Skyline - Day 393

April Fool's Day had its way with us, but we licked it in the end. Thinking that the rain yesterday would have reduced the snow on the ground, coupled with the National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center snow cover map which says there are 2-4 inches on the ground where we were headed, we set the cars up to do 4 miles in the woods.

Bill and I got maybe 300 feet down the trail, looked at each other and said, "No." There was over a foot of mushy snow on the ground, and that was in a somewhat open place where the trail followed a two-track. Lesson learned- I have been relying heavily on that snow cover map, but it's far off the mark in this area.

We decided to scout farther north with the car, thinking we'd do 3.5 miles of roadwalk. Every place we checked at trail crossings, the snow was at least as deep as where we had tried to hike. Michigan north of Petoskey isn't going to be ready to hike for days if not a couple of weeks. Doing an isolated few miles in the middle of that wouldn't help much.

We turned around and went back to the trailers to eat lunch and look at maps. Then we headed out to do 1.5 miles of roadwalk that are very close to where we are staying, which also connect with what we hiked the other day. Part of that roadwalk was seasonal, and not so great either.

We decided to see what the next 1.5 miles was like. It turned out it had been walked by snowshoers quite a bit, so we decided to add that on to the day's total. This is a special section for me. In the first place, the land the trail is on here originally belonged to Doug and Pam. They worked out a deal to provide the trail permanent passage.

They also built one of the nicest shelters along the NCT, called the Skyline Cabin. It's totally enclosed.

Inside, there are three levels of bunks. The cabin can sleep 8-10 people. There is another upper set of bunks at the front you can't see in this picture.

The other REALLY significant item on this "skyline" section of trail is an overlook platform.

If you are hiking the trail from east to west, this is the first place you can catch a glimpse of Lake Michigan. Well, you can on a clear day. You'll have to take my word for it that it's out there somewhere.

This is pretty cool by itself, but this is a place of huge significance to me. This is where I completed my first section hike of the entire NCT in August 2010. A good-sized group of friends hiked with me. We ended at the overlook, sang some songs, and then went down to Doug and Pam's for a picnic.

Just FYI, my completion mileage on that day was 4395 miles. At that time, the route in Vermont was not really defined. In 2014, I added Vermont to make the 8-state total 4455 miles.

Miles today: 3.2. Total miles so far: 4408.9, with an estimated 410 miles yet to hike. This trail just keeps expanding.

We have found some road sections south, but not too far away, that we can hike in the next few days. The weather is supposed to be warmer, so hopefully this deep snow won't last too long into April. Progress is much slower than I would like, but we decided it's worth staying for the road pieces we found to hike. Then we'll assess things again.

See The Party's Over, But It's OK