“It looks like it’s about five miles.” It turns out I would regret those words, at least a little.
I’ve long had a difficult time convincing people to accompany me on my little adventures, which I regularly write about in these pages. Snowshoe slogs across the Lost Lake Swamp. River canoeing through rapids, which can (and sometimes do) involve capsizing. Or long(ish) hikes through the Boundary Waters.
Terms like “death march” have often been used to describe such outings. So, maybe I tend to downplay the distances involved when I’m looking for a fellow adventurer.
So it was with my suggestion of a day hike up the Sioux Hustler trail, which heads north from the Echo Trail, completing a 35-mile loop through the far northwestern end of the Boundary Waters.
I wasn’t suggesting the entire 35 miles on a Saturday. The plan was to hike as far as Devil’s Cascade at the north end of Lower Pauness Lake, which is part of the Little Indian Sioux flowage. The Sioux Hustler trail is described as a “lollipop,” with a spur trail to the cascade as the stick with a roughly 20-mile loop starting at the end of the stick.
The maps I had seen had no mileage markers so I estimated the distance to the cascade was about five miles, which would then be ten miles there and back. I was thinking probably more like five and a half miles each way, but figured I’d round down as I was still hoping Jodi might want to join in. We’d been on ten-milers before, but not in recent years so I figured anything over ten would be a non-starter.
In the end, Jodi declined, but I did find a willing hiking partner who had been on my treks before and knew what she was getting into. Unfortunately, she’s a runner who wears one of those fancy watches that tell you how far you’ve gone.
My “about five miles” didn’t hold up. At mile five, it was clear we weren’t anywhere close to the cascade. “I was kind of thinking it would be five and a half miles,” I said.
She let me know when we were at five and a half miles. She let me know when we were at mile six, and at six and a half. “Jodi warned me about this,” she confided.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “I think we’re getting close now.”
Just a bit further on, a fairly well-worn trail appeared and we stopped and wondered if it might be a shortcut to our destination. It turned out it was the trail to a latrine, set back a ways, it turns out, from a gorgeous campsite on a rocky overlook at few hundred feet further along.
“Do you think that’s the Devil’s Cascade,” my hiking partner suggested. I tried to ignore her and headed back to the main trail, while she hung out to get a picture of the latrine to document our visit to what she now insisted must be the destination I had promised.
At mile seven, we did, in fact, make it to Devil’s Cascade, which given the low water level was more like the Devil’s Tinkle, but it gave us the chance to eat a quick lunch on rocks in the narrow canyon that would normally be underwater. Over the centuries, the 75-foot-high canyon walls had shed some massive boulders, and I tried to imagine what it must have looked like in the wake of our June 18 rainstorm or when swollen with snowmelt from a normal winter. It must be an angry, roaring torrent when the water’s high.
Below the cascade, where there is normally a large pool, there was just a trickle of water flowing between rocks, making it easy to cross the river at will. The scene was bookended by the golden leaves of big yellow birch and orange sugar maples, an interesting mix of two tree species that are uncommon in the Boundary Waters.
On the trail
From the start, we knew daylight would be an issue, as it always is in October. We had hit the trail about 10 a.m. and knew that we’d need to set a brisk pace given the uncertainty of our destination. On the way in, we’d set an average pace of 19-minute miles, so we were making good time.
Fortunately, the Sioux Hustler trail is surprisingly well-maintained. I’ve been on hiking trails in the Boundary Waters that can take a bloodhound to follow at times, but we experienced only one moment of uncertainty when the trail ran a couple hundred feet along the top of a beaver dam. We, at first, had traveled on what appeared to be the trail only to have it fade away, prompting us to double back before deciding to walk the dam. There were a few blowdown trees here and there, but they could easily be stepped over or around and barely slowed us down.
We even ran into a couple other hikers, which is a very rare event on a Boundary Waters trail. Then again, it was hard to top our recent run of weather, which has been remarkably dry and warm for this time of year. The fall colors were near peak, and the bugs were non-existent, so it was an ideal time to be out in the wilderness.
The section of trail we traveled offered plenty of variety, including colorful overlooks and deeply shaded stretches lined with cedar right along the Little Indian Sioux River, which at one point included a small but scenic waterfall, which could make a nice destination for those not interested in the 14-mile round trip to Devil’s Cascade. A stretch of alder at one point on the trail was loaded with ruffed grouse.
We were tired by the time we made it back to the car but recognized it as that worthy kind of tired that says you actually did something with the day. It was a bit more than five miles, to be sure, and I would hear about it again when we got back to the house and Jodi got the report from my hiking partner.
“I told you that would happen,” she said. “He does that all the time.”