Eskers and Mud Pits

Mosquitos don’t like chilly mornings.

It gets down to 36 at night, but I still stayed cozy. I carry two sleeping bags because one is very old with little loft left and a broken zipper and the other is very thin and more of a summer quilt. I could use a new 20F but well, money.

It stays cold for most of the morning which is great because it keeps the mosquitos away. The trail is lovely and dry. We’re having a good time!

Then it warms up, the mosquitos come out and the trail goes to shit. Mud pits everywhere. The highlight is one very cool esker, basically a small ridge with drop-offs on each side. Whenever we climb we keep joking that we’ll soon break tree line. Spoiler alert, we didn’t get above 1500 feet all day.

We still have an impressive amount of giant trillium and some marsh marigolds.

Even though the trail kind of sucks through here we see about a dozen hikers today. Some are out backpacking and some day hikers. Some say the terrible mud section coming up is one mile, some say three miles, and some five. I’d say the worst was about a mile long and then there were more sporadic mud pits.

At the end of the day, we are ready to be done with it. I put my head net back on for the mosquitos but still get annoyed by the buzzing while I’m trying to find the best way through the bog. There is lots of whining going on. We remind ourselves it could be worse, at least it’s not raining.

We fill up on water at the north fork of the yellow river. There is a platform with a bench next to the bridge which I assume was built for hikers. It looks nice but the stairs to it are dilapidated and the grass around it is not mowed. We still climb up there and have a great break away from mosquitos and mud.

We push on another three miles to find a place to camp.