June 11, 2006
from the Associated Press *
by Tom Carr

Fife Lake man immerses himself in winter wonderland

Jerry Gauld poses with the mode of transportation he relied on for his 39-day, 400-mile trek through the Upper Peninsula. (Photo by Jan-Michael Stump/Traverse City Record-Eagle)

Jerry Gauld found a way to escape the winter doldrums.

He snowshoed more than 400 miles across the length of the Upper Peninsula in February and March [2006].

Gauld, 57, spent almost 39 days trekking the U.P. segment of the North Country Trail from St. Ignace to Ironwood and the Wisconsin border, camping in a tent at night.

"To say I was an experienced backpacker before this would be a lie," he said. "I think it was a pretty great little adventure."

Gauld, who operates a bulldozer for road construction and has much of the winter off, has always liked winter camping and got the idea to take the trip while taking shorter snowshoe trips on the Manistee River.

He set off on Feb. 1 after his wife Kim dropped him off on the north side of the Mackinac Bridge.

He hiked about 50 miles and called his wife to come get him because his tent, sleeping bag and other gear were soaking because of several days of wet snow.

He dried the gear, and his wife drove him back to where he'd left off.

He got rid of his cook stove, since he wasn't going to be able to get any fuel for it along the way. Instead, he carried lunch meats, tortillas, cheese and power bars.

He also carried packets of hot chocolate powder mix. At night, he'd put snow in a cup and hold a candle under it to soften it a bit and then add the chocolate.

"It was like a chocolate slush," he said.

He usually fell asleep about 8 p.m. and woke up before dawn.

"One of the hardest things was getting up before daybreak and packing your gear when it's below zero," he said.



He also found too much snow was caking on the bottom of his snowshoes, so he used duct tape to cover all but the edge of the metal claws.

His biggest scare came when he was walking down a steep grade outside of Marquette. The trail was covered by a "dome" of snow. As he reached a ledge, he lost his footing and started to topple forward. He caught himself just in time.

"It was about 100 feet down," he said.

During the hike, the originally 156-pound Gauld lost about 20 pounds.

He figures he walked well over the 407 miles of trail in the U.P. He backtracked several times when the snow covered the trail and markers enough that he got off course. He found his way back with a compass and trail maps.

And he often left the trail to walk into a town to restock food supplies, feeling hungry enough to "wrestle a bear for a bag of garbage."

"When I got to a town, I'd go to a restaurant and really pig out," he said.

People he met encouraged him and gave him food and other gifts. One man gave him a real bear claw for luck, and another gave him a bear carved of stone. A woman gave him a "huge" pasty and a man gave him a cigar for when he finished the trip. A L'Anse restaurant owner let him order anything he wanted on the house. He feasted on two cheeseburgers and a malt.

Gauld said he saw a lot of wildlife along the way, including bald eagles. He didn't see any moose but spooked a few with his approach and then came to the spots where they had been bedded down, the snow still steaming from their body heat.

He learned some things about himself during the long time alone with no radio, too.

"I realized I don't know any songs all the way through," he said. "It drove me nuts."

He mentioned that to some people he met in Rockland, and they offered to write the words of a song in his journal. They wrote out a song version of "The Lord's Prayer."

"It's not that I don't like 'The Lord's Prayer,' but I wish they'd gave me something a bit snappier," he said.

Gauld spent his 57th birthday in the Porcupine Mountains. He ate a precooked, frozen pizza he'd been carrying a few days in his backpack. The pizza had thawed during the day as the late winter sun rose higher in the sky. He washed it down with half a bottle of Coca-Cola he'd also been saving for the occasion.

The most difficult part of Gauld's journey was the last 100 miles, he said. He missed his family and he'd broken through the ice of a creek and soaked his boots. He had to take his boot laces off each morning to get his feet into the boots that had frozen stiff during the night. After a mile or two of hiking, they'd soften up.

"I started to think, `What ... am I doing?'" he said.

He reached the Wisconsin border about noon on March 30.

"When I crossed the line, I felt like I'd won the Olympics," he said. "I was a little bit emotional about it."

Gauld figures he'll take a similar trip next year, though he doesn't know where he'll hike yet.

He'll probably start next winter's hike earlier, he said.

"I want to have time to ski later," he said.

The North Country Trail winds for 4,400 miles through seven states from upstate New York to central North Dakota. Michigan has the longest expanse of any state, going from Waldron near the Ohio border, to the Mackinac Bridge, then starting up again in St. Ignace and going west to Ironwood at the Wisconsin border. In this region, the trail goes through Manistee, Wexford, Grand Traverse, Kalkaska, Antrim, Charlevoix and Emmet counties.

For more information:

• read a previous article about Gauld's hike.
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