June 26, 2024

Judge C. R. Magney State Park to Cliff Creek

13.4 miles

I woke up to the sound of raindrops again. I had to poke my head out of my tent to roll down my vestibule (which Machine calls a “vegetable”) and decided that if I had to be awake, I may as well use the opportunity to pee. After that I helped Machine wrangle his rain fly, which he had not set up last night in an extremely optimistic act of trust in Minnesota weather.

It was still raining when I woke up again for real, which was annoying. I thought maybe it would let up if I waited for long enough, but reader, it did not. Eventually I accepted my fate and, after a luxurious breakfast and hot coffee, got packed up. We made one last visit to the restrooms and water spigot (so cold! so clear!) and then started our day properly. On the bright side, I felt way less sore than I expected to after the 17 yesterday. I feel like I’m finally getting into the flow of this and remembering how to be a thru hiker.

It didn’t take long for the trail to turn to mud. It was probably already wet to an extent, but then last night’s rain made it even worse. At first I was avoiding the muddy spots by stepping on rocks and roots whenever I could, but eventually I just started giving up and walking right through the puddles. It alternated between mud and normal terrain as we climbed up.

The trail followed a roaring creek, walking on a cliff above the torrent. At one point I looked back and cracked up when I saw Machine.

“What?” he asked.

“You have a maple leaf on your head. It’s in a perfect spot. It looks like a crown.” I took a picture and showed him. “You’re the maple king!”

“No, I’m the maple jester,” he replied.

It would be technically incorrect to say that the day was entirely mud, because there were sections of lovely trail through coniferous forest that smelled so good as well as a short walk along the shore of Lake Superior. However, it would probably be accurate to say that the day was at least 50% mud. Sometimes it’s truly mud, other times it’s more like a flowing creek, and still other times it’s what I started calling “slop”: very, very watery mud that sucks your feet in and leaves you both soaked and covered in sediment. At various points throughout the day, depending on how hydrated and fed I was, I either found it funny or incredibly irritating.

We got a break from the slop when we did the walk along the lake, the same little section we did on Sunday when we camped with Slapshot. It started misting rain, though, and it was cold. We decided to take a lunch break in the trees because it didn’t look like the rain was the type of rain that was going to let up. It was slightly more enjoyable than dinner last night but not remotely in the same universe as the two-hour lunches of the last two days. I followed up my warm Knorr side lunch with a double hot chocolate. This, along with observing two very cute slugs as they navigated across the stones, may have been the highlight of lunch.

We continued along the side of the lake. It was extremely cold and damp and I had suddenly developed a headache, and the stones on the shore of the lake were challenging to walk on, so we ended up doing a road walk for a little bit instead. When we re-entered the woods, the first thing to greet us was a soupy bog with broken bog boards. Neat.

It was uphill for a while after that. There were suddenly slugs everywhere and walking turned into a slug-avoiding hop. I was feeling in need of some music, so I stuck in my headphones and zoned out to Wolf Alice, followed by some random downloads. It was more slop. Cold slop. Dry for a while, over a rocky ridge type thing, then back down into slop. On the bright side, there were tons of gorgeous creeks with nice bridges. We marveled every time we crossed one at the power of water to shape the landscape.

We took a short break at Kimball Creek Campsite. I am loving these campsites! There are no shelters and the latrines are just out in the open, but it’s still giving Appalachian Trail—in terms of how we plan breaks and mileage goals around the established SHTA campsites. After a quick snack we started again. Machine and I listened to the Gizz album Nonagon Infinity at the same time, and this propelled me for the next few miles.

Before long we arrived at Cliff Creek, our goal for the day. We had floated the idea of going another mile further but once we saw the sign that was it, we were done. At first when we rolled up we just saw one tent pad.

“Uhh, this is shitty,” Machine said dubiously.

“There’s no way this can be it.” I looked around, saw a flat looking spot through the trees, and we blazed through some thick ferns to reach a significantly more awesome campsite with the trademark bench, fire ring, and path leading to the latrine. We set up our tents and got ready to cook dinner. For one glorious moment, the sun started shining and we yelled our thanks like we’d never seen the light.