Patty Loew:
You never know what you'll experience when you explore Wisconsin's Northwoods. This week videographer Frank Boll takes you for a trek on a portion of the Ice Age national scenic trail. You're about to see how his plans for a spring hike quickly turned into a winter adventure on the New Wood trail segment in Lincoln County.

Frank Boll:
This is pretty late in the year. This is April. We got about three inches of snow last night on a base of eight to ten inches of old snow that was wet. Skiing did not work very well today. It was right around freezing all day. The snow would stick to the bottom of the skis. And then you would go through the new snow and bog down in the snow that was underneath that was still wet. It didn't freeze so it was kind of like slushy underneath. I didn't make very good time and the sled was pretty heavy with the camera equipment. I camped here and skied over to the pine and took some pictures over there. It takes longer in winter to do anything. I think it took two hours to set up camp here. Once I found a spot, I leveled it off and I tied the fly off the branches off to the side because the ground is still frozen so you can't get stakes in the ground. You have to get off the trail for camping and find a place where it's kind of out of the way. And you aren't supposed to build campfires. You are supposed to have a backpacking stove. Don't cut any trees. Don't cut any branches. They don't want you to do that. They want you to use a gas stove. There is a small creek down here and it has got metal flakes, as a ford. That was underwater when I got here, and I looked at it an hour later and the water was even higher. Tomorrow morning it might be completely under water. One nice thing about winter camping you don't have any mosquitoes to worry about. I don't know how the night is going to go. It's supposed to get about 25 tonight. I have a down sleeping bag, a pad underneath. I think I'm pretty tired. I'll have to see how that goes. Reminds me of a speech I taped once for Governor Dreyfus. He said, at my age a little backpacking goes a long way. I think I know what he meant. One problem with winter camping that I forgot about. I took off my pants because it was so wet last night and there is only so much you can take in the sleeping bag. I put the boot inserts inside. They're dry this morning. The pants are frozen shut and I had to open them up to get the leg in and my boots are also frozen shut and I had a hard time getting my inserts in but I finally did after breathing in the boots for a while. Looks like it is a beautiful day. Blue sky, sun is already up. I slept pretty good. Woke up about four times and I couldn't believe morning was here already. It was about three or four inches under water yesterday. This morning it was a foot, foot and a half or more of water over it and I couldn't walk through without getting my packs wet. I took off the liners and some of the socks, put the boots back on and put these garbage bags that I had around my sleeping bag on. I thought it would help me keep from getting wet. I came across with the tripod and backpack. It worked good. Then I got the camera, the most expensive part of all this gear. I didn't want to see that float down the creek. I went back. Got my skis across and I brought this across and I thought for sure as I was coming across there would be a boat effect that would try to pull me off the walkway but it followed me pretty good. I got out with just a little wet feet. Not too bad. It could have been a lot worse. It's been 24 hours since I skied in here to the New Wood segment of the Ice Age trail pulling a 90 pound pack. 45 pounds of camera, tripod and extra batteries. I haven't done this for about 20 years, and I found out I'm not in as good a shape as I thought it was. Fortunately, I had dropped trail mix and a bottle of water on the trail. I loaded the pack and I figured it must have fallen out. So I left the camera here and all the gear and I went back almost to the creek again. I found these items and then I came back. And it truly was delightful. A beautiful day. I had a very good experience on this trail. It is a great trail and I would love to ski it without camera equipment.

Patty Loew:
You can check out other reports about the Ice Age national scenic trail by going to our website at wpt.org. Then click on “In Wisconsin.” You'll find reports about the trail's designer and the most urban section of the Ice Age trail.