Enrich your outdoor experience - volunteer
In 1995, I was fresh out of college with a newly-discovered lust for backpacking. I had discovered a set of topo maps on the UMD Outdoor Program’s gear rental desk detailing this long trail going up and down the North Shore. I was entranced.
The trail led to places with fantastic names like “Fantasia,” “Wolf Rock,” “Lookout Mountain,” “Devil Track River…” I wanted to be there - to see it all.
So I hiked it, and by the end of the 1990s I had hiked the entire trail plus many special sections over and over and over again. I had fallen in love with the trail but soon I felt a little guilty - like I should give back a little to the trail that had given me so much.
It started simply, just by joining the Superior Hiking Trail Association. The trail is open to anyone who wants to hike it - you can just go, park your car at a trailhead, hike and camp for FREE! FREE!!! No reservations, no permits, nothing! Any person who likes to hike may totally mooch the trail! So cutting the SHTA a $25 check twice a year seemed like a small price to pay. Plus, I got a quarterly newsletter and an updated set of maps every year!
But then I had kids. That’s what woke me up to REALLY helping the trail - I felt a deep desire to insure that my kids and future generations can have this stellar trail for perpetuity. So I decided to do more.
Over the past few years, I’ve helped the SHTA in several ways. Since I have had my kids on the trail since birth (Jackson made it to the summit of Carlton Peak at two months old) I was asked to write an article about taking kids hiking on the trail for the newsletter. In the article, I detailed several kid-friendly hikes and gave a few tips for hiking with kids. (Getting kids into the outdoors has become a huge passion of mine).
Then last fall, I wrote a brochure about classic hikes for kids which the SHTA passed out at the Midwest Mountaineering Outdoor Adventure Expo in Minneapolis. It felt great to see parents and their kids excitedly pick-up a copy of the brochure - to know I am helping get more kids on the trail.
Speaking of the expos, I have helped staff the SHTA booth for the past five years and it‘s always such a blast! It is just so much fun to talk to hikers, answer questions about the trail, recommend routes, and just generally get people excited about the SHT. I sell memberships, guidebooks and other SHT merchandise, but mostly I just talk excitedly about the trail. I sometimes find myself waxing poetically about watching the sun set over Bean Lake or feeling the spray from the surging Split Rock River or how the fall colors blaze from Carlton Peak - maybe I get a little too excited! Even when I’m in downtown Minneapolis, the trail gets me amped up! But spreading a map on a table, helping a newbie plan a trip - doesn’t get much more exciting then that! Almost every time I end-up saying, “Man, I wish I was going with ya!”
Six years ago, I decided to get my boys involved in helping the trail. I wanted to instill the values of volunteering into them (plus, it will look great on college applications). So twice a year we hike in to the Penn Creek campsite near Silver Bay to clean the fire rings, inspect the latrines, make sure the benches are holding-up and the trail to the site is clear. It’s a four-mile round trip and usually takes us four hours so we’ve done 48 hours of trail work so far. I wouldn’t have it any other way.
We’ve made some great memories together on our inspections. We’ve had days in pouring rain, we’ve hiked in 90 degree heat. Our spring hikes have seen the creek gushing beside the tent pads, our fall inspections have found us hiking through blazing colors. We’ve met people camping at our site while we are doing our work and they always thank us profusely. What a great feeling! Hopefully seeing my kids helping the trail inspires them to volunteer, too!
Not all of my volunteer work has been planned in advance, however. This June I was sitting at work when news of the Duluth floods came rolling-in on my computer. I immediately thought of the trail. That morning I sent an email to the SHTA saying if they needed any help that weekend to count me in.
So three days after the floods hit I was assigned sections of trail to inspect for flood damage. The first part I hiked was the six miles from the Gooseberry River to the Split Rock. I found a few displaced bridges (most of which I replaced myself) but, thankfully, the damage was minimal.
My second task was to hike the Gooseberry River upstream of the falls. Now, that was miserable! I found piles of brush blocking the trail, bridges wedged in creek bottoms, even a trail shelter moved into the middle of the trail! The trail was full of thick slippery mud and I lost my footing several times. It was raining. The bugs were bad. But in the back of my mind I thought of my love of the trail and that pushed me on. I didn’t quite get to all the bridges I was supposed to but I knew it was safe to say we would have to send in a trail crew to do a lot of work.
That night I got back to my campsite on the Baptism River, washed the mud off my legs and collapsed in my tent without supper. It had been a hard days work!
The next day I filed my report and inspected a couple of other stretches near Finland and near the west branch of the Knife River south of Two Harbors. There was some damage but nothing compared to the Gooseberry. Hiking that day was much more pleasant.
Nearly
three months later, I helped finish one of the last bits of work left
from the floods - the Encampment River bridge. On Sept. 8-9 I joined a
great group of volunteers for a trail maintenance weekend. We spent the
first morning pounding bolts for the new bridge and in an effort which
must have rivaled the building of the pyramids, raised half the bridge
across the water. It was incredible!
Much more, these PEOPLE were incredible.! I was working with a group of volunteers, who just like me, love the trail. We spent the rest of the weekend clearing a quarter mile of new trail between Two Harbors and Duluth and even cleared space for a new trailhead. It was great as usual to help the trail, but spending the weekend with fellow volunteers was a great time - especially that Saturday night after supper, sitting around the fire, telling stories of the trail. The love of the trail was evident in all of us.
Which brings me to the point of this week’s blog - volunteer! Most of us who spend time in the outdoors do so due to a deep love of the activity - and the outdoors in general. Sure, it’s fun - but if you want to REALLY feel good about your passion, volunteer. Help a park or a trail, take kids fishing or shooting. There are many organizations out there which promote the activities we love. Join them and help out! I found the Superior Hiking Trail Association - find yours! Not only will you do good work, it’s a lot of fun!
In : Volunteering
Tags: superior hiking trail volunteer clean umd wolf rock lookout mountain devil track river outdoors
Zach Johns is an alpine skier, backpacker, paddler and all-around nature lover who lives on Minnesota‘s Iron Range. Originally from Osceola, Wis., Johns attended the University of Minnesota-Duluth so he could ski every day and be close to the trails of his beloved North Shore. There, he earned a degree in Communication and was editor of the student newspaper. However, the real education he gained at UMD was in honing his outdoor skills. He took courses in subjects such as backpacking, winter camping, rock climbing and canoe tripping. By the time he graduated, that was all he wanted to do. In January of 1997, he moved to the Range where he met a group of die-hard skiers dedicated to making turns at Giants Ridge every single day of the winter (when they weren’t out skiing the big mountains of the west.) Throughout the late nineties he built a very impressive ski resume, taking several trips to Utah, Montana, Wyoming, California, British Columbia and Alaska. During the off-season, he took to the hiking trails. In 1997, he hiked the entire Superior Hiking Trail during the single season (what had been completed until that time) and in following years, took trips to Yosemite, Glacier and the Grand Canyon. He also made two attempts to climb King’s Peak, the highest mountain in Utah, but failed to summit both times. In 1999, he attempted the infamous 43-mile Kekekabic Trail through the heart of the BWCA and limped out after only ten miles with a hernia. He did finally complete the Kek in 2005, during one of the hottest weeks on record. Besides hiking, he also continued dabbling with paddling, making several canoe trips to the BWCA and became an enthusiastic (yet very novice) whitewater kayaker. He is now a father of two sons, Nick and Jackson, who accompany their father on nearly all his adventures. Both were skiing fairly soon after they could stand and from 2006-2011, the three hiked in every state park in Minnesota, 195 miles of hiking in 65 parks. Since becoming a dad, Johns has suddenly realized that you can’t just be out there skiing, hiking, paddling, etc. without also working to protect the very things you love. With that in mind, he founded an adventure club at work to get co-workers outside who might not otherwise be inspired to go. The club has gone on hiking, paddling, winter camping and cycling trips and annually go on a trash pick-up hike to celebrate Earth Day. He believes that once you get people out into beautiful wild places, the more likely they will be to protect them. He has also done a lot of volunteer work for the Superior Hiking Trail Association including adopting a backcountry campsite which he and the boys maintain twice a year. It is of extreme importance, he believes, to introduce children to the outdoors early. Not only is it good for them, but they will be the ones protecting these places once we are gone. Future plans? There are a few local goals to check-off including hiking the Border Route Trail in the BWCA and Isle Royale. Mostly, it’s just to take the boys hiking and camping in more of our national parks, skiing the big western mountains, and more of their usual seasonal cycle: Giants Ridge in the winter, Superior’s North Shore in the spring, South Shore in the summer and back to the North Shore in the fall.
