Wisconsin`s glacial landscape has been opened to public view in recent years by a 1,000-mile hiking trail whose completed segments amount to a work in progress where hikers can translate the secrets of the great glaciers.
One of 10 national scenic hiking trails, the Ice Age Trail, like the others, has largely been a grassroots effort. It is so new that portions of the trail, especially in northern Wisconsin, could stand much more use with no fraying at the edges.
This summer, almost 500 miles of trail will be open, marked and designated for hiking. No motorized vehicles are permitted, although winter brings snowmobilers on some north woods reaches.
From Door County peninsula`s limestone sheaves to prairie savannahs near Chicago to the pines of the Land O` Lakes, the trail meanders along the terminal moraine of the ice sheet that retreated 10,000 years ago.
Backpackers, casual walkers, campers and Ice Age enthusiasts have discovered that the trail opens a landscape whose special charms have been known for decades to geologists.
Illinois residents who think they know Wisconsin might be surprised at some trail revelations. Although nature issued these bulletins eons ago the
”news” as such is still reaching us, which helps explain the elusive appeal of the glacial landscape. The language of the glacier, the meaning of two-mile-deep ice sheet`s passing, has fascinated naturalists since Jean Louis Agassiz, riding a 19th-Century train in New England, realized in a flash of insight how anomalies of time and place came about.
Translating epic events
The decades since that stroke of insight have brought about a revolution in the way geologists are able to ”read” and translate epic events during the Pleistocene Era. With that awareness has come increasing study of the Wisconsin landscape because, as it turns out, Wisconsin is a storehouse of glacial antiquity.
Even Congress recognized the importance of the Ice Age heritage in 1971, when it created the National Ice Age Scientific Reserve in the state. Wisconsin was selected because so many of its landforms have survived development and because the state was well known among geologists as a glacial laboratory.
While the reserve units lag in development for lack of funding, the trail project has been pushed hard by volunteers around the state. Nine reserve units were authorized and these, in various stages of development, eventually will be linked by the trail.
Recent years have seen much trail work absorbed by the Wisconsin Conservation Corps and youthful inmates from state corrections institutions, said Gary Werner, co-ordinator of the Ice Age Trail Council.
While the Ice Age Trail`s popularity doesn`t rival that of the famous Appalachian Trail, it promises to rival the eastern trail in years to come.
Trail segments open to hikers and backpackers this summer have names almost as picturesque as their scenery-the Ahnapee in scenic Door County, Two Creeks Buried Forest in Kewaunee County, the Sugar River Trail in pastoral Green County, a spellbinding walk around Devil`s Lake, a nifty route in Marathon County that passes through the roaring Eau Claire River dells and shorter segments near Cross Plains and Marquette.
Overnight backpacking
Overnight backpacking is possible along 40 miles of Chequamegon National Forest, 27 miles of Kettle Moraine State Forest north of Milwaukee, 29 miles of Kettle Moraine southwest of Milwaukee, 21 miles in Chippewa County, 19 miles in Rusk County and 50 miles in Langlade County.
The trail was envisioned by Milwaukee lawyer Ray Zilmer, who began pushing for a national ice age park in Wisconsin back in the 1950s. Zilmer, now deceased, was a globe-traveling mountain climber who never lost his zest for his homeland`s intimate appeal. He often took his family on jaunts to see Wisconsin glacial landforms, showing how civilization was gradually erasing the unique earthen artifacts with subdivisions, farming, gravel pits and highways.
Zilmer`s son, John, chairman of the National Ice Age Reserve Foundation, says Wisconsin is a living museum of the glacier. ”Students come from all over the world to study Wisconsin landforms,” he said. ”Wisconsin has the most marvelous glacial heritage in the world.”
That fact does not make for dramatic scenery. Instead the countryside is an elfin shire that has been wrinkled, bobbed and pocked by the icy advance and watery retreat of grinding ice that spread by gravity of its own immense weight. The 16,000 lakes and thousands of miles of roaring rivers in Wisconsin are sparkling remnants of the force of that flow.
Geologists describe the Superior Highlands of the north, a tableland that rises up to 2,200 feet above sea level, as a vast sponge that will be draining the charged ice melt of the glacier for centuries to come.
Some highlights of the Reserve are popular travel destinations and include:
– Devil`s Lake: Near Baraboo is a large glacial lake met by stone bluffs where a state park and campground anchor a portion of the trail.
– The Kettle Moraine: A state forest in two units near Milwaukee, with charming woodlands well developed for recreation.
– Horicon Marsh: A vestigial glacial lake where a famous federal wildlife refuge harbors permanent populations of waterfowl and marsh animals and, in fall, splendid migrating flocks of geese and ducks.
Story of the glacier
An Ice Age Interpretive Center tells the story of the glacier in a scenic location at the craggy dells of the St. Croix River at Interstate State Park. The St. Croix is a National Wild and Scenic Riverway.
There is little argument that the trail`s most secluded reaches are hidden in the wild forests of the northern lake country. These lonesome woodlands offer splendid scenery and solitude and encounters with creatures such as coyotes, porcupines, bald eagles and deer, but no venomous snakes.
According to Joseph Jopek, a University of Wisconsin resource agent at Antigo, northern trail use is so limited that hikers often have woodlands to themselves for many miles, sometimes all day.
The Antigo Trail chapter is the state`s most enthusiastic hiking group, setting out on a different section of trail for daylong hikes, which have turned into seasonal social events.
The trail passes through second-growth northern highlands, near lakes, streams, old lumber camps, abandoned homesteads and root cellars, beaver ponds and former logging railroad grades where steam engines once hauled big trees. For more information, write: Ice Age National Reserve, Department of Natural Resources, Box 7921, Madison, Wis. 53707. For information about the Langlade excursions, write: Fairgrounds, Box 460L, Antigo, Wis. 54409;
715-627-6236.
