|
Published 1/27/08 in the Leader-Telegram, Eau Claire WI Building
for the future |
|
The
Ice Trail spans terrain that's at least thousands of years old, and
volunteers are working to ensure it lasts much longer. |
|
By Candy
Czernicki |
|
Chippewa Falls
News Bureau |
|
The Ice Age
Trail turns 50 this year. Or is it 12,000? The 1,000-mile
trail runs through most of the state alongside features carved by the
glaciers that covered Wisconsin thousands of years ago. More than 20 of those
miles wind through Chippewa County, starting near Highway 40 toward Cornell,
and other segments go through Barron and Polk counties. Volunteers
continue to help build the trail, segments of which are not yet connected to
the others. More than 600 miles of trail have been completed. "It's kind
of an ongoing effort to add piece by piece to it," said Richard Smith, a
longtime trail volunteer and head of the Chippewa Moraine chapter of the Ice
Age Park and Trail Foundation. "A lot of
(the trail) is in national forest (land). A lot of these existing trail
segments are in very wild country, very accessible, very beautiful." The trail
foundation, which now has 3,300 members, was formed in 1958 after Raymond
Zillmer, a lawyer and avid outdoorsman, helped acquire land for the Kettle
Moraine State Forest in southeastern Wisconsin. Zillmer saw the Kettle
Moraine trails as a starting point for a statewide park. Zillmer
consulted with the National Park Service, which ultimately decided a
statewide park would be too difficult to administer. The Ice Age National
Scientific Reserve, encompassing nine units around the state, was born as a
compromise. Work on the Ice
Age Trail began in earnest in the early 1970s, and in 1980 it became one of
only eight trails in the National Trail System. "It was a
different era, different time," Smith said. "They thought the route
rights would become more easy to get. Anybody could go out in the country and
hike through farm fields and nobody seemed to mind. Now that has become
extraordinarily precious. "As time
goes on, I think the value of this project is going to become almost beyond
priceless, as opportunities for this kind of thing are going to become harder
and harder to find. "I've
often thought we could never start a project like this today," Smith
added. "It would be beyond imagination because of the way private land
is now so closely held, so difficult to get hold of, so expensive." The gaps in the
trail exist because of that, Smith said. One such gap
was filled last year when volunteers near Birchwood upgraded a 2 1/2-mile
section of hiking trail, called the Blueberry Trail. The project took off
when the Ice Age Trail's Superior Lobe Chapter received a $2,000 grant. The
grant originally was given to the Future Business Leaders of America at
Birchwood High school and was forwarded to the Ice Age Trail. That trail
section already was designated as part of the state Tuscobia Trail, so no
private land purchase was required. "We've
pretty much secured all what's public land already," he said. "The
places you see gaps is where all the private land is. It's very difficult to
cobble together using the voluntary means we use. We don't ever use
condemnation or anything," Smith said. Wisconsin is
one of only two states that fully contain a national scenic trail, said Nancy
Frank, former northwest field coordinator for the Ice Age Trail Foundation. "It's a
marvelous project that allows people the opportunity to reconnect with
nature," she said. "Parts of the trail bring together not just the
wilderness experience, but it goes through many cultural centers,"
including Lodi, Slinger, Haugen and St. Croix Falls, the last which marks the
western edge of the trail at Interstate State Park. The trail, the
landforms of which formed when the last glaciers retreated more than 12,000
years ago, touches all but one region in the state, the southwest, also known
as the driftless region. "That just
happens to be the way the glacier laid itself out," Smith said.
"The unintended consequence of that is truly an amazing thing." The trail winds
past lakes and prairies, forests and wetlands, American Indian effigy mounds
and remnant oak savannas. "Wisconsin
is the best location in the entire world to study glacial geology,"
Frank said. "People around the world come here to study glacial features
because they haven't eroded as much - they're much more specific as to how
they were first formed." The rock
outcrops at Grandfather Falls in Lincoln County and Eau Claire Dells in
Marathon County are estimated to be 1.8 billion years old, according to the
Ice Age Park and Trail Foundation Web site. Soil, gravel and boulders
deposited in nearly every county are between 10,000 and 25,000 years old, and
several other features are estimated to be hundreds of millions years old. While most
people who see these natural wonders while hiking the trail do so in small
segments, at least 30 people have hiked the entire trail. Madison resident
Jason Dorgan completed a through-run - defined as consecutive-day effort from
one end to the other - in 22 days last April. Dorgan ran the
equivalent of two marathons a day and gave more than $15,000 in donations to
the trail foundation. A slightly less
extreme event, the Chippewa 50 (kilometer) Ultra Marathon is slated for
Saturday, April 12, from the Chippewa Moraine Visitors Center near New
Auburn. The center has trails that connect to the Ice Age Trail and exhibits
focusing on the Ice Age. "(Part of)
our chapter's focus is not just taking care of the trail but trying to make
the trail accessible to people," Smith said. "We try to get people
out there to use the trail and become familiar with it so they value it and
give it good use. It's a great way to leave behind your cares and troubles of
the working day and just get out, and it's accessible to everybody." - For more information
on the trail and foundation, visit www.iceagetrail.org/index.htm, call
800-227-0046 or e-mail info@iceagetrail.org. - The Chippewa Moraine
Chapter is at www.greendarner.com/ChippewaMoraine/, and a calendar of events
is at www.iceagetrail.org/Chippewa Moraine/calendar.htm. Trail-building
events are at various times throughout the year, and volunteers are welcome. - Jason Dorgan's blog on his 2007 trail- running adventure can be found at blog. iceagetrail1000.com/. --------------------- Czernicki can
be reached at 723-0303 or candy.czernicki@ecpc.com. |