green track in the map above) up to Hall Lake where we accessed the horse trail and the soon to be “Old” NCNST route (red track on the map above) and headed back to Norris Rd. 

The horse trail, as usual was miserable, but since the ground was still frozen, it was a little easier than usual, although the frozen ruts were still a challenge. 

Wildlife was limited to Canada geese and sandhill cranes providing background music to the hike. We did meet some other hikers coming from the other directions, but I don’t think they qualified as wildlife.

When we got back to the Norris Road site, Ron Sootsman was already gone heading out for another spot to hike back. He seems real serious about putting in the miles for the Chief Noonday Challenge Cup.  Remember to contact Larry Pio with your hiking miles on the NCT since January 1, 2009. 

You can only count a specific stretch of trail once, which has our Webmaster in a funk because he has done the “Yankee Bill Loop” multiple times in his efforts to master his new GPS and get the interactive maps up on the web site. Check that out too, it’s really neat!  (Click on the satellite image above.)

Larry Hawkins
President - Chief Noonday Chapter of the NCTA