Went for a little hike this afternoon on the Cross Plains segment of the Ice Age Trail. Today was a relatively warm day with temps in the high 30s, which was good and bad. Good, because it was easy for me to keep warm. Bad, because the trail, which had previously been frozen solid, was today thawing to the point that significantly long stretches of it were the kind of mud that is both slippery as snot while also being so sticky that the soles of my boots were quickly gummed up with clods of muck that I had to stop and scrape off if I didn’t want to lift a couple pounds of dirt with every step.

I’ve walked the loop part of this segment before, also in the winter when the trail was muddy. If I ever come back to this segment, it’ll only be in the summer or fall, and then only when I’m sure at least a week has passed since the last rainfall.