Better Walking for Raleigh?

It's really hard to get around some American cities without a car. Neighborhoods built roughly 1945-1985 usually have no sidewalks. Some cities are tackling the problem. There's a short video at click here showing the situation in Raleigh, North Carolina. What do you think?

Roadless Areas along the Ice Age Trail

By Drew Hanson

While most of us use roads to reach a trailhead, one of the reasons we go hiking is to leave roads behind. The quality of our hiking experience is in part judged by the degree to which our hike brings us into contact with roads and other signs of civilization. When roads are a prominent part of the experience, I suggest that what we are doing is more like walking than hiking. But this isn’t an essay on semantics. It is about experience.

The current Ice Age Trail route includes over 1,300 road crossings. For an American hiking trail, that is a big number but most of the crossings are clustered in communities that the Trail passes through. As you walk the Ice Age Trail through Manitowoc, Slinger, St. Croix Falls and the other cities crossed by the Trail, you cross many streets.

On the other hand, most off-road segments pass through areas with significantly lower road densities. Some of the off-road segments even pass through places that might be considered roadless areas. This is an introduction to the larger roadless areas along the Trail.

Inspired by The Big Outside, by Dave Foreman and Howie Wolke (Harmony Books, 1992), in August, 2008, I completed an analysis of roadless areas along the Ice Age Trail. I used the best Geographic Information System (GIS) data available at the time. The effort evaluated all areas bounded by public roads along the Trail. The result was a poster map titled, “Largest Roadless Areas on the Ice Age National Scenic Trail”. It shows roadless areas that are greater than five square miles (3,200 acres). The map shows that there are few roadless areas over this five-square-mile threshold in southern Wisconsin. But in northern Wisconsin there are quite a lot. I’ve posted the map here in four parts.

The largest roadless area along the IAT is between Tower Road and County Highway E in western Lincoln County at a whopping 92 square miles. For Wisconsin, that’s big! Adding to its remoteness, it is part of a cluster of roadless areas that I call Spirit Wood. It is located northwest of Wausau, between Highway 102 in Taylor County and the Wisconsin River in Lincoln County. Hiking the Ice Age Trail across Spirit Wood takes you 40 miles without crossing a single paved road. The September, 2008 edition of Backpacker magazine ran a story titled Destination Nowhere which highlights the most remote, solitude-promising places in the United States. They missed Spirit Wood so I wrote an essay about it that appeared in the January, 2011 edition of The Muir View and the Summer, 2011 edition of Mammoth Tales.

The Ice Age Trail through the Chequamegon National Forest has several roadless areas over five square miles including one that is 14 square miles which contains the Ice Age Semi-Primitive Non-Motorized Area.

A sampling of other roadless areas (from east to west) includes:

-          The area containing Besadny State Wildlife Area in Kewaunee County at over 11 square miles;

-          The area bounded by Mineral Point Road, Timber Lane, Old Sauk Pass, Stagecoach Road and Highway P that contains part of the Cross Plains National Scientific Reserve in Dane County at 5.5 square miles;

-          Old Indian Agency House to Clark Road in Columbia County at 5 square miles;

-          The area containing Quincy Bluff in Adams County at 20 square miles;

-          Highway N to Poplar Lane in Marathon County at 9 square miles;

-          Highway S to Highway 52 in Langlade County at 45 square miles;

-          Bear Avenue (west) to Highway 102 in Taylor County at 14.5 square miles;

-          Moonridge Trail to Highway CC in Chippewa County at 12 square miles;

-          The area containing Straight Lake State Park in Polk County at 8 square miles.

In designing or discussing individual places along the Ice Age Trail, we always like to highlight traits that make each one special. The very lack of roads in these roadless areas makes these places special. As urban or park development is proposed along the Trail, we should endeavor to minimize the number of new road crossings, especially in these larger roadless areas.

In the hundreds of years to come, if we are to maintain the Ice Age Trail as a place to go for a hiking experience (especially a long-distance hiking experience that is rare in the north central United States), there must be larger roadless areas along the route. These places are special. If we want our great-grandchildren to have outstanding hiking opportunities in Wisconsin, we need to keep these roadless areas special by not building roads into them.

Camping Program Needed for the Ice Age Trail

By Drew Hanson

Use of the Ice Age Trail is increasing. But a significant impediment to more people enjoying the thousand-mile footpath remains: the lack of regularly-spaced camping areas. It’s like a coast-to-coast highway with no place to buy gasoline. Fix this problem and more people will use the Trail. More people using the Trail will bring economic, education, and physical fitness benefits to Wisconsin.

The non-profit Ice Age Trail Alliance recognizes anyone who can verify that they hiked the entire Ice Age Trail as a Thousand-Miler. In the ten years prior to 1990 only four people hiked the entire Ice Age Trail. During the 1990s 13 people completed their hikes of the entire Trail and 39 people completed between 2000-2010. By this meter, Thousand-Miler use of the Ice Age Trail is increasing at a rate of roughly 200% per decade.

Sign directing hikers to one of only two
existing dispersed camping areas along
the Ice Age Trail

The Southern Kettle Moraine State Forest has three backpack shelters spaced along roughly 30 miles of the Ice Age Trail. The shelters require a fee for use and can be reserved in advance. Use data for the three shelters for May – October, 2010 shows 297 user/nights out of a possible 552 available nights for an occupancy rate of 53.8%. For comparison, according to the report The Economic Impact of Expenditures By Travelers On Wisconsin: Calendar Year 2010 prepared for the Wisconsin Department of Tourism (see http://media.travelwisconsin.com/~/media/Files/Research/Economic%20Impact/2010/2010%20Full%20Report.pdf), hotels/motels/resorts/B&Bs had an average occupancy rate of 51% in 2010. Like hotels/motels/resorts/B&Bs, demand for Southern Kettle Moraine shelters is greatest on weekends when the shelters are often reserved months in advance. Comparable occupancy rates between camping shelters and hotels shows that demand for overnight use of the Ice Age Trail is solid where camping accommodations are available, even inconvenient accommodations that require a reservation and fee.

Another example of long-distance hiking use is provided by the 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail (AT). Most of the estimated 2-3 million people who use the AT each year hike only a portion of it but an increasing number complete the entire trail. According to the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, approximately 500 - 600 people complete their hike of the entire AT each year (see http://www.appalachiantrail.org/about-the-trail/2000-milers). Given that the Ice Age Trail is roughly half as long as the AT and passes over terrain that is generally easier to hike, if the Ice Age Trail had a camping program, long-distance use numbers on the Ice Age Trail might surpass long-distance use of the Appalachian Trail.

Simple. One of the existing dispersed
camping areas along the Ice Age Trail.
A system of these is needed.

To address the need and realize the tourism potential of the Ice Age Trail, a new program of regularly spaced dispersed camping areas was adopted in 2011. While these camping areas should be free to use, the economic benefits come from the increased fuel purchased to reach trailheads, food and specialized equipment purchased for multi-day hikes, visits to taverns near the Trail and more.

Such a program would be one of the least expensive economic generators that the State of Wisconsin could invest in. It would benefit half of the state’s counties. Partners such as the National Park Service and Ice Age Trail Alliance could assist with set-up. Once in place, the Wisconsin Department of Tourism could promote the program to state residents and the vast Chicago market. Other benefits would include educating residents about the beauty of their state, increasing public use of state-owned land and promoting physical fitness.

Let’s get the program rolling.

North Country Trail office moves from Madison to Lowell

After two decades in Madison, Wisconsin the National Park Service (NPS) recently relocated its North Country National Scenic Trail office to Lowell, Michigan. For years federal staff for the North Country Trail (NCT) shared an office with Ice Age National Scenic Trail staff on Madison's west side. The two trails even shared some staff, which provided some administrative efficiencies. But those efficiencies were wiped out by the travel required anytime North Country Trail staff needed to be on or near any part of the NCT itself. Plus not having a shared federal office will provide an emotional boost to both National Scenic Trails, especially for NCT volunteers who now have their own office and staff located on the NCT.

The kind of synergy of having federal and non-profit offices for the Appalachian Trail located in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia can begin to benefit the NCT in Lowell. I applaud the move.

For more on this story, see http://www.mlive.com/outdoors/index.ssf/2011/11/world_traveler_now_in_lowell_t.html

One of the Top 100 Great Outdoors Projects in America

By Drew Hanson

A new report from the U.S. Department of the Interior highlights the Ice Age Trail as one of the country’s most promising projects designed to protect special places and increase access to outdoor spaces. The full report is at http://www.slideshare.net/USInterior/americas-great-outdoors-fiftystate-report

In a news release about the report, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar stated, “We have listened to the American people and their elected representatives about the most important things we can do to conserve our land and water and reconnect people, especially young people, to the outdoors. These projects represent what states believe are among the best investments in the nation to support a healthy, active population, conserve wildlife and working lands, and create travel, tourism and outdoor-recreation jobs across the nation.” The report lists 100 projects nationwide—two in every state.

One of the goals of the America’s Great Outdoors: Fifty-State Report is to "expand the Ice Age Trail through strategic conservation easements”.

USA Today mentioned "completing gaps in Wisconsin's Ice Age Trail" in the first paragraph of an article about the report that appeared at, http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2011/11/americas-greatest-outdoor-spots-feds-pick-top-100/1

This sounds like good news! Fifty-three years after Ray Zillmer first called on the federal government to help acquire the land needed for the Ice Age Trail, maybe it’s finally about to happen. Let’s hope so.

For more on the subject of National Park Service land acquisition for the Ice Age Trail, see http://pedestrianview.blogspot.com/2011/04/national-park-service-land-acquisition.html and http://pedestrianview.blogspot.com/2011/03/protecting-route-and-resources-of-ice.html