Zillmer Begins to Map the Southern Cariboos

by Drew Hanson

This is the second in a series of articles about Ray Zillmer’s pioneer mountaineering exploits in the Canadian Rockies. Ice Age Trail fans know Zillmer as the Milwaukee attorney who in 1958 founded the Ice Age Park and Trail Foundation which became the Ice Age Trail Alliance. Each article in the series enlarges our picture of his rugged approach to wilderness travel by summarizing one of his papers that were published in the Canadian Alpine Journal. This one is based on Exploration of the Southern Cariboos which appeared in 1939.

Zillmer's own words offer the best place to begin. “This was my seventh back-pack trip in the mountains of Alberta and British Columbia. On two previous trips I went alone, and on the others I was accompanied by another amateur who was inexperienced in mountain backpack trips. This year Lorin Tiefenthaler, my companion on the Mackenzie trail, was again with me, and he has put an end, once and for all, to the comment of my friends that ‘no one goes with Zillmer a second time.’ We planned to carry everything ourselves, without help or re-provisioning. The food was measured in the exact amounts required for the thirteen days. We carried only that which was absolutely necessary—2-pound sleeping bags, a very small tent, no firearms, no camp axe, no change of clothing except socks and underwear. But as we planned to make a plane table survey and to cross the icefields, we carried, in addition to our normal load, the equipment for the survey together with a primus stove, a gallon of gasoline, and climbing equipment. We planned to go up the valley of the Thompson from the point where it leaves the Canadian National Railways at the flag stop, Gosnell. The vicinity is unsurveyed and the only maps are based on sketches made by prospectors or trappers”.

Ray Zillmer on the Azure-Thompson Divide

“I had given thought to this trip for two years, studied plane table surveying, read all the material on the country that I could find, and carried on a considerable correspondence relative to it. I learned little about this part of the Cariboos, being quite surprised to hear from the trapper of the Canoe valley that he ‘had not been to the extreme head of the Canoe,’ and from others that they had never been at the head of the Thompson. I surmised that there must be a good reason for this.”

The first documented trek through the southern Cariboo Mountains was in 1871. Seven other expeditions explored the area in the intervening years, two of which included geologist R. T. Chamberlin—another man with Wisconsin ties. R. T. Chamberlin was the son of famed geologist Thomas Chamberlin who was an unwitting Ice Age Trail pioneer.

As had been arranged for Zillmer and Tiefenthaler, upon disembarking the train they met “Miss Ella Frye”, the licensed trapper of the upper Thompson River. They spent a night at her cabin of which Zillmer wrote, “On the wall of her cabin was the hide of a grizzly which she had shot a few miles up the trail we were to take in the morning. We plied her with questions for several hours, and her knowledge of the valley was of great help to us. She helped us even more, however, by insisting that we take the only mosquito netting she had. That was the one thing we needed most, yet we had forgotten it. She gave us a gasoline can, for ours was leaking. And she offered us a rifle which we declined. An old friend could not have been kinder to us.”

The next morning was July 3, 1939. Zillmer’s description of the next few days needs no editorializing. “For thirty and a half miles we followed the rough and heavily overgrown trail up the north and east side of the Thompson, to a point where it crossed to the other side of the stream. It took us four and a quarter days of strenuous travel to reach the crossing. It rained a lot and we were always wet, either from the rain or from the dripping willows, alders, and parsnip, through which we forced our way, or from the tall nettle and Devil’s club growth, through which we walked with hands raised high. Only when we crawled into our sleeping bags were we dry. It was wasted effort to dry our shoes or clothing, for we would only be thoroughly soaked again shortly after we started walking. I had trouble seeing, for my glasses were covered with the water or the debris from the bushes we pushed through.”

“At times the trail was so overgrown that we could not even see it, although we were on it. On such occasions we kept on it only by feeling for and following the trail’s depression of several inches. But this frequently resulted in our stumbling or falling when we stepped into holes or against small stones or logs we could not see. We forded the many branches of the Thompson and crossed many mud holes, and marshes often covered with water.”

“A day was lost through an injury to my left leg. Late on the first day of our trip the trail led to an area 150 to 200 yards in diameter, which was cluttered with several large and many small fallen trees. With my attention focused on looking for the trail while I was walking on a fallen tree seven or eight feet above the ground, I suddenly lost my balance and was compelled to jump. I was carrying my heavy sixty-pound pack and I crashed through the debris and undergrowth a foot or so. Only the next day did I realize that I had injured the tendons in my left leg. I suffered the next few days, not because of the very painful leg, but because of the mental anguish over the thought that I might have to give up the trip. But my leg improved on the fifth day, and I could again travel at a faster gait.”

“I had trouble opening my eyes on the morning of the second day, and when Lorin looked at me he said: ‘No wonder. Your eyes are almost closed from the mosquito bites. And you look as though you had small pox.’”

“On the morning of the fifth day we arrived at the crossing of the Thompson. For the first time, the weather had begun to clear.”

At this point the tandem faced several options. Zillmer described each choice within the historical context of their predecessors’ expeditions. They ended up choosing the option which involved fording an ice-cold stream back and forth. Eventually they reached a ford which was deeper and swifter than the rest. Zillmer wrote, “Lorin crossed rather easily, but he was six inches taller than I.” On Zillmer’s second attempt, “after standing a few seconds, though they seemed hours, I was thrown over, pack and all, on my back into the fast water. But the very strong current fortunately threw me quickly across to the other side of the stream, with no injury except a slightly skinned finger, in spite of the many rocks in the river.” They soon set camp.

Click on Zillmer's sketch map to see enlarged image

In the morning they began their exploration of the Thompson River headwaters and adjacent basins. For the next week they enjoyed good weather while they mapped this previously uncharted area and documented the sources of several rivers. They were afforded commanding views from the hand-full of peaks they summitted. They reveled in floral alpine meadows, described mountain goat, caribou and marmot and surveyed several glaciers.

Their time drawing to a close, it took three days to hike out. Of reaching the trailhead, Zillmer wrote, “We now weighed thirty pounds less. In spite of bushwacking, mosquitoes, rain, mud, and marshes, we are ‘rarin’ to go back to the Cariboos.”

Farewell, Prejudiced NPCA

by Drew Hanson

Areas of the National Park System are outstanding places to enjoy on foot. One organization gets a lot of attention for its efforts on behalf of the National Park Service but this writer’s 17-year experience exposes a prejudice. Following up on Mountain Majesty Bias, below is most of my October 11, 2006 letter to National Parks Conservation Association.

Dear National Parks Conservation Association,

Since 1990 I have been a devoted member of National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA). I have read, usually cover to cover, every edition of National Parks magazine and saved every one of them. Since 1990 my life list of visited units of the National Park System has grown from three to 71.

But your article “The Fourth Coast” is trying my patience and testing my allegiance. Although the article represents a long-overdue treatment by NPCA of Great Lakes and more broadly freshwater issues, NPCA’s bias against the Heartland portion of the United States still shows.

The map that appeared on page 25 was by far most upsetting. It shows Mississippi River and Recreation Area and St. Croix National Scenic River even though both are entirely outside the Great Lakes watershed, places the label for the North Country National Scenic Trail a hundred miles out of place and omits the Ice Age National Scenic Trail entirely. The Ice Age National Scenic Trail is partly within the Great Lakes watershed, the St. Croix and Mississippi parks are not.

A dozen times over these 16+ years I have written letters or emails to NPCA describing one facet or another of the national park in my backyard, the Ice Age National Scenic Trail, but not once has NPCA mentioned the Ice Age Trail (IAT) in National Parks. Here was your chance to provide some glimmer of hope for the thousands of IAT volunteers (whose VIP hours total rank in the top ten of the entire National Park System each of the past several years) that NPCA is on our side. Here was your chance to show that you pay attention to your members. But you blew this chance to provide even token recognition.

The sting inflicted by your latest anti-Heartland bias might have been less severe had you not labeled the North Country Trail (NCT) at all because the IAT and NCT are both “non-units” of the National Park System. I am perplexed as to why instead of labeling both or neither you would choose to label only one. Both the IAT and NCT are great trails and could be great units of the National Park System if treated reasonably.

Why has NPCA been so insulting to those of us who labor on this non-traditional park, the Ice Age National Scenic Trail?

Given NPCA’s record of taking my money but ignoring my pleas, I cannot help but note that my NPCA membership is set to expire 6/30/07. That gives NPCA eight more months to say something constructive about the Ice Age National Scenic Trail in National Parks magazine. Anything short of that will lead to a very disappointed member redirecting his annual donation to some other deserving cause.

Best regards…

-----

I never received a response from NPCA. So as promised, my membership with them ended on June 30, 2007. The 17-year stack of National Parks magazines went into the recycling bin. No sweat. My life list of National Park Service areas continues to grow without NPCA.

You don’t need to support NPCA to learn about and support the conservation of national park areas. If you want to support an organization that does fantastic conservation work in the Heartland region of the country, give to the Ice Age Trail Alliance. If you want to support an effective national or international conservation organization, I recommend The Nature Conservancy or The Conservation Fund. If you enjoy reading news about the National Park Service, a great website and list serve is National Parks Traveler, which runs balanced and informed stories about places in the Heartland and beyond.




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Conserving our Legacy of Forests

by Drew Hanson
 

A version of this article appeared a decade ago as the cover story of Mammoth Tales.

Forest areas in north central Wisconsin were permanently protected from development in 2002 under a landmark easement. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (WDNR) and the landowner, Tomahawk Timberlands, led the effort to protect 35,000 acres of working forest. The conserved areas are in several large blocks.

The State’s easement with Tomahawk Timberlands ensures the following in perpetuity:

·         the land cannot be subdivided into smaller parcels;

·         development of buildings is not allowed;

·         public hunting, fishing, and hiking are allowed;

·         sustainable timber harvest can continue.

Preventing the subdivision and development of these 35,000 acres means that road densities will remain low and a more natural setting remains for critters to thrive and pedestrians to explore.

One of the bigger blocks protected by the easement is along the Ice Age Trail in western Lincoln County. A separate 1999 easement protected only a narrow strip for almost five miles of Ice Age Trail through this property. The 2002 easement, known as a forest legacy easement, adds another level of protection to a much larger area around the Trail.

Almost 70% of forests in Wisconsin are privately owned. During the past couple of decades, our forests have been increasingly subdivided into smaller parcels and developed. At the same time, some companies that own forestland are being bought out by interests that do not necessarily share our love of and livelihood from Wisconsin’s forests. Should these trends continue into the decades ahead, we could expect vast areas of forests to be subdivided and developed.

The Forest Legacy Program is here to help. A private land conservation program administered by the U.S. Forest Service, the Forest Legacy Program provides financial assistance primarily for the purchase of conservation easements on forested lands. WDNR and private land trusts, such as The Nature Conservancy and the Ozaukee-Washington Land Trust, are leading the implementation of the program in Wisconsin.

The voluntary program leverages private and other public funds to provide Americans with a bigger bang for their conservation buck. In 2001, over 700,000 acres were conserved across the nation using $60 million from the Forest Legacy Program to protect forestlands with a value of $151 million.

Funding for the Forest Legacy Program is provided on a project-by-project basis by Congress.

Ray Zillmer Retraces an Ancient Trail through British Columbia

by Drew Hanson

Most people know of Ray Zillmer as the father of the Ice Age Trail and founder of the Ice Age Trail Alliance. Fewer know that he was a prominent Milwaukee attorney, leader of the Izaak Walton League and instrumental in the State’s purchase of lands for the Kettle Moraine State Forest. In this article, we see another side of this amazing person: as an accomplished backpacker, mountaineer and outdoorsman.

After reading the diary of the explorer Alexander Mackenzie, Ray Zillmer later wrote, “There was always with me the thought that I must take the overland pack trip of Mackenzie.” The 1792-93 journey Mackenzie and his nine comrades took across Canada was the first recorded transcontinental crossing of North America north of Mexico—twelve years prior to Lewis and Clark’s voyage of discovery.

The area of Mackenzie’s travels that most captured Zillmer’s imagination was in the mountains of western Canada. Since there were no guidebooks of the route and not even large scale topographic maps of the area, Zillmer wrote letters to all who might have useful information to help him plan a trip through the still wild country. He found scant reliable news. The manager of a remote lodge near Bella Coola wrote, “This is an extremely arduous trip, the trails are not well defined and the country only very thinly populated by Indians.”

At roughly 250 miles, the route crossed the Telegraph Range, Nechako Plateau, Coast Mountains and parts of present-day Tweedsmuir and Kluskoil Lake provincial parks. No one since Mackenzie had duplicated his route.

Ray Zillmer

During the 1930s-40s, Ray Zillmer built an impressive mountaineering resume in British Columbia. He joined the Canadian Alpine Club in 1931 and solo hiked around the Drummond and St. Bride glaciers in 1933. In 1937, he and a Swiss alpinist set-up a temporary base camp for 30 climbers on the snow-slopes of Mt. Collie at 9500 feet. For 1938, he made it his mission to retrace the footsteps of Mackenzie on an ancient trail between the Fraser and Bella Coola rivers.

Lorin Tiefenthaler

Accompanying Zillmer would be a young Lorin Tiefenthaler, also of Milwaukee. Zillmer described him as, “more than six feet in height, over two hundred pounds in weight, strong, healthy, considerably younger than I, and a splendid companion. He had never been in the western mountains before and was without any experience in backpacking, but he learned quickly.”

Zillmer’s description of their journey was published in the 1938 Canadian Alpine Journal—the primary source for this article.

The two men set out from Prince George, British Columbia on June 28, 1938. One of Zillmer’s “greatest concerns was to locate the Mackenzie trail where it left the Fraser”. After some searching, they found, “a faint trail. It was 4.30 p.m., we were not in condition, our packs were at their heaviest, and the way to the plateau above was very steep, and, just as Mackenzie did, we found the next hour the hardest on our trip. Hereafter we were to have many experiences such as Mackenzie related in his diary.”

Ray Zillmer's hand-drawn map of his 1938 trek

Chief among the similarities was the scarcity of water. While they could sometimes see lakes and rivers in the distance, they found little water to drink during their first few days. The first night they found only “a small, stagnant, shallow pool among the trees. It was full of debris, mosquito larvae, and tasted of decaying vegetable matter. I strained it through a clean cloth and drank it. Lorin could not bring himself to drinking it. We had only soup and apricots. We expected to be sick that night from the water. However, we slept well, and the next morning we enjoyed a meal cooked with this water.”

There were important differences between the Zillmer and Mackenzie expeditions as well. “Whereas Mackenzie travelled with Indians most of the time, met them almost every day, and learned the route from them. We saw no Indians until the twelfth day, and no whites on the entire trip.”

Another difference was the forest. During Mackenzie’s time, the route was well established by trading between interior and coastal people. But Zillmer found, “there was much more timber than in the time of Mackenzie, so that we had almost no open views. This made the task of following the route more difficult.”

Near their crossing of the Euchiniko River, for instance, they faced several confusing route options. Hours later it turned out they chose the wrong option. Zillmer recounted, “For less than a day we had been off his trail, but now we were on it again.”

They carried no gun but Zillmer did have a fishing pole. On their second evening of fishing for their supper Zillmer wrote, “With a casting rod of which the top section was missing, and a small bass plug, I fished three pools adjoining fast water. Approximately twenty casts netted fifteen bites and ten rainbows weighing about two pounds each. On one cast I caught two fish on the two hooks of the plug. I never fished after that for it was too easy, and besides, we did not have time for it.”

Along the way there was a lupine-rich alpine meadow, traversing a one-foot ledge across a cliff, views of snow-capped peaks, part of a day negotiating three canyons, several waterfalls and other trials great and small.

Of the final days of the trek, Zillmer wrote of the downward descent, “our toes were constantly pressed against the front of our shoes. As a consequence, both of us lost the nails of our big toes. Our feet were badly swollen and blistered. Lorin lost thirty-two pounds and I fourteen. However, we had not experienced cold weather as we had expected from Mackenzie’s account.”

On their 16^th day, they reached Bella Coola where they recuperated for a week. Taking special comfort from a rustic Tweedsmuir Lodge, Zillmer wrote, “Our clothes were rags, so we wore clothes kindly loaned us until we were again completely outfitted a few days later. I have always wanted English flannels and here in this outpost I got them, and they were altered to fit me by a daughter of a pioneer settler of the valley, a settler who had come from Wisconsin, my own state.”

From Bowling Pins to Land Conservation

by Drew Hanson

As a boy, I heard a story about a maple woods that was in the family long ago. The woods were handed down from one generation to the next until all the grandest old trees were cut down. The story ended with how the maple trees were turned into, of all things, bowling pins.

The story stuck with me and in my mind the woods slowly took on an enchanting quality.

I grew up in rural Marinette County, where my dad’s family has been since the Meyers arrived during the Civil War. Some of them survived the Great Peshtigo Fire of 1871. The land where my parents built the home where I grew up was part of another family line—farmsteaded by my great-great grandparents, the Kellers. Other family lines, like the Jaegers and Hansens, had farmsteads nearby.

Going through the Marinette public schools, quite a few other kids were what my grandparents called shirt-tail relation. So when I left college at UW-Marinette to attend UW-Madison, I joked that I needed to leave town so I wouldn’t accidentally marry a cousin.

Years later I was searching microfiche for old family stories in newspapers at the State Historical Society Library in Madison. There I found a story from 1896 of my great-great grandfather Jaeger who was delivering milk when the horse pulling the wagon lost all composure at a railroad crossing. Jaeger was thrown to the ground, the wagon badly damaged and the horse injured so that it was shot on the spot. Not the sort of thing you see today, eh?!

More satisfying, though, were the small news items that mentioned the place Hansen Maple Grove or just Hansen Grove. It was noted as a meeting place for church and school groups to gather for picnics and as the residence in the obituaries for some family members. This was the maple woods of my family lore and judging from the stories, it was a place that must have held special meaning for not only my ancestors but for their neighbors too. It made me proud.

Thrilled, I soon visited. But today it is a different place—nothing enchanting or grand about it. A private home stands in the middle. As a place for family and neighbors to gather, relax and recreate, Hansen Maple Grove is gone. It is like a ghost town—only a ghost woods. It would be easy to blame the landowner for the loss of that woods but they probably had few options. We should assume they needed the money from the harvest of those big trees. They did what they needed to do and they had every right to do it.

As a place shared with the community, Hansen Maple Grove existed for about a half-century. It was a time, at least in northeast Wisconsin, before public parks and public picnic grounds. In the vastness of rural America in those days, neighbors let neighbors walk through each others’ woods.

Out of my combination of pride and sadness came a motivation to be a conservationist, to do my small part to help other places like Hansen Maple Grove be around for hundreds of years or more. In a world that is changing faster all the time, we need to be conservative about land and water by conserving special places for generations to come.

When my ancestors settled Wisconsin a century and a half ago, the state was still dominated by nature. Today it is increasingly dominated by highways, powerlines, subdivisions, mowed lawns and No Trespassing signs. Fortunately, today we have public parks and picnic areas and several options to help save other special places.

Two of the more important of these options (sometimes we think of them as tools) are conservation easements and the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program.

A conservation easement is a legal agreement between a landowner and a land trust or government agency that permanently limits uses of the land in order to protect its conservation values. It is the most traditional tool for conserving private land and offers flexibility in crafting the terms. It allows landowners to continue to own and use their land, and they can also sell it or pass it on to heirs. An easement may apply to all or a portion of the property, and need not require public access.

The Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program was created by the Wisconsin Legislature in 1989 to preserve valuable natural places and wildlife habitat, protect water quality and fisheries, and expand opportunities for outdoor recreation. It accomplishes these through the acquisition of land and easements, development of recreational facilities, and restoration of habitat.

If Hansen Maple Grove had existed during today's era of conservation easements and the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program, there is no guarantee the landowner would choose to conserve their land instead of trading it for bowling pins. But one thing is certain: these tools give landowners options.

If you are a private landowner, options are good things.

Shenandoah and Kettle Moraine Diverge

by Drew Hanson

Envisioned to be roughly the same length and shape and created at almost the same time, Shenandoah National Park and the Kettle Moraine State Forest have different conservation legacies. Why?

Shenandoah National Park

Shenandoah National Park encompasses part of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. The National Park Service owns a continuous corridor of land for the park, stretched along a long and narrow ribbon of ridges. See a map of the park here. Significant to the question of this article, it includes a 101-mile segment of the Appalachian Trail.

Shenandoah was authorized by Congress in 1926 and fully established on December 26, 1935. Prior to being a park, much of the area was farmland. The State of Virginia acquired the land through eminent domain and then gave it to the Federal Government provided it would be designated a National Park.

Most of the people displaced for the park left their homes quietly. According to the Virginia Historical Society, eighty-five-year-old Hezekiah Lam explained, "I ain't so crazy about leavin' these hills but I never believed in bein' ag'in (against) the Government. I signed everythin' they asked me." (Source: Wikipedia) The lost communities and homes were a price paid for one of the jewels of our National Park System.

Northern Kettle Moraine State Forest

Near the end of the most recent Ice Age, a 100-mile long series of morainal ridges formed between two immense lobes of glacial ice in what is now southeast Wisconsin. Nineteenth century geologists named the belt the Kettle Moraine. Due to its rocky soils and steep slopes, the Kettle Moraine turned out to be ill-suited for farming. With flooding downstream becoming a problem, the Izaak Walton League purchased the first 800 acres in the Kettle Moraine in 1926. Eight years later the State Planning Board recommended the entire scenic belt of glacial ridges be purchased for a public conservation and recreation area. The Kettle Moraine State Forest was established in 1937 albeit in two separate, North and South purchase units.

Conservation leaders like Ray Zillmer kept up the drum beat of pressure to acquire the connecting corridor between the North and South units of the State Forest. In 1942, the Milwaukee Chapter of the Izaak Walton League adopted the report, “The Wisconsin Glacial Moraines”. A couple years later, the Wisconsin Division of the Izaak Walton League adopted a similar resolution.

In a July 1, 1948 letter to Oscar Rennebohm, Acting Governor of Wisconsin, Ray Zillmer introduced himself and the Kettle Moraine State Forest: “I have given a great deal of my time to the Kettle Moraine project. I have given 34 addresses to over 2,000 people, and I know how the people feel about it. I would like you to give consideration to extending the purchase area so that the northern and southern areas are connected to form a line 100 miles long. As far as the State of Wisconsin is concerned, this will be one of your most important acts. I consider my own efforts in the promotion of this project the most important contribution in my life.”

After receiving a response from the Acting Governor, two weeks later Zillmer replied: “Your letter shows that you have a very good knowledge of the Kettle Moraine project. Personally, I believe it will perform a greater service to the people of Wisconsin than any other projects which are more expensive. The war demonstrated that so many of our young men are not physically fit. We need more outdoor projects where we can retain health by normal exercise of the body. I believe it is urgent to extend the Kettle Moraine area at the very earliest opportunity. It will make possible the purchase of many tracts not now available. The connection of isolated tracts with larger areas will gradually take form.”

In spite of these and many other calls for the protection of the Kettle Moraine corridor, there were set-backs. Zillmer addressed one loss in a December 28, 1948 letter to Ernest Swift, Director of the Wisconsin Conservation Department. Regarding a Mr. Froedert, who sold his property to a developer for twice what the State was offering to include the property in the Kettle Moraine State Forest, Zillmer wrote, “I want you to know that I was utterly disgusted with Mr. Froedert; perhaps more sorry for him than anything else, because he has, in his struggle for wealth, lost all social values”. Lamenting the loss of enchanting Blue Spring on the property, he wrote, “In its original form, the Palmyra Blue Spring, was known in southeastern Wisconsin as one of the most unusual, natural phenomenon. It was a very active pool of a beautiful blue color and so active as to simulate the pools in Yellowstone National Park. It was a place which, in its original condition, could have been developed into a pilgrimage spot for nature lovers. This has been spoilt by the damming of the waters.”

Ten years later, Zillmer founded the Ice Age Park and Trail Foundation (later re-named Ice Age Trail Alliance) to promote and assist in the creation of an Ice Age National Park.

Another fifty years later, there remains no 100-mile segments of the Ice Age Trail (none are even half that long) and the Kettle Moraine State Forest never became a continuous corridor of public land like Shenandoah National Park.

What happened? Why did the 100-mile continuous corridor of public land for Shenandoah National Park achieve success but the Kettle Moraine State Forest (and Ice Age Trail) did not? Did Mountain Majesty Bias have an effect? Is it because eminent domain was used to acquire the land at Shenandoah but in only rare instances for the Kettle Moraine State Forest? A friend said to me, "Maybe Virginians care more about their unique and beautiful landscapes than Wisconsinites?"

What do you think?

Gem of a Junction

by Drew Hanson

Whenever I have free time, it’s hard to beat a walk or a hike. If I’m running errands on the far west side of Madison, one of my favorites is the Ice Age Junction Area. Sometimes it’s called the “Ice Age Trail Junction Area” or “Ice Age Trail Junction Natural Resource Area”. My vote would be to rename it “Kathleen Falk County Park”, but that’s another story.
 

The park has no lake or stream, no picnic shelter or playground equipment. It’s just a great place between Madison and Verona to have a few minutes of respite from civilization.

Click on the map below for a larger image. A map of the broader area is at http://danedocs.countyofdane.com/webdocs/pdf/lwrd/parks/IAT_Junction_Map.pdf

Source: map 66f, Ice Age Trail Atlas 2011

I usually deposit my car in the well-marked parking lot on the south side of McKee Road. A paved bike path leads south to the Military Ridge Trail. I like to use the bike path for about a quarter-mile to access the oak woods in the middle of the park as quickly as possible.

In the winter I sometimes wander around the woods, where the sounds and views are dominated by nature. From there I might follow some of the mowed paths that are designed to firstly be prescribed burn breaks. Or I might just explore off-trail.

In the summer the greatest assets of the park are the native prairies. Volunteers with the Dane County Chapter of the Ice Age Trail Alliance and staff with the Dane County Land and Water Resources Department have spent years converting former cultivated fields into the beautiful restored prairies we see today. In July and August, the prairies are in their full glory—they’re absolutely fantastic. I enjoy these prairies far more than the historic prairies at the famous UW-Madison Arboretum.

The topography is more fun here than most other places in Madison too. With the terminal moraine a couple miles to the south, according to David Mickelson’s Geology of the Ice Age National Scenic Trail, the prairie-covered high hill in the northern part of the park is composed primarily of dolomite bedrock with an upper layer of glacial till.

The only disappointing thing is the current route of the Ice Age National Scenic Trail (IAT) that courses through on a more-or-less north-south orientation. In general, some of the most scenic areas of the property are missed. But that's about to change. A reroute is in the works. Careful trail layout and design by specially trained volunteers and staff is the first step. Once all the prep work is complete, in coordination with the National Park Service and Dane County Land and Water Resources Department, the Ice Age Trail Alliance will lead construction of the new trail tread. The result will be a park that is a gem.

Care to volunteer to help make it so?

A Neighborhood Ice Rink

by Drew Hanson

Madisonians will know it as the Union Corners rink, perhaps someday anyway. That big snow that lasted a few weeks was followed by a warm week and now this flash freeze—perfect conditions for creating a shallow frozen pond. It made a delightful swath of ice for a five year old to learn to skate and then stamp around in winter boots. It's only a one block walk from our home.

For those who don’t know the 11-acre area, just a decade ago it was a Kohls grocery and old battery factory. A developer had plans to transform it into a new neighborhood that became a casualty of the recession. The city bought it a few years ago to guide its future. It is a future that would be especially nice for families with kids if it included a small ice rink. Wouldn’t that be a sweet neighborhood destination and gateway feature along East Washington Ave/Highway 151?