Patty Loew:
Among the many natural wonders in our state is the Ice Age National Scenic Trail. The 1,200 mile hiking trail follows the leading edge of the last glacier that covered Wisconsin more than 10,000 years ago. The trail celebrates its 50th birthday this year and as our gift to you, we plan to take you to some of the highlights found on the trail. We begin with one produced by Joanne Garrett who spent a day with a group of volunteers who are willing to roll up their sleeves and really get their hands dirty all for the love of the trail.

Joanne Garrett:
What did you get done today?

Trail Volunteer:
What did we get done today? Mark and Chris, what did we get done today? A mile of trail? A mile of trail.

Garrett:
Is that a good day?

Trail Volunteer:
That is an awesome day. And an awesome crew. A lot of go getters out there. They punched out a lot of trail.

Trail Volunteer:
It's all volunteers that do this. If you look around at all the people, three of them are actually paid staff. Everybody else here is a volunteer. Gave up their weekend, gave up several days to come up and get dirty.

Volunteer:
Came on Wednesday, worked Thursday, Friday, Saturday.

Volunteer:
It's beautiful out here and also I like the physical labor. People pay a lot of money to join a gym, you know? Why not get my workout out here.

Volunteer:
I love being in the outdoors. Listen to the wind blow through the trees. I just love being outdoors.

Volunteer:
I've been volunteering with the Ice Age Trail for probably three years. It's a hard juggle between family and work and when I find the times to do it. I got introduced to the trail in high school many years ago. I live near the northern kettle moraine. It’s kind of my escape to hike. There’s something about working right with the earth and creating something.  A lot of times you're hiking a trail it doesn't occur to people how does it get here? When you do one day of work on this you appreciate trails for the rest of your life. [laughter]
Trail Volunteer:
We can always take our 3:55 break before 4:00 quitting time.

Volunteer:
There is a lot of camaraderie with a group like this.

Andrew Handson:
This is called a Pickmatic. The matic side, the pick side. Ancient. Great trail building tool. It goes back to the age of the Romans, building roads. Roman road builder tool here and we aren't slaves.

Garrett:
Why are you using such an old tool?

Hanson:
It's really perfect for hand crafting a trail. We're building a national scenic trail here and in order to get it right, you know, bulldozers are not going to cut it or bobcats or anything for constructing trail. We want to hand craft the trail.

Garrett:
Why, though?

Hanson:
It's just a pleasure to walk when it's finished. You don't have to spend so much time looking at your feet to see where the trail is. You can enjoy the landscape. People will have a lot of fun and seeing the satisfaction of a beautiful handcrafted trail. People come back for it time and time again. My family, we're here with my wife. We met on the trail.

Andrew Bent:
Another thing I like to do is train people. So instead of having one person who tries to build the whole Ice Age Trail through the state they teach three people to do it and they teach another five and all of a sudden you have 100 people that know how to build trail.

Jim Brenner:
The first step is you have a cross bow and you do a back slope line along the trail where you see yellow flags. About a foot over and take the pickmatic and you go in on it to that there line and take all the dirt you got out and you throw that up on top of the hill about 20 or 30 feet from the trail so people don't see it and you make sure your edge on the down slope side has no loose soil on it, make sure it's firm soil and you take your back slope right here you just -- knock it down. It's fairly even with the upslope. See how this here lays kind of flat versus here is up? You don't have that there nice and flat as possible.

Bent:
I'm here to compliment the workers. This is beautiful. You didn't see the before picture. This was one ugly piece of stumble and now it's great.  This used to come like this and a hiker had to tiptoe along. If the hiker has any weight on their back or else if they have any kind of infirmity which is a bad hip, bad ankle or bad anything it's real easy to slip and fall right off. Have your feet go out from under you.

Garrett:
What kind of grade would you give your crew?

Bent:
I'd give them an “A.”

Hanson:
This was built three years ago and so you see it's healed over and part of the landscape now. People who are working on it come back to these things when they hike them, I worked on that. This will be here for their kids to show to their kids.

Hanson:
We'll have a pickmatic in her hands in no time. We'll start out with a hazel hoe.

Kent Wahlberg:
The concepts that I really like about the ice age trail is it really is the people's trail. The people have built this thing. It is not a matter of some government agency or something just came through and did this. Responsibility, yeah.

Josh DeLaney:
Lots of people building the trail for other people.

Wahlberg:
It invigorates my soul, I don't know how else to say it. I love it. It just gives -- it invigorates my soul.

Joe Wenzler:
The stuff that we've built is awesome. The whole concept behind the 1,000 mile foot path is a real good one. We need to look at environmentally if we don't get people out here, environmental issues don't get talked about unless we provide a way for people to get out here easily and that's what we do is to provide an easy, walkable foot path.

Volunteer:
I would love to see the trail finished in my lifetime. Every little foot we put on the ground we're a foot closer.

Loew:
The Ice Age Park and Trail Foundation is planning a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the trail on June 7th, which is National Trails Day. The foundation invites everyone in Wisconsin to join a statewide effort to hike the trail. There is more information about the event, which is called the Mammoth Walk at wpt.org/inwisconsin.