I drove up to Sauk County to walk the Devil’s Lake segment of the Ice Age Trail. This is the continuation of the Sauk Point segment that I hiked on 10/14/2024 right up to County Highway 113, which is where I started hiking today. I intended to walk only as far as the IAT campground at Devil’s Lake, a 3-mile hike, then turn back, just to get a good 6-mile hike, but I walked the three miles to the campground in only an hour and it was such a nice day, so I figured why not do the loop around Devil’s Lake? How long could it take?

It took me four hours. That’s how long it could take. What I hadn’t counted on was that the state park at Devil’s Lake is not only massively popular in the summer, but that the trails along the bluffs around the lake are still very crowded in the fall.

To climb up to the west bluff trail, about 400 feet higher than the lake at its highest point, I had to slowly pick my way through the rocks along the 1.4 miles of the trail along the bluff, stumbling on the uneven asphalt that some dumbshit decided to lump over the trail year after year in an effort, I suppose, to mitigate the damage to the trail caused by thousands of hikers every year. When I finally made it to the end of the trail, I had to unclimb the bluff down to the lake, which takes almost as long as climbing it, before circling around the south shore of the lake to the base of the east bluff to start climbing all over again.

The east bluff is “only” 300 feet higher than the lake but I was too pooped to climb it when I got there. Besides being tired and needing a delay to work up some motivation, I had climbed that part of the trail before and I didn’t care for it. The east bluff trail is very popular and for that reason it can be very crowded. Last time I went up, there was a line of people behind me, making me feel pressured to climb as quickly as I could, and a line of people coming down, making me feel that I should step aside from the narrow trail to let them pass. If I stepped aside, the steady stream of people coming down would never seem to stop, while the people coming up would get impatient and climb past me. It was not a relaxing climb at all, just stress stress and more stress.

So instead of facing that again, I ambled about three-quarters of a mile through the woods along the Grotto trail at the base of the bluff. Only a handful of people had opted to go this way so it was much more relaxing that walking through the crowded park. I wish I could’ve taken it even more slowly than I did, but by then I was starting to realize I would probably be getting home late even if I rushed it, so I kept moving even if only at a moderate pace.

At the end of the Grotto trail there were only two options: turn back, or climb the east bluff. Well, for me there was just one option. I climbed the east bluff. There were only two people making the climb and they were far in front of me. Also, the view from the top of the fall colors in the valley below was stunning. It was a much more enjoyable experience than the one I had before.

From the top of the bluff, I was supposed to follow the Upland Trail Loop, but somehow I followed a false trail into the woods. Luckily, I realized fairly quickly I had gone wrong and started looking around for blazes or some other signs. I spotted a bench next to a trail map about 150 feet away and bushwhacked cross-country to get to it. From there, the Upland Trail was a fairly easy walk along a rocky but wide trail, about 1.75 miles back to the van. I started hiking from the van at 11:15 am and got back to the van at 3:20 pm, hiking about 9.5 miles in 4 hours 5 minutes. Small wonder I was trail weary by the time I got back.