After drinking my morning coffee Sunday morning, I dressed for a rainy day outside, jumped in the van with my backpack, and headed for the Sauk Point segment of the Ice Age Trail. There was rain forecast for the afternoon but it wasn’t supposed to arrive until one o’clock or later so I figured I was safe, even when it started to cloud over later in the morning.

I walked this segment last October, making this a do-over but it had been a week since I was on a long hike, so I was due for another. I needed one nearby because I had things to do that day and I wanted a hike that was at least a little challenging, which made me think immediately of the hilly terrain of the Sauk Point segment. On a scale from zero to ten, I’d rate this a three or four for difficulty. Not easy, but not especially difficult. There are some steep ups and downs, and the trail is punctuated by rocks and boulders in more than a few places, but for the most part the trail is clear and wide.

I started from the parking lot at Parfrey’s Glen and walked to Highway 113 and back. I’m not entirely certain how far that is. My GPS tracker told me it was 7.7 miles out and back, but a trail sign posted at Highway 113 would have you believe the trail is 4.2 miles from 113 to Parfrey’s Glen, making the out-and-back total 8.4 miles. But the IAT map puts the one-way distance at 3.9 miles, making the out-and-back 7.8 miles. The difference between 7.7 miles and 7.8 miles is only 528 feet, so I’m going to go with 7.8 because it sounds farther.

I had good weather for the walk from Parfrey’s Glen to 113, cool and a little windy, and occasionally the sun would break through the clouds to shine warmly on the trail. I reached Highway 113 at 11:15 AM and turned around to head back without stopping, knowing I wouldn’t reach my car until after noon. I felt the first few sprinkles ten or fifteen minutes later.

The hardest part of the climb up to the ridge line is a stretch of trail so rocky it’s almost like climbing stairs. A lot of the rocks were very smooth and they were going to get slippery if the rain didn’t stop. It didn’t, but I got past the rocks before stopping to drop my pack and dig out my rain gear. The rest of the walk back was through a steady but very gentle rain.

There are a lot of rocks along this trail. Most of the trail is free of rocks, but there are at least a dozen stretches of trail where it’s more rocky than not, and the climb to the top of the ridge on the western end of the trail is all rocks and boulders for a distance of maybe one hundred yards. I also notice that every twenty minutes or so I crossed over a lot line heaped with rocks, where the owners piled rocks along the line for dozens and dozens of years. Most of these heaps were no higher than a foot, so they were not quite stone fences and the trail simply climbed over them, but one heap was almost waist high. The trail builders went to the trouble of shifting rocks to either side of the trail to cross over the line there, making a low cut through the rock pile.

Even though I had to walk almost all the way back to the car through a steady rain, it was a pretty enjoyable hike.