I had a nice few days on the Superior Hiking Trail this past weekend. I hopped in the car on Thursday morning with no plan in place. That's the way I roll when it comes to most trips. It makes it more fun not knowing exactly what I'll end up doing.
I ended up going with the Woods Creek to Kadunce Wayside section of the trail which is just North of Grand Marais. I hadn't been on this section before. Since I was alone and didn't do the shuttle service I only went the 4.1 miles from the trail head to the Cliff Creek campsite. I must say I was impressed with this section of the trail. Nice variety, not overly challenging with ups and downs but lots of cool stuff to see. I got to camp and had just strung my hammock up and a couple gal hikers arrived at my camp and shared the site with me. I was at a Multi Group site so there was plenty of room and they were sharing a two person backpack tent. We chatted for awhile and ate dinner and turned in. I must say they were pretty intrigued by my hammock rig and were asking lots of questions and taking pictures.
I got up early the next morning, packed up and headed back to the car Friday morning. I wasn't sure where I was going to go the next day and ended up driving south and hiking some on the Beaver River section of trail.
Saturday morning I headed back North a bit to Tettegouche State Park. I had a reservation for one of the walk in campsites up at the campground. The reason I did that was because I wanted to make use of the showers as I planned on stopping into my Dad's in Duluth on Sunday and didn't want to show up smelling like a pig. I ended up doing a nice day hike on the SHT that runs through Tettegouche. I have been to Tettegouche several times but only on park trails and not on the SHT. I was pretty impressed with the trail in this section. Nice overlooks and I really liked the Drainpipe POI on the trail. Pretty steep climb and one to be careful on.
After hiking back to the trail head lot I headed to find my campsite at the campground. It was very close to the car but it actually had a couple trees that worked for setting up my hammock. As I was setting up my hammock a park ranger walked into my site and the first thing I thought was "Oh S**T, he's going to tell my no hammocks allowed.He actually stopped in to tell me there was a tornado warning out for Silver Bay and that I should be prepared to take shelter at the shower building if it got bad. He didn't say anything about my hammock which was a relief. Just as he left it started to rain and I quickly deployed my tarp and then it started to poor and hail! It ended up doing this off and on until 10pm Saturday night. I slept great under the tarp and the MacCat Deluxe with doors performed like a champ.
I packed up Sunday morning and headed to Duluth and then on home. All in all it was a pretty nice weekend and it was fun to visit sections I haven't been to yet and there is a LOT more of the SHT I need to get to yet. Here is a link to my photos.
http://hammock.smugmug.com/Photograp...7296020_Fpgp9D
Video Part 1 Woods Creek to Cliff Creek
Video Part 2 Tettegouche State Park
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