Michael: Off the Beaten Path - Water

The rosemary bush
Has a beguiling fragrance
Worthy of the gods.

Saturday, October 29, 2016

Before working out any more details of a screwball fastpack trip the main feasibility question is; is there water?, how far apart are water stops?, and will I need a filter?

I know, I know…even if there are marked spots where drinking water is available and even if you’ve gone to the pre-caution of contacting the park system to see if the water systems are up and running, it’s still not a bad idea to bring a back up. But if I’ve been assured everything’s functioning as it should, I’ll skip the filter and bring some purification tablets.

Now, it gets a little complicated. There is drinking water on the two sections of the North Country Trail that I plan on doing in July. Heading east from Munising, there are three campgrounds with drinking water on the Painted Rock Lakeshore Trail. But they’re not ideally spaced apart. Damned drive-in campers!

The first is about 15 miles away but requires a 1 ½ mile hike up a spur trail to reach the faucet. Round trip that would be an extra 3 miles. Not a problem if I didn’t have a hard 5:30 deadline to reach a shuttle. The next available water is another 20 miles up the trail. 35 miles is a long way to go on the two liter bladder my pack holds, so I may just take that spur trail and get some water 15 miles in. That has the bonus of not having to carry a full bladder at anytime during my trip on this section. But it may cost me about half an hour and a little extra fatigue.

After the water at mile 35 the next water is only two miles further up the trail. With the end of the trail only 7 miles away, there’s no point stopping there. So that means two water stops en-route.

After catching the 5:30 shuttle and  returning to Munising, I was hoping to catch a bus to Marquette and hopping on a Greyhound to reunite with my wife and mother-in-law in Cheboygan. That bus leaves nightly at 1:35 a.m. and arrives in Cheboygan at 8:30 in the morning. What the hell, I’ll be so wiped out I probably won’t even notice the little Bambi speed bumps on the Deer Killer Express.

But there is no evening shuttle service to Marquette except on Fridays and Saturdays. That means another night in a hotel in Munising and either hang out in Munising or Marquette the following day or jog the 45 miles or so to Marquette. Again, what the hell, I’ve got until well past midnight to get there.

But the section of the trail heading west from Munising toward Marquette isn’t in a National Park, it’s through some forests and a lot of farm country.
Is there water? From my search of the net there is a small state park - Laughing Whitefish Falls - about 2/3 of the way to Marquette, that has a water pump. Again, it’ll be a few miles off the main trail on a spur trail through the park, but that could be my only opportunity to fill up on that section without carrying a filter or going way off the trail.

All right, so far it seems a plausible way to go. There is water. The distances are a stretch; after 30 miles of racing it would mean two back to back days of nearly 45 miles. I’ve put together 3 thirty mile days before and that was on the mountainous Wonderland trail.

Now I’ve got to be honest about my conditioning, whether it would be enjoyable, and do I want to risk pushing through the dark in a very exhausted state by myself?