Superior Hiking Trail – Day 11

Daily Miles: 16

Total Miles: 180

We decided to get an early start today because a thunderstorm was expected in the late afternoon.  We were hoping we could hike our miles for the day and get our hammocks set up before the rain started.

So, we were up by 5am and hiking by 5:30am.  We used our headlamps for the first half hour or more.  Shortly after it was light out, we got some nice views of the Faultline Valley from the ridge we were hiking on.

We stopped for water at the Faultline Creek.  Like several other creeks we have come across, it looked like a beaver had taken up residency and turned the creek into a pond.  We don’t really like getting water from beaver ponds, but there isn’t always much choice.

We ran into two section hikers at the next campsite.  They had started their 7 day section hike the day before, and it sounded like it was a rough day…blisters, heavy packs and sore bodies.  Sounded like they were going to do some reassessing.

We stopped for a break mid-morning when we passed by a large rock area in the sun.  We figured that the sun wouldn’t be around for long today and we wanted to dry out our sleeping bags.  We don’t have any wet gear, but all of our gear is damp from the high humidity.

Today’s state park was the Split Rock Lighthouse State Park.  We guessed that maybe this park isn’t as popular, because the trail didn’t seem to be as maintained.  There were multiple trees down over the trail.  It wasn’t a big deal, because most of the trees were small, but the trail so far has had a high level of maintenance, which today fell short of.

We noticed in the afternoon that the trail had been rerouted in the past to accommodate a failed bridge.  The river looked very easy to cross, so we decided to just rock hop across and avoid the reroute.

We stopped down at the river and had lunch in the shade, while drying our soaked shirts on the rocks in the sun.  It was a really nice spot and we spent some time sitting in the cold river to cool off.

JJ had to do some repairing of his hammock suspension rope.  Last night, part of the outter sheathing of his rope broke and he dropped several inches in his hammock.  Luckily he didn’t drop to the ground, but his rope was very compromised.  When we had service he looked up a knot he could tie in the rope to make it usable for the rest of the trip.  He took time during our lunch break to tie the knots so his hammock was ready to hang when we got to camp.

We passed two more section hikers today and they mentioned that it was really hot where we were planning to camp.  They certainly were not mistaken about that.  For the last 1.5 miles before we made it to the Blueberry Hill campsite, it was very exposed and very hot.

We got to our campsite by 3pm, so we had plenty of time to set up our shelters.  The campsite is not great for hammocks, but we managed to hang all four of our hammocks in a small clearing.  It is pretty tight, but it works.

We started cooking dinner around 4:15pm and thought we had plenty of time, because it didn’t look like it would rain soon.  But, the weather changed quickly and we scrambled to get our stuff back under our tarps before the rain really let loose.  By 4:45pm the rain had arrived, and we were happy to be dry under our tarps.

It is expected to storm most of the night and then sporadically tomorrow.  We expect to be wet tomorrow and that is ok…we have had such great luck with the weather this hike.