Superior Vistas: Waterfalls, Roses, and Fishing Boats and Bikes

I first started biking seriously when I was 17.  A couple of years later I rode my first century (100 miles) at the Platteville, WI Dairy Days Festival.  One thing led to another and in '09 and '11 I finished the Arrowhead 135 a 135 mile race on snowmobile trails held in late January in northern Minnesota.

This is not to toot my own horn but just point out that I've done a fair amount of endurance-type stuff on a bike.

Cut back to 2010:  I had just met Jenny and floated the idea of doing the Superior Vistas Bike Tour's 40 miler.  Despite it being farther than she'd ever ridden and having not ridden in years, since life got in the way, she agreed and we had a good time taking our time and enjoying the ride.

A year or two later I floated the idea of doing the 70 miler of that same tour.  She agreed.  We rode slowly and by the time we got to the end they were out of ice cream sandwiches to give the riders.  Despite that we still had fun.

Cut to early 2017:  My birthday is close to the scheduled tour date and I told Jenny that what I really wanted was for her and I to do some rides together this spring to train for the full century at the SVBT.  I'm sure you've done the math - this was the farthest she'd ever attempted.  But she didn't say, "no" and so I kinda kept talking about it like we were committed a little more each time I brought it up.  Worked like a charm.  Mwhahaha!  (I've written blog posts about some of our rides here and here) 

Selfie at the start.  The lake behind us is Lake Superior.   

The tour begins and ends at the same place - a park in Washburn, WI.  There was some road construction on the usual route so this year we were going to be ending a kind of out and back course.  Sort of.  Let me explain: we rode out what I'll call to Point A and then straight on to Cornucopia, WI (also right on the shore with a height of land in between).  Then we rode back to point A turned here and rode for quite a ways to Delta, WI.  Then we turned around and rode the same route backwards to A and then back to Washburn the same way we started.

Since, 'round these parts, when you're on the shore of Lake Superior you're as down as you can get (barring SCUBA gear), the ride started uphill.  And into a fairly stiff headwind.  For reasons I'll get back to this made me happy.  The first checkpoint that we stopped at (about 10 miles in) was about 400' above our starting spot and was virtually all uphill and/or into a stiff headwind.

Jenny's bike is a old Trek mountain bike that she got on sale for $75 over 15 years ago.  My rig is a beast of a touring bike that I put straight bars on.  This spring we got slick tires for Jenny's bike but the vast majority of bikes were road bikes with a good chunk of those being carbon fiber racing machines that were probably well under 20 lbs.  We didn't weigh ours but they were probably well over 30 lbs.

The next rest stop was also on the shore of Lake Superior and and after a few relatively small ups and downs we began our 400' descent into Cornucopia.   Of course, this also meant a 400' climb out but let's not think about that just yet and just enjoy a few pictures of old fishing boats, roadside roses, and waterfalls.

Selfie by an old fishing boat.  There were several old boats here but we chose this one in honor of our twin nieces.

Near Corni (that's what us locals call Cornucopia) the route takes you right by Siskiwit Falls.  It's more a fairly long series of cascades than a classic waterfall but there's a good view of a little bit of it from the road.  

After our rest stop in Corni we had to climb those 400' back to Point A, turn and ride down a beautiful forest road for 20 miles to the town of Ino.

This picture kinda misrepresents this road.  It's beautiful and almost all wooded but this picture makes it look flat.  It's emphatically not flat.  No huge hills but they're pretty constant.

This stretch is about 20 miles.  About 18 of those miles were neutral elevation wise.  And by that I do NOT mean flat - I mean that at Point A where we turned onto this road elevation as 1234'  and at 18 miles in it was close to the same.  Virtually none of that was flat.  According to the all knowing internet we climbed over 600 feet in this stretch when you add up all the small hills.  The last two miles drop in Ino where the next rest stop was.

We were riding on the slow side, especially for the 100 mile route which is generally tackled by svelte guys and gals who are also quite quick.  This is all a nice way of saying we were dead last.  By a loooong way.  They were about to start taking down the rest stops.  Which was fine with us - we couldn't expect them to stay open indefinitely for two slow bikers.  So I stocked up on mini PBJ sandwiches and cookies to fuel me through to the end (we were at about mile 50).   It also started to rain at this rest stop.  It was 8.75 miles to the next rest stop and it rained the whole way (and it was pretty open and the wind got a good sweep at us - most of the time it was in our faces) and, of course, quit like clockwork as we stepped under the tent at the turn around point.  The turn around point was at the Delta Diner and the tent was theirs - there was no sign of a rest stop organized by the bike tour.  I'm not suggesting that it was never there just that we were so slow that it got taken down before we got there.

Rain on the way to Delta,

In Delta the nice employees of the Delta Diner offered to give us water.  And we ate a few cookies that we had gotten at the previous rest stop.  Now it was back to Ino.  Aside from a bit of spitting, the rain had stopped and the howling headwind that we had pushed into was now a howling tailwind.

We made it to Ino and the start of the Forest Road back to Point A.  It was virtually all uphill for the first two miles and then, well, I already explained it for the way down.  Elevation neutral but far from flat and all that.  The last few miles to Point A seemed to take a bit longer than we hoped - but we had a tailwind so it wasn't that big of a fuss.

Although the rain had stopped it was still blustery and threatening.

Finally we made it to Point A (which was mile 10 on the way out and was now mile 90).  Remember how I was happy to have a headwind and be riding uphill at the start?  There is a method to this madness.  I was hoping the the wind direction would hold (I was pretty sure that it would still be downhill and so didn't worry about that.  Wind can change pretty quick but topography usually takes a few thousand years.  Thankfully both held).  The wind didn't shift or lose power which meant the last 10 miles, which on a flat course would be the hardest, were dead easy.  They were pretty much a coast - as in we didn't pedal much or all that hard when we did.

Jenny descending the last little bit into Washburn.  Lake Superior in the background.

It was not fast.  The world record time for a century is under 3 1/2 hours.  Most mortals do it in twice that time.  (Actually scratch that, most mortals don't even try it.  ...Sorry to be a little snotty but I think we earned a little chest thumping)  I started my timer when we left, didn't stop it at rest stops or for any reason.  It took us 10 hrs and 52 minutes.  Probably about 10 hrs of that was spent pedaling a bike.  We might have been slow but, pardon me, I don't care how in shape you are, ten hours is a long time to be sitting on a bike seat.  And we were still smiling by the end - and not just the 1/500th of a second when the camera took the below picture.  We genuinely had a great time from mile 0 through the uphills, downhills, headwinds, crosswinds, tailwinds, rain, and sun all the way to to where the number of miles ridden rolled from double digits into triple digits.

When we rolled into the parking lot where we had started there was no sign of anyone else.  They had torn down hours ago - as they should have, we were hours behind anyone else.  And so we were able to share this accomplishment just between the two of us.  

Elevation profile of the course.

Seepage

Put a map in front of me and I'm happy for hours.

Considering my love of maps it's surprising that it took me so long to realize that on the way back from my parents-in-law's place, if I don't go too directly, takes me to (or within sight of) five lakes.

They're all small lakes varying in size from 9 to 19 acres with a max. depth of around 20'.  With Lake Superior (20,288,000 acres and max. depth of 1,333') less than 30 miles away they're pretty small potatoes - but they're also quite lovely.  These are all seepage lakes in the sandy soil so they don't have streams flowing in or out.




John and I took off for a ride and by the time we got to the second lake he thought it was about time to head for home while I continued on to our place.

As far as I know there's no road/trail down to the lake...which is really quite intriguing. It seems like everything these days has to be accessible by a motor vehicle and when they're not it piques my curiosity.

On a day like this (mostly sunny, warm, and oh-by-the-way the saturday before memorial day) I'm sure the beaches on the Big Lake were busy.  Not so much here.

The managers of the CNNF love to log.  I understand that it's their job and national forests are tasked with this.  I just like big old trees and it bums me out that when I ride (or hike through) a nice stand of old trees in the CNNF I know that before too many years go by they're probably going to get the ax.  And to be fair there actually are a number of places with decent-sized trees that have been there for a while.  But there is also a lot of weedy  regrowth where they've cut things down and the pioneer species is aspen - and so there are a zillion 2" diameter aspen in a year or two - almost a monoculture.

I came to this lake a few years back to do some fishing with my friend Bill Heart.  At that point it was a short drive from the main road on a closely wooded two track and the lake was ringed with nice trees.  Now that two track is mostly open and the ring of trees is mostly gone.  Maybe there's some regulation that they can't cut right down to the water but the hillsides above the lake were sure cut.  

A few weeks back I got a Spot GPS tracker.  The thing has a GPS unit it it and four buttons.  One tells your specified recipients that you're OK. Another notifies them that you need help, and another notifies emergency services that your life is in danger and they should come and get you.  (The fourth one is the On/Off switch).  Anyway that's a little background about how I came upon this scene: I was riding along a paved connector road when I saw a little unlabeled two track leading off into the woods.  I'm curious by nature but being a family man I hesitate a bit to go off into the woods by myself where chances of anyone finding me, if things go south, are slim - my family needs me to be around.  But with the Spot I tend to go for it more.  And that's how I ended up riding my bike down a crumbling, overgrown stretch of what I presume to be the old road bed.  I had ridden by this stretch dozens of times and despite this stretch being close, and running parallel, to the present road I have never even had an inkling that this old roadbed is here.

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Ice-biking Lake Superior

A few weeks back I met up with a group of fatbikers on a Saturday and we rode out on the ice of Lake Superior.  Much of Lake Superior doesn't freeze up reliably but this was on Chequamegon Bay which is relatively shallow and also relatively isolated from the bigger stretches of this enormous lake and so has thick ice each winter. 

Most Saturdays the North Coast Cycling Association puts on these rides.  They usually start at the Coal Dock in Washburn, WI and head out on the ice.  There are constant cliffs and rocks that are rusty-red sandstone that bleed tannic acid-laced water that is also rusty red.

It hasn't been a terribly snowy winter here in the northlands and snow is maybe ankle deep in most places.  I'm not exactly sure of all the physics involved but there's even less out on the ice.  So whatever the reason for the thin snow the upshot is that you can ride almost anywhere out there - no trail required.