Today was a good day to walk a couple nearby segments of the Ice Age Trail. I wanted a segment close to home — an hour away by car or less — because I felt like doing more walking than driving this afternoon. Opening my guidebook, I started flipping through pages of maps in nearby counties and noticed I hadn’t walked the Devil’s Staircase segment or the Arbor Ridge segment yet. They were only a forty-minute drive from home, so off I went.

Google maps told me there was a parking lot between the two segments on County Road E just north of Janesville. I nearly drove past it as I came around a tight turn out from under a railroad overpass that blocked my view of the road ahead. The parking lot is roomy and paved with gravel, and there’s easy access to either segment. On this very chilly day — my dashboard thermometer told me it was 27 degrees F — I was the only person who showed up to hike the Devil’s Staircase from this direction.

I had walked barely 300 feet from the trailhead when I thought I might be lost already. From the parking lot, the trail ducks into a cluster of short bushes, trees, and undergrowth, then pops back out again onto a paved trail on the edge of a golf course. The paved trail goes left and right, and it’s not immediately obvious which way the IAT goes. I randomly picked left, thinking I would turn back and try the other direction if I didn’t spot a yellow blaze within 100 paces. Crossing over a set of railroad tracks. Within fifty feet I was rewarded with the sight of a familiar yellow vertical stripe in the distance.

The sky was clear and the sun was shining, but that didn’t do much to keep me warm. There was a brisk wind blowing ice-cold off the Rock River, and the trail was almost entirely in shadow beneath the limestone cliffs. I had to maintain a quick pace or freeze until I got to Riverside Park where the steady sunshine warmed me up just enough for me to relax and slow down a bit.

Quite a lot of the trail was in poor condition. Last week we had spring-like temperatures which probably brought a lot of foot traffic to this popular trail. It looked to me like the hikers churned up the muddy sections of the trail pretty thoroughly while the ground was melted. Then, when temps dropped back into the teens and twenties, the mud froze into a very uneven trail surface that was hard to find footing on in many places. Climbing the irregular rocky parts of the trail was easier than scrambling over some of the frozen mud.

There’s also a very deep washout at the north end of the segment where the trail had been cut so deeply that the climb in and out of the cut would be challenging for many people. I had to very carefully pick my way over the rocks to avoid stressing my trick knee. Some of the stones laid for the trail are still in place, but much of the surrounding soil has been washed away, making it difficult to step from stone to stone.

For some reason, I had the idea in my head that Riverside Park was on a high cliff. I don’t know where I got that idea, but I was so wrong. Although there are high points with scenic viewpoints along the back of the park, they aren’t more than fifty or sixty feet tall, and the shore is broad and flat as milk on a platter. My sunshine stroll along the shoreline was pleasant and relaxing. I walked a loop up the road that went to the top of the hills in the back of the park and came down again where the Devil’s Staircase segment emerged from the woods into the park.

It took me all of an hour and a half to walk to Riverside Park and back to my car. At that point, I could’ve packed up and gone home, but I felt like I still had plenty of steam and the Arbor Ridge segment was right across the road. I had time and I was there, so why not keep going?

After crossing County Road E, the trail runs about 500 – 600 feet alongside Northridge Drive before diving into the woods, where it more or less parallels the railroad tracks. It’s not right next to the tracks, but about 200 feet to the south. During the summer, when the trees are fully fledged and the undergrowth is thick, I doubt you can see the tracks at all, but in leafless winter I could see them clearly, even after the trail curved slightly away from the tracks to follow Marsh Creek.

The trail meanders a distance of about three-quarters of a mile through the woods beside the tracks and the creek, to arrive at a nature conservancy identified on a posted map as the Robert O. Cook Memorial Arboretum / Janesville Schools Outdoor Laboratory. The hour or so which I spent ambling through this conservancy was easily the most relaxing portion of the hike. I’m glad I decided to include it on my itinerary today.

The IAT runs southward near the western border of the conservancy, on top of a ridge. The hill bottoms out in a narrow valley, about 60 – 70 feet below the ridge tops. The valley is maybe three-quarters of a mile long from north to south. Across the valley another trail runs along the top of the opposite ridge near the eastern border of the conservancy. The thickly-wooded hills all around the valley are shot through with trails, well-maintained and clearly marked. There is an abundance of choice for any visitor looking to spend a few hours walking through the woods here.

I made a loop of my hike through the conservancy, following the IAT almost all the way to the end but detouring at the south end of the valley to take the conservancy’s blue trail north back to where it rejoins the IAT at Marsh Creek. The trail was very easy to walk. I settled into a relaxed stride as I wandered through the park. On another day in the near future, when it’s a little warmer, I’m looking forward to returning to explore this park in a bit more depth.

Adding these two segments to my progress walking the IAT makes a total of 86.3 miles down. Only 913.7 to go! Just kidding. I’m never going to be a thousand-miler. There are too many road walks I’m never going to bother with. By my counting, I’ve completed 20 segments. According to the Official Guidebook of the Ice Age National Scenic Trail, there are 124 segments, so after one year of hiking the IAT I’ve already knocked one-sixth of the segments off my to-do list! Feeling well chuffed about that.

I made it back to my minivan by three o’clock, which gave me plenty of time to get home before the rush hour got too crazy.