Patty Loew:
By mid April, the weather is warming up and it's prime time to hike along the 1100 miles of the Ice Age National Scenic Trail. But as Videographer Frank Boll found out, plans for a spring hike can quickly turn into a winter adventure in Wisconsin as he explored the east “new wood” segment in Lincoln County.

Frank Boll:
This is pretty late in the year. It's 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. 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 so I just camped over here and skied over to the pines and took some pictures over there.

Boll:
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. Because of the camping you have to get off the trail and find a place where it's kind of out of the way and you're not supposed to build campfires. You're 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's got a metal plate as a ford. That was under water when I got here. I noticed -- I looked at it about an hour later and the water was even higher. I think by 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 see how it goes. It 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’s only so much you can take in the sleeping bag. I put the boot inserts in dry. The pants are kind of frozen shut this morning and I had to open them up to get the leg in and then 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's 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's about three or four inches under water yet. Today it's a foot and a half or more of water going over it. I knew I couldn't walk over it without getting my feet wet. I took out the liners and socks and put on the boots and put the garbage bags around them on. Figured it would keep me from getting completely wet. I came across with a tripod in the backpack first to test if it would work and it worked pretty good. I went back and 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 and got my skis across and brought this across and I thought for sure as I was coming across there would be a boat effect and 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. Could have been a lot worse. It's been 24 hours since I skied in here with the new wood segment of the ice age trail pulling a 90 pound pack. 40 pounds of camera, tripod and extra batteries. I haven't done this for about 20 years and I found out I wasn't in as good a shape as I thought I was. I dropped this water and food along the trail. I left the camera here and the gear and I went back almost to the creek again and I found these items and came back. It truly was delightful. A beautiful day. I had a very good experience on this trail. It's a great trail. I would love to ski it without camera equipment.

Loew:
You can check out other "In Wisconsin" reports featuring the Ice Age Trail by logging onto our website at wpt.org/InWisconsin. We return next week with this Wausau teacher who in his retirement clears unexploded bombs in Laos. See how his students inspired this mission of mercy. Our winter weather has had no mercy on drivers. But in Beloit they're fighting back with beet juice to clear the ice and snow. Plus we’ll soar with the eagles along the Wisconsin River high above Sauk Prairie. Those stories next week “In Wisconsin.” We leave you now with a look forward to spring and scenes like these near Portage in Columbia County. For "In Wisconsin" I'm Patty Loew, have a great week.