I took the day off from work today, so I drove up past Sauk City to walk the Sauk Point segment of the Ice Age Trail as far as Highway 113. One-way that’s 4.2 miles, but I had to walk it out and back to return to my van, so a total of 8.4 miles. I did it in just under 4 hours carrying a 20-pound pack. My feet hurt and I was trail-weary afterward, but I felt especially satisfied to learn I was able to hike so far shouldering a pack of any weight at all.

I thought this was going to be a moderately easy walk through the woods, but I was quickly disabused of that idea in the first thirty minutes, which was an uphill slog. Seriously, I was not expecting a climb as long and steady as that. It wasn’t so bad at first, but after about twenty minutes I was thinking, “Is this whole trail a climb to the top of a hill?” Well, not the whole trail, but that first thirty minutes or so is! When I returned home I looked at the route on a topo map. The first mile I went from 920 feet elevation in the parking lot below Parfrey’s Glen up to 1,593 feet elevation at Sauk point, a climb of 673 feet in about a mile. Not the “moderately easy” walk through the woods I was anticipating.

I also didn’t realized I would be walking more than eight miles on this hike, not until I got to the midpoint and had to make a decision. If I turned back, I would only have to walk two more miles, all downhill — not bad! But I would walk only four miles in total. I wanted to go farther than that, so I continued on, reasoning that I could always stop and turn back at any point if it seemed like too much for me.

It never did. The trail was moderate to easy after passing the peak and downhill for the last mile or so to Highway 113. I completed it easily and was pretty sure I would have no trouble walking back, if I took my time, which I had plenty of. I took a break when I reached the highway, ate some snacks and drank plenty of water, then started back. The trail on that end is fairly rocky but the uphill climb is not as strenuous as the climb out of Parfrey’s Glen, perhaps because it’s more gradual. Whatever the reason, I was not as winded by the time I got to the midpoint as I had been when I started.

As chuffed as I was to walk that whole segment, I’ve got to build up a lot more stamina if I’m serious about making some of the hikes I want to make next summer. 8.4 miles is not quite far enough to hike between a lot of the campgrounds on Isle Royale. I’ll have to be able to repeatedly hike at least 10 miles a day. 12 or 14 would be even better, to have a margin for safety. And to hike in the Porkies, I’ll have to be able to hike 10 to 15 miles while climbing hundreds of feet in an hour or two. I got a taste of how strenuous that is today.