[Rhodes22-list] Unexpected Polar Bear Winter Camping Trip

[Roger Pihlaja]

I just got back from a weekend backpacking trip with my Boy Scout troop.  We hiked & camped on the Jordan River Pathway, which is in the Mackinaw State Forest about 15 miles SW of Gaylord, MI.  It's about a 2-1/2 hour drive north from my house in Sanford, MI.  We had 19 Scouts and 5 adult leaders along, which is by far the biggest group we've ever tried to do a backpacking trip with.

Our troop has developed sort of a bimodal age distribution in the past couple of years.  We have a bunch of 11 & 12 year olds & a bunch of 16 & 17 year olds with relatively few Scouts in the 13 - 15 year range.  It's hard to find an activity that's interesting & challenging for the older Scouts that wouldn't absolutely kill the new Scouts.  So, we tried something a little different on this camping trip.  We divided the troop into Group A & Group B.  Group A started their hike from a place called "Deadman's Hill"  & hiked about 8 miles + about 1200 feet of total elevation change + several small stream crossings to our overnight destination at Pinney Bridge Walk-In Campsite.  Group B drove the vehicles to another trailhead & hiked about 3 mostly downhill miles to the same overnight campsite.

I hiked with Group A along with 6 Scouts & one other adult leader.  We hiked about 4 miles & stopped for lunch on the trail.  We covered the entire 8 miles in about 4 hours.  The trail conditions were pretty tough for hiking.  The area got about 3" of snow the night before & we got occasional wet snow flurries during the hike.  The temperature was right at freezing.  The ground was still warm enough to melt some of the snow on the trail & there was freezing cold water dripping off the trees.  The trail was slippery from the snow, mud, & wet leaves.  You had to be really careful of your footing, especially on the hills, or your feet would go right out from under you or you'd twist an ankle.  This was the 1st time I've ever parallel "skied" in my hiking boots!  Did you you know you can "hockey stop" a pair of Sorels in the mud if you edge them really hard?  Without the heavy backpack making me so top heavy, it would actually have been kind of fun.  Fortunately no one in our group got hurt, all though we were all pretty wet & muddy by the time we made it to our overnight campsight.  The fall colors were just past peak & the scenery from the high ridgelines along the trail was great.  I saw an 8 point whitetail buck, an easy 50 yard standing broadside shot with a rifle.  But, it ran away before I could get my camera out of my pack.

Group B got into camp about 2 hours ahead of us & had the campfires burning when we arrived.  All the younger Scouts had done just fine on their 1st ever backpacking trip.  Nobody in Group B had gotten hurt either.  We all said a little prayer of thanks for that blessing.

One of the adult leaders in Group B was Brenda Acklin.  Brenda wasn't able to find a babysitter & had her 12 year old daughter, Emily, with her in Group B.  This was also Emily's 1st backpacking trip.  Emily is kind of a whiner & a fussy eater.  I knew Brenda would have her hands full taking care of her.  So when we were planning the camping trip, I promised Brenda that I would cook dinner & breakfast for the 3 of us.  For dinner, I made Polynesian chicken over rice, green beans with lemon-butter sauce, hot fudge brownies for dessert, & all washed down with hot spiced apple cider.  Emily was a little slow eating her dinner &, in the freezing temperature, the food got stone cold before she'd finished half of it.  I warmed up Emily's whole plate of food at the same time as I was warming up the brownies in my double boiler.  Waving the dessert in front of Emily did the trick & she soon finished the rest of her dinner.  I've found that when you camp with women, you simply must bring chocolate!

Saturday night, the temperature got down to about 23 deg F.  After dinner, I started feeling pretty tired & cold.  I was in my sleeping bag by about 7:30 PM & slept straight thru to 7:30 AM Sunday morning.  I think most of the troop was in bed pretty soon after dinner & nobody got too cold overnight.

Sunday morning, I made breakfast burritos + fresh baked honey cinnamon sticky buns for Brenda, Emily, & me.  The last of the new Scouts was finally packed up & ready to leave by 11:00 AM.  We all hiked out together via the easier Group B route.  Hiking out from Jordan River level to the ridgeline was uphill almost the whole way, about 450 feet of elevation gain in 3 miles.  Some of our new Scouts were hurting bad by the time we reached the trailhead.   

For some reason, the tailgate on my Chevy Astro minivan wouldn't open when we got back to the vehicles.  I think it was frozen shut.  It made loading backpacks into the rear cargo area thru the side door & over the 2nd & 3rd row of seats a royal PITA!

We drove a short distance to another scenic overlook to have a look at the site of an ancient landslide.  Then we hiked about 1-1/4 miles to the headwaters of landslide Creek.  The headwaters turned out to be a spring that bubbles up out of the hillside & cascades down the hill in a pretty neat little waterfall!  Yes, that's right, this stream starts out with a waterfall.

On the way home, we stopped in Gaylord, MI & had lunch at Taco Bell.  We arrived back the SUM Church in Sanford, MI at 15:58, two minutes ahead of schedule.  I love it when a plan comes together!

The Jordan River Valley has quite a history in the lumbering industry in Michigan.  There used to be a log flume on Deadman's Hill.  I imagine getting in the way of a 5 ton log going down a 450 foot log flume would just ruin your whole day!  There were some fatalities at this site, hence the name.  Our campsite at Pinney Bridge Walk-in Campground was originally the site of a lumber camp around the turn of the century.  The Jordan River Valley was reforested during the 1930's by the CCC's.  Nowadays, it is managed by the Michigan DNR as a working forest.  Along the trail on our 8 mile hike, there were signs pointing out the sites of relatively recent wood harvesting operations.

I'm really proud of the way our troop handled this backpacking trip in fairly tough conditions.  Nobody got hurt or hypothermic.  They all managed to cook their own meals & slept thru the cold night without any problems.  A few of our new Scouts got cold wet feet & I'm sure they all learned a few things.

I wish I'd brought an extra pair of fleece pants.  The pair of fleece pants I wore on the 8 mile hike in on Saturday was pretty soaked by the time we'd reached our campsite.  I really missed having a dry pair to wear after dark on Saturday night & Sunday morning.  I had to make do with light weight polypropylene long johns & nylon wind pants.

We're calling this our 1st Polar Bear Winter Camping trip of the year.  It didn't start out that way, but that's Michigan weather for you.  Our Scouts will certainly have bragging rights at school tomorrow.

Roger Pihlaja
S/V Dynamic Equilibrium