>> Today we are pleased to
introduce Melanie Radzicki
McManus as a part of the
Wisconsin Historical Museum's
History Sandwiched In
lecture series.
The opinions expressed today are
those of the presenter and are
not necessarily those of the
Wisconsin Historical Society
or the museum's employees.
Melanie Radzicki McManus has
worked as a news reporter at a
Green Bay radio station, as a
press secretary at the Wisconsin
State Capitol, and as editor of
two local publications.
Since 1994, McManus has
worked as a freelance writer
and editor, specializing
in travel and fitness.
She has won numerous awards
for her writing, most notably
prestigious Lowell Thomas
Gold and Grand awards
for her travel journalism.
Her book, "Thousand-Miler:
"Adventures Hiking
the Ice Age Trail,"
was recently published
by the Wisconsin
Historical Society Press.
Here today to discuss and share
stories from the Ice Age Trail,
please join me in welcoming
Melanie Radzicki McManus.
[applause]
>> Thanks for coming today.
I'm really excited to be
here because I love the
Ice Age Trail, and
I'm excited to share
everything I know about
it with all of you.
To start with, I'm going to talk
a little bit about the history
of the trail and our National
Scenic Trail System to give you
a little bit of a background
because if you're going to do
any hiking, it's just really
helpful to know how the trail
came about, what it really is,
how it fits into the
National Trail Systems Act,
and how it's administered.
So, first of all,
where the trail goes.
This is the Ice Age Trail.
It's roughly 1100 miles long.
It is about two-thirds finished.
So, today, it's about
650 miles of signed trail
and about 350 miles of what
they call connecting roads.
These are areas where they're
hoping to get land in the future
for the trail, but they
don't have it secured yet.
So the Ice Age Trail Alliance,
which is the governing body for
the trail, has maps
available where they show
connecting road
routes where you can
walk from the end of one
trail segment to the next.
So if you want to do what's
called a through-hike, which is
hiking the entire trail, it is
possible, but you will be hiking
two-thirds on trail and
a third on road routes.
The western terminus, to the
left, is in St. Croix Falls
in Interstate State Park, which
incidentally was Wisconsin's
first state park, and it
opened in 1900 or 1901.
And on the eastern side,
it is in Potawatomi State Park
in Sturgeon Bay.
The trail roughly starts, if you
look going from the west
to the east, it starts
in St. Croix Falls
and goes to the Antigo area.
Then it loops down and goes
all the way to Janesville,
which is the southernmost point,
and then it goes up, as I said,
to Potawatomi State Park.
And the route is roughly
tracing the terminal moraine
for the last glacial.
Now, I'm going to get back to
the Ice Age Trail in a minute.
I'm going to talk a
little bit now about
the National Scenic Trails,
where they are
and what they are.
So, sometime in the 1950s and
1960s, researchers, scientists,
legislators were all talking
about how Americans were working
really hard, it was post-World
War II, but they needed
to take some time
for recreation.
And they were starting to learn
how good it was for people to be
outside and in nature,
how healthy that was for you,
for your body, for your mind.
And at that time we had
already started building
a lot of the national parks.
Those were started in the early
1900s with Teddy Roosevelt.
But a lot of the big national
parks for Midwesterners,
unfortunately, were out far west
with Yosemite and Glacier
and Yellowstone,
Acadia in the east.
So the researchers and
scientists and congressmen
said let's start
developing some trails
that people can get outside.
Walking was becoming popular.
And so they decided to come up
with three types of trails
that could be developed:
National Scenic Trails,
National Cultural Trails,
and National Historic Trails.
So in 1967, Congress passed the
National Trails System Act
that said let's get some
of these trails out there,
and let's get some Americans
out in the outdoors.
Now, at that point in time,
in 1967, America's very first
long distance trail was
already in existence.
And that is the Appalachian
Trail, which I want to try
and point here, if I can find
my little... There we go.
Okay, so here is the
Appalachian Trail.
It starts in Springer
Mountain, Georgia,
or that's the southern terminus, and it goes about 2100 miles up
to Mount Katahdin in Maine.
That trail was developed
in the 1920s and 1930s.
And so it's considered
the granddaddy
of our national trails.
Another early trail, which some
of you might be familiar with
from the popular book and movie
"Wild," by Cheryl Strayed,
is the Pacific Crest Trail.
And this goes up from,
through California, Oregon,
and Washington, from
Mexico to Canada
on the Sierra Nevada's Cascades.
And the third biggy is the
Continental Divide Trail,
also which goes from
Mexico to Canada on the
Continental Divide,
where the rivers on the east
flow into the Atlantic
and the rivers to the west
flow into the Pacific.
So in 1967, the Appalachian
Trail was already built,
the Pacific Crest was
probably about 90% finished,
so they petitioned Congress
and were designated
our first two
National Scenic Trails.
Now, they didn't get to become
a National Scenic Trail
just because they petitioned,
just because they're long,
or just because they're pretty.
A National Scenic Trail
is a pretty difficult designation to receive.
You have to have
something significant
about your trail to America.
In the case of the
Appalachian Trail,
it ran along the
Appalachian Mountains,
which is a significant mountain
range in North America.
And similarly with
the Pacific Crest.
You know, the Sierra Nevada's
Cascades are significant.
And the Continental
Divide, again,
is a very significant formation.
Now, the Ice Age Trail and
the North Country Trail
were the two next
ones in 1980 to get
designated a National
Scenic Trail.
And we were able to get that
designation, again, because our
trail is tracing the edge of the
glacier's last terminal moraine.
And not just that, but one
thing, I knew we had a lot
of glacial formations in
Wisconsin, but I did not know
until recently that we
are considered to have
some of the very best
in the entire world.
So that's a very cool thing.
The North Country Trail
is up here.
It goes from North Dakota
up to New York.
It's 4600 miles long,
and it's the longest of our
National Scenic Trails.
And a tiny bit, about 120 miles,
of it runs through Wisconsin
north of the Ice Age Trail.
So that was 1980.
In 1983, the Florida Trail,
down here,
came on board,
and the Natchez Trace.
And then, in 2009,
the last few came on.
There's the Arizona Trail here,
Pacific Northwest Trail up here,
Potomac National Heritage Trail,
and this tiny little guy
that I'm going to be
hiking this fall,
the New England
National Scenic Trail.
It's the shortest at 215 miles.
So from 215 to 4600, these are
our 11 National Scenic Trails.
Only three of them are
only within one state.
Ice Age Trail is one of them,
and then the Arizona Trail
and the Florida Trail.
And I just want to take one
minute to say one thing I really
hope anyone that hears me talk
is going to come away with a
real appreciation for what a
treasure this Ice Age Trail is.
I mean, it's not just ours, it's
everyone's in America's, but
it's all in Wisconsin and from
being a travel writer for so
many years and working with a
lot of editors and people on the
coasts, everyone always talks
about the Midwest is a flyover
zone and there's nothing good
in the Midwest and it's a
boring place and
blah, blah, blah.
And I think somehow, this is my
own theory, I think somehow when
you hear that all the time, over
and over your whole life,
that the Midwest is hicks and
all that, I don't want to say
you believe it but you
can look at something
like the Ice Age Trail
and say, well, it's just a
trail, we don't have mountains,
it can't be that great,
we're not the coast,
but yes, it is great.
Yes, it is cool.
It doesn't matter that it
doesn't have mountains.
You're going to walk across some
things that feel like mountains
and that are very
phenomenal glacial remains.
And we really need
to be proud of this.
We really need to talk about it,
use it, help develop it,
whatever.
It's a huge status symbol,
if you will.
So that's my little
spiel on that.
Now, back to the trail itself.
How did our Ice Age
Trail get started?
Well, there was a man named Ray
Zillmer, who I tried to get his
picture for you last
night three or four times
and it kept crashing my laptop,
so I gave up.
But he was a lawyer
out of Milwaukee.
He also was an avid hiker and
mountaineer, and he and his son
actually climbed a peak
in the Cariboo Range
in British Columbia that
no one had ever hiked.
So there's a peak named
Zillmer Peak out there.
But he had hiked all
around the world.
He actually started some of the
trails in Kettle Moraine in,
I believe, the 1930s-1940s.
He was very much keeping a watch
as the Appalachian Trail was
being developed and when all
this research was coming out in
the '50s about the benefits
of people being outdoors.
And he kind of ended up having--

He had very strong
opinions about this.
He thought people needed
definitely to be out
and recreating in the outdoors.
He thought people should not
have to drive, spend their whole
vacation driving to the west
coast or the east coast to hike.
He thought everyone should
spend no more than half a day
driving somewhere and be able
to get into the outdoors.
He also thought a lot of
the trails, especially the
Appalachian Trail, were trying
to pull people away from
civilization and keep you in the
wilderness as long as they could
before you'd need to resupply,
before you'd have to be
dropped back into a town.
He didn't agree with that.
He had hiked a lot in
England, and he loved
the way the trails there just
kind of meandered around
and regularly would
dip into a town,
and, oh, you could have lunch
and then you'd hike some more
and, oh, here's another town,
I can stay overnight.
He thought that was great.
It was convenient for the hiker,
and it really brought together
the communities with the trail.
So he initially thought
let's do a park,
a National Park in Wisconsin.
He knew about our
glacial remains.
And he thought let's put it,
you know,
going around the
terminal moraine.
And as you can see here, it's
picture this ribbon of parkland
going through the state.
That's what he was picturing.
He thought there'd be hiking in
it, but it would be parkland
so you could just see all this.
And he talked to the National
Park Service about that,
and they said you are crazy,
how in the world
could we administer
something like that?
Most of their parks or all of
their parks are pretty much
a postage stamp kind
of mass of land.
They said we cannot
do that, no way.
So they nixed it, and then,
unfortunately, in 1960 Ray died.
But he had already been working
with plenty of people who were
excited about the idea of
some kind of something
with our glacial remains.
So I'll just kind of fast
forward this part, but during
the '60s and it ended up
becoming morphed into the idea
of a long-distance trail.
So then the National Trail
Systems Act had passed in the
'60s, so the group of people
that had been actively working
for the last 10 or 20
years on this idea
grabbed a chunk of trail
in Kettle Moraine.
It was actually, already
developed because the forest was
already developed, and it was
called the Glacial Trail
because it was one of the
trails there that happened
to go along around
the terminal moraine.
So they said this is going to be
the seed of our Ice Age Trail.
So they started that in the
'70s, and then, as I mentioned
before, 1980 Congress said, yes,
this is a special enough place
to be a National Scenic
Trail, keep going.
So they just were
off and running.
But there was a problem
almost right away.
As things go with politics or
any group, people started

fighting, and they had
two trains of thought.
One group of trail developers
said let's just get trail
on the ground as
fast as possible.
So if that means we're going to
strike handshake agreements
with people, that's fine.
And what that means is
you're Farmer John
and you say I don't want to sell
you my land for your trail,
but you can hike on it, sure go ahead, and shake hands on it.
And another group of people
said, well, yeah, you can get
trail really quickly that
way, but what happens,
it's not permanent
and you never know,
what happens if we
lose that trail?
And they said don't worry about
it, it's just important first
to get this trail developed,
we can go back later
and find permanent agreements.
So a bunch of people started
going out and striking all these
handshake agreements, and the
other group was working to try
and purchase land and have it
or get permanent agreements.
Well, just what the one side
feared started happening.
People would say-- Farmer John,
I'm going to kill you off, sorry.
Farmer John dies and his kids
get the land and they say
we don't want a trail here
or we want to sell it
and we don't want to
sell it with a trail.
Or maybe Farmer John loves the
hikers the first five years
and someone comes through
and litters one day
and he says forget this.
And so a National Park Service
employee told me for the first
10 or 15 years they were working
on the trail, maybe even a
little longer, she said we just
kept growing and reseeding.
Every time we'd gain trail,
we'd lose trail because these
handshake agreements
were not holding up
for a variety of reasons.
So at some point the main body
that administers the Ice Age
Trail, which today is called the
Ice Age Trail Alliance, they
said stop, stop the madness, we
are only building trail if we
can purchase the land or if we
can get people to sign a
permanent easement where this
land is protected in perpetuity.
Sometimes people will
sign those free
because they're trail-backers.
Sometimes they ask for, like,
basically a rent
payment every year.
So that's the way the Ice Age
Trail is operating now, and
that's why, one of the reasons
why it's not finished yet.
Some people will say, how
can they build a 2100-mile
Appalachian Trail in 20
years and we're working on
the Ice Age Trail 50 years
and we're not done yet?
Well, that's part of the reason.
And now, too, that we're trying
to purchase so much trail,
there's limited funds available
and back in the 1920s, there was
a lot fewer people in the US, it
was a lot easier to buy land.
A lot fewer people,
a lot more land available.
Now there's less land available. So it gets trickier.
But we will still get there.
I did not mention yet this
bifurcation, as they call it.
That is right, this bubble
in the middle here.
So what this is, is an
area of dispute again.
So when they were plotting out
the trail, which Congress had to
approve as part of the National
Trail System, the actual
terminal moraine runs right in
the middle, and one side said we
really think the trail should go
here because if we put it to the
east, we can lead people past
Aldo Leopold's shack and John
Muir's boyhood home, and those
are significant environmental
things we'd like to showcase.
The other side said, no, if we
put it out here, somewhere in
here, I might be off a little
bit, during the glacier's time
there was something called
Glacial Lake Wisconsin.
It was a massive, massive lake.
I've got to look up the
statistic again.
It's something like three Lake
Winnebagos would fit into it
or something like that.
So that side said, no,
we got to put it
where Glacial Lake
Wisconsin was.
It's outside the
terminal moraine
but it's a major, major
piece of the glacier.
And, in fact, Glacial Lake
Wisconsin was stopped up by the
Baraboo hills and part of
a piece of the glacier
that had the ice sheet
that had come down.
And when the glacier started
melting, this lake drained.
Some scientists or most
scientists are estimating it
could have drained in as
fast as three or four days.
And that lake draining is what
chiseled Wisconsin Dells.
So this fight went on and the
National Park Service was like
the parent and finally said
stop, stop, we will create
official side loops to National
Scenic Trails, so you can keep
both of these routes and
then you guys just decide
which is the official and
which is a side loop.
So they gave their blessing,
they stepped away, and the
people kept arguing again
because the people who wanted
the eastern side said, well, we
want this to be the main loop
and the other to
be the side loop.
So they were fighting and
finally they just said,
you know, we're just
going to sign a truce,
we're just going to
leave it as it is.
So now, today, if you want to
hike the entire Ice Age Trail,
you only have to hike
one side or the other.
It's your choice.
And that's what's
considered, you know,
completing the whole trail.
But they have told me that in
the somewhat near future the Ice
Age Trail Alliance is hoping to
decide, designate one side the
official trail and the
other the side loop.
So, stay tuned.
I don't have any
indication from anyone
if they're leaning toward
one side or the other.
So that is the trail today.
I've hiked them both.
And, actually, both today
have very little trail.
They're mostly road walks.
A few more things I
wanted to mention.
The Ice Age Trail passes
through 31 of our 72 counties,
and 60% of us live
within 20 miles of it.
So that was Ray
Zillmer's vision:
easy access to the trail.
So that is a great thing.
And it's also maintained
by 21 volunteer chapters.
And that's a very
important piece to know
if you're hiking it.
I knew that when I started out,
but I didn't really
understand what it all meant.
So, very, very basically, the
Ice Age Trail Alliance, which
happens to be based in Cross
Plains, so we're lucky it's in
our backyard, they have a small
staff, and they work on getting
money to build the trail,
physically building some of the
trail, maintaining some of the
trail, advertising the trail,
etc. and then there are these 21
volunteer chapters, which are
areas around the trail, and they
get volunteers to do,
they really do the bulk of the
reblazing it every year,
cutting the weeds, that kind
of thing, building new trail.
And Ice Age Trail Alliance also
has events throughout the year
where if there's a major
trail-building project,
they might have people go up for
anywhere from a day to a week
and build trail, build
boardwalk, that kind of thing.
But it's really the volunteers
that power and are in charge
of a lot of these
sections of trail.
And so what does that
mean for the hiker?
Well, when I first started out,
when I first learned what the
Ice Age Trail was, I thought,
oh, that's right, the Ice Age
Trail, I remember now, I hiked
some of that in Kettle Moraine
and I hiked some of
that in Lapham Peak
and I hiked some of
that in Indian Lake.
Well, these are all
county or state parks.
So there, when the trail runs
through a county or state park,
there are county
or state employees
that maintain that trail, as well as all the other trails,
and you're getting a
lot of people through.
So those things combined means
the trail is basically
always in good shape.
A bad trail there might be the
grass is up to your ankle.
So in my head I was
thinking that's what
the Ice Age Trail is
going to be like.
It's going to be like these
trails, and it's a prestigious
National Scenic Trail, so I'm
thinking it's just going to be
this, you know, you're in the
wilderness but it's going to be
a beautifully clipped trail
that I just follow along.
And on the second day, I had
started in St. Croix Falls
and it was like, oh, my
gosh, what the heck?
There could be wild raspberries
up to my shoulders, there were a
lot of weeds up to here, and I
remember I was tripping all over
and I remember at one point just
yelling out loud to nobody
because I was out
there all by myself.
I'm like, "This is not a
National Scenic Trail.
"This is an embarrassment.
"We cannot be telling
people to come out here.
"What if I was with my grandma
"or what if I brought
little kids along?
"And this is a disgrace."
I had no idea how
it was supposed,
you know, how it operated.
Well, then I talked to a
volunteer the next day,
and it's like, oh, okay,
yeah, I get it now.
I had started my hike
at the end of August,
all the summer growth
had been going on.
At that point, long
distance hiking in America
had just currently been
growing, you know,
every year, but it had really,
it was just starting to
become a thing maybe
five years ago when
I was out there.
And they were only getting
maybe, they could get maybe
two people a year in
some of these sections
of the Ice Age Trail
that are far north.
So if you're only getting two
hikers through a year and you
maybe have 60 miles of trail in
your chapter and there's maybe
four of you that are
volunteering, maybe two of you
are young people with kids who
are in a lot of activities,
maybe the other two are 80 and
you can't really hoist a big
chainsaw on your shoulder and
hike 10 miles into the trail
to clean it up,
of course the trails
can't be in shape every minute.
Even if you were able to clean
them out perfectly at the start
of the spring, think of how
your own yards, you know,
it seems like sometimes
the grass grows overnight.
You just mowed it, you got a
rain, and it's this high.
So that is something to keep in
mind, and I don't say that
to scare anyone because it's
not like the whole thing
is this wild jungle.
But you will get sections that
are pretty rugged, which, in the
end, I decided after I was so
mad that first couple days,
I really liked going through
some of those because when you
come out and, yeah, maybe you're
all scratched from the bushes
or whatever, you're like dang
it, I got it, yeah, go me.
[laughter]
So, yes, that is part
of the experience.
But it is also something to
let everyone know about too
because maybe you are
passionate about hiking
and you'll love the trail.
So then see if you can
take time and volunteer.
Even if you don't live in an
area where there's a chapter,
they have these events,
about a dozen events a year,
where they're building trail.
You can sign on, you can do
anything from pull weeds
to learn how to do, operate
the big saws and everything.
Or that's not my thing
so I just bake cookies
because they feed these people.
Sometimes they'll camp,
like I said,
anywhere from a day to a week.
So they need food, so you can
volunteer and drop off cookies.
One man told me I hate hiking
but I love to build trail.
So maybe you're a handyman and
you love to build boardwalk.
There's a lot of ways that
we can get involved and keep
building the trail and then get
the word, spread the word out
about it, make it even a
greater gem than it already is.
I will talk a little bit about
my journey on the Ice Age Trail.
So, why did I do this?
A lot of people would say
to me, what the heck?
Are you crazy?
What are you doing out hiking?
Well, I actually had a
friend, Jason Dorgan,
some of you may know him.
He's from this area.
In 2007, he was a big Ice Age
Trail backer and a big runner.
He decided I'm going to
try and set a record,
a speed record on
the Ice Age Trail.
That's what a lot of people were
doing on the Appalachian Trail
and the Pacific Crest.
No one had tried to do
it on the Ice Age Trail.
And he knew that when you
do these speed records
you bring attention
to the trail.
So he thought, I want to
help this trail grow.
He was talented at doing this,
so he went out and he
through-ran, as he calls it,
the trails in 22 days.
He averaged about 50 miles a day
And I knew this was going on
when he was doing it, but I
didn't know because my oldest
child was about to
graduate from high school.
He was doing this in April-May,
and I was busy with that and a
bunch of other things.
And I would get these emails
because I'm part of a running
groups he's in.
It's like, Jason's here,
now Jason's in Lodi,
who wants to meet
Jason at the end?
And I thought, I knew
he was doing something
but I didn't know what.
Well, five years go by
and it's the end of 2012
and I'm on some group run
and Jason's talking about,
reminiscing about his
record-setting run.
And I said, "Now what
did you do again?
Explain this to me."
Well, as he's talking about it,
by then my kids are out of the
house and I had started doing a
lot of hiking over those years
and writing about hiking.
And I just got so excited.
I had just done a ton of work
on this Camino de Santiago
in Spain.
I had written a guidebook about.
I'd been hiking
that over and over.
And it's like, oh, my gosh,
I've got a trail that's twice
as long, twice as exciting,
and it's in my home state.
It's right in my backyard.
I don't have to go overseas.
And I thought, I want
to do this too.
I want to hike it.
And I thought, and I like to
run, so, you know, let's see.
So I went on the website that
night, and then I got really
excited because I saw only three
women, this is like December
2012, only three women had done
what's called through-hike,
and that is when
you hike the trail
from start to finish
in one attempt.
And I thought, ooh, too bad I
couldn't have been number one.
[laughter] I know, I'm a competitive runner.
So then I looked at the times
and I thought, I can tell
none of these people was
trying to set a record.
I mean, I never heard of a
record-setting attempt other
than Jason's, and I could just
tell from the number of days
that it wasn't any
record-setting pace.
So I thought, well, I'm know
I'm kind of old to set these.
I can't do 50 miles a day,
but I thought I could
do maybe 30 to 35.
And then I'd have the women's
record, and that could be really
cool because if you're into any
kind of competitive sports or
running, by the time your,
if I was 50 at the time, 51,
you don't set any
records anymore.
So I'm like, oh, I could
have this record too.
And then I thought, that's
still, I calculated it out,
that'll be like five weeks,
though, and I can't really take
five weeks off of work.
But I thought, well, if I didn't
know about the Ice Age Trail and
I've been writing all about
Wisconsin travel for that
last 15 years, 20 years,
I bet a lot of other people
don't know about it, too.
So I started asking around.
Have you ever heard of this?
Do you know what this is?
And it was kind of like me.
People either knew nothing about
it, had never heard the name,
or they had heard about it,
but sort of thought they knew it
but they didn't really.
So I went out and I got a
bunch of article assignments.
And I said to my husband,
you need to crew me.
Well, no, first I was
going to do it on my own.
First I was just going to hike
and have someone pick me up at
the end of the day
and go to a lodging,
a friend's house or an inn
or something like that.
But Jason said, no, if
you're going to try to set
a speed record, you have
to have a crew with you.
And in running terms that
means somebody who's with
you all the time.
So you head off on a trail
segment and it might be five
miles and someone's
going to meet you there.
When you finish this day,
do you need more water?
Do you need snacks?
Do you need a change of shoes? Whatever.
And so I agreed, and I put
together this crew of family
and friends who
agreed to be with me.
So someone was with me
on the trail every day.
And I kind of calculated out
where would 30 to 35 miles
be a day, and I found
friends and family
who said I could stay with them.
And when I didn't know anyone
in an area, I booked a room
at a motel or something.
And I set out in the very end
of August of 2013.
Mostly it was in September,
but a little bit of August,
a little bit of October.
And I decided to start in
St. Croix Falls, Interstate
State Park, because I was
thinking, that's up north,
it's the end of August, it'll be
cool up there, and then I'll,
you know, I'll be hiking,
I'll be hiking south.
And so maybe, you know,
I'll have the best weather
because I hate hot weather.
I love Wisconsin.
I love winter.
So the day I started off this
lovely day at like 6:17
in the morning, it was projected
to be a high of like 95.
[laughter] It was
like 90% humidity,
and it's like you
gotta be kidding me.
I think I changed
entire outfits,
my entire outfit three times.
[laughter]
And it was so gross!
And, actually, that whole time I
was hiking, I would say until,
the very last week, it was
hot almost every single day.
I had a whole week of 90s.
There were a lot of 80s,
a lot of 70s, and 70s
might not sound bad if
you're doing something else,
but if you're out hiking and running, that's pretty warm.
So that was probably the most
challenging part for me,
was just the weather.
And I did the trail again
a couple years later
at the same time and
it was just as hot.
So, I don't know.
But the good thing about
hiking the trail in the fall
is that you don't have ticks.
That is one thing with
the Ice Age Trail.
You do have to be aware if
you're hiking in the spring,
which is another good season,
that there are a lot of ticks.
And one section was actually
closed for a couple weeks
because the tick count
was so high in there.
The Ice Age Trail
Alliance, if you're ever
interested in hiking, they have
an annual conference every year,
and they have a hiker
panel on it every year
where people will talk
about their experiences.
It's a Q&A kind of thing,
and you can learn a lot.
So my friend Jason
had said go to that
before you do this.
I had already started.
I had gotten these
article assignments.
I had gotten people to crew me.
I was well into planning when
this conference was in April.
So, again, I started this idea
December, this is now April,
I'm planning to do it
at the end of August,
and one guy on the panel
was talking about how he
had hiked last spring.
And he said it was tick season,
and he said he just kept,
he had hundreds on his arms,
and he would just be
brushing them off like this.
And my palms started sweating. [laughter]
And I didn't know
what tick season was because,
again, my parents, we're
from Chicago originally
and that's just not our thing.
It wasn't our thing.
So we never went camping
or anything like that.
But I just, my palms were
sweating and I'm thinking,
all right, I'm going to have to
cancel all my assignments,
I'm canceling this hike,
I can't do this.
You know, I can do a lot of
things but I can't do ticks.
And by the end of the, yeah,
he said he finally
stopped doing it.
So he hiked all day with
these sleeves of ticks,
and then at the end of the
night he would brush them off.
So I'm like almost gagging too.
Then somebody asks a question,
you know, when's tick season?
And they said spring and
it starts dying out in
July, and it was like,
oh, thank God because
I thought I really
was going to have
to cancel my hike.
But that is one thing
about the spring.

So I headed off on my merry way.
I'm going to go back
one minute too.
When I was talking about
through-hiking and
through-running and records,
a couple things I want to say.
So, through-hiking
is starting a trail
and hiking it through to
the end in one attempt.
Now, that doesn't mean
you can never get off
or never stop hiking.
Many people will take a day,
a rest day a week.
Some people, you know, if you
have a wedding and you just
can't find a convenient time to
schedule your hike and you know
it's going to take you two
months or something, you might
get off on a weekend to go to a
wedding or a graduation or one
set of hikers took off a week
when I got, that week that it
was the 90 degrees
when I started.
This group of hikers,
two hikers took off
because it was just too hot.
And in many trails, the bigger
long distance trails,
like the Appalachian Trail,
Pacific Crest,
and even the Florida Trail,
which is about the
same size as ours.
They give you a year.
They say if you do this
trail in 12 months,
you're considered
a through-hiker.
So I'm actually through-hiking
the Florida National Scenic
Trail right this very minute
because I hiked a bunch in
January and March and May, and
then they tell you not to hike
until November/December
because it's just too hot
and buggy down there.
And so if I decide to go back
down there, which I'll probably
have to go in the holidays which
will be hard, but if I can go
there and finish by, I think I
started January 7th this year,
in one year I'll be
considered a through-hiker.
And the Ice Age Trail
doesn't quite--
They don't really have rules.
So I suppose technically if you
hiked from one end to the other
over years, you could say I'm a
through-hiker, but the general
understanding is that you're
going to be doing this--
Try to do it in one
attempt and within a year.
Section hikers, that's
you can hike
the entire trail in sections.
And you can get a wonderful
thousand-miler award
and get your name in
stars or in lights.
All kinds of things.
And that's what most people do.
So if you decide, hey, that's
going to be my goal, especially
maybe your two young children
there, grandchildren,
who are starting to hike,
you can, they have great,
the Ice Age Trail Alliance
has wonderful materials.
They have a map, a huge map of
the state and the trail.
You can put the
dates you're hiking.
You can go out and hike a
section at a time and just tick
it off, and whenever you're
finished, whether it's,
two years, five years, 20
years, you can fill out a little
form on the Ice Age Trail
Alliance website and submit it
and you get your designation
as a thousand-miler.
So that's what most people.
And if you section hike,
you can do it in any
order that you like.
You don't have to go in
sequential order.
And then, onto the
record-setting fast packing,
the one thing I wanted
to mention about that,
when Jason talks
about his through-run
or I say I ran the
trail, no one, no matter
how talented, ever runs an
entire trail like that.
So there's just another
speed record set
on the Appalachian Trail.
What that means is you
run when you can,
and when you're running
it's very slow jogging.
It's not like running a 10K race
where you're going
six-minute miles.
You're jogging slowly.
But there's some spots
where you just,
physically the terrain is such, you can't run.
There's some pretty
big boulders in
a section called
Grandfather Falls.
There's bit boulders
in the Dells.
You have to walk up those.
And just in general, even if you
are running, say, a shorter,
maybe a 10-mile trail race, the
thought in those is that you go
faster in the long run
if you walk up the hill.
So even your winners of
those races will generally
walk uphill when
you're on trail.
So some people just
have this image of,
you know, how could
you possibly run?
You're not really
running all the time.
Jason estimates, when he
did his 50 miles a day,
that he was running 60% of
the time and walking 40%.
I would say my figures were
actually flipped, walking 60%
and running 40%, because I had
some other issues with some foot
problems and things where I
couldn't run for a number
of days and I could only hike.
So that's what that means,
if you're curious.
And, also, in the world
of these speed records,
you don't have to
run them at all.
There's two trains
thought of there.
They attract, the people who try
these either are good at
ultra running, which is anything
over a marathon distance,
so over 26.2 miles.
So they will try to run
as much as they can.
And they'll stop, they'll
maybe only be out on the trail
10 or 11 hours a day.
The other theory is that I'm
going to hike it all because
it's not as exhausting, but I'm
going to hike for up to 16 hours
a day, which I can't imagine
just being on my feet that long.
So when you hear about these
speed records, that's what
people are generally doing is
one of those two methods.
One thing I learned about our
Ice Age Trail that's so great
compared to some of the
others is that we have
a lot of variety
in our landscape.
The Appalachian Trail,
which is so famous
and I'm sure is beautiful
from what I've seen,
a lot of the hikers call it a
big, the long, green tunnel
because you're in
the woods a lot.
We have a lot of prairie.
We have, we see the
beautiful woods.
We have a section where you're
walking along Lake Michigan.
And then all the cities
and towns too,
the communities that
you're going through.
So I know I'm getting close
to my time limit here,
so I'll just do, these are
just prairie on the left
and some of the forest
land on the right.
A lot of glacial lakes,
of course, those are beautiful.
There's some farmland that,
this picture on the left--
It doesn't really do it justice,
but this was one of the
most spectacular sites.
I popped out of the woods
and I found myself
on the top of this hill, and a farmer had mowed this trail
and it was just winding
like a ribbon down.
And there are these little
grasses on each side that were
kind of waving, and I made it
like, I felt like I was royalty.
Like walking down
some special path.
It was just really incredible.
A lot of pine forests.
Those are lovely.
More prairie and woods.
And then, on the right is where
it goes on Lake Michigan,
along Lake Michigan two miles.
One year the water level was so
high you had to actually walk
through pretty deep water
and a lot of bramble,
and that was kind of difficult.
In general, the Ice Age
Trail is blazed yellow
with painted on
or plastic blazes.
Sometimes they have
some old signage.
They're trying to make it
uniform so it's just
the yellow blazes, but the little brown sign on the left,
those were some freebies
from the federal government.
So they had used them a lot in
the past, but it doesn't look
like it blends in here, but
really they kind of blend in
with the tree trunks and
it can be hard to see.
They started using some
on the right years ago,
but that's kind of like
the snowmobile signage.
I got mixed up on that once.
Snowmobile signs are generally
rectangular and not square, but
I didn't know that and so I
think it was my second day on
the trail and I thought, well,
that's the only thing I see so
that must be the Ice Age Trail,
and that got me lost.
On the right, the yellow
sign in the bubble,
that was an old Ice Age symbol.
It has Wisconsin in the middle.
The triangular shape around
it that's kind of rounded,
that is the shape for the National Scenic Trail.
Some guy in Florida called
it a pregnant triangle.
So there's the standard
blaze on the right.
They don't usually use too many
arrows like you see on the left.
Now, on the left, it's
not a great picture.
That is the current
Ice Age Trail sign.
It's got the woolly mammoth in
the middle and a little bit of
blue behind it, and each segment
that's currently developed,
as opposed to the road walks,
they have a name, which is nice,
and they generally have
these nice, big, wooden
signs on either end.
So it's easy to find
where they are.
Every once in a
while they don't.
They have a thin Carsonite post,
and that can be a
little confusing.
I know we're out of time,
so I won't get to my signs
of the glacier.
But I want to say thank you
so much for having me here,
and I hope everyone
will enjoy the trail.
[applause]