DAY 3 UNDER THE BIRCH TREES

 We started the day at Judge C. Magney SP where we’d stayed in the 'through & section hiker' free site. Adrian, the camp host, had brought humongous DQ Dilly Bars over to us the night before when we came into camp. We felt completely indulged.

But this new morning would bring a very long day of hard hiking to us. 

As almost always, the trail feels pretty tame and easy in the beginning but that seems to change pretty quickly. Ahead of us we had some steep climbs and a deep dive down onto the lake for the 1.5 mile rocky shoreline Lake Walk portion, then an equally tough climb up from it. Vegetation is almost always thick along the trail and that would be true for this day. We didn't mind it because it brought scads of ripe thimbleberries, blueberries and service berries to the hungry hiker. 

We met two female solo hikers this day at various points on the trail, Moss and Izzy.

Moss had camped at the Northwest Little Brule River campsite and was walking into Magney SP (about 7 mi round trip) to pick up her resupply when we met her. She'd been on trail for 47 days, hiking about 7 miles a day. Seems she was basing her walk on a book she hoped to write on the trail entitled, The Lazy Hike. Fitting and a nice idea! Along with this publication she was finishing her thesis on 'attention and memory and the effect nature has on them in children'. Izzy had been on trail for 18 days, was a little pixie of a girl with a maroon pack full of a newly acquired resupply towering over her head. She was planning on finishing in 5 days. Her next stop after the trail was a graduate program in the Twin Cities.

I so admire these women. I'm not sure how they do it--being alone, REALLY alone, for so long in a place that feels and is so remote. They have mental and physical grit that is for certain.

As we hiked through wildflowers and berry bushes that reached thigh-high, 72 year old Buck formally of Buck's Hardware in Grand Marais came up behind us. He was running these technical trails we were gingerly picking our way through with a singular handheld and a few GU's stashed in his belt. He planned on 6-7 miles that day. Impressive is all I can say about him and "Happy Hardwarin' " Buck.

We stopped for a long rest and lunch break at Durfee Campsite. We indulged and took out our stoves and made midday coffee. As we were packing up to leave, Nick came in to rest. He was an inbetween-teaching-jobs hiker and had just been at the Boundary Waters the week before. Until Nick, everyone we'd met were females, solo females.

In addition to scads of berries and flowers we saw wolf, quite a bit of bear and a lot of, what I thought was fox scat. It was always on top of a rock or in the middle of the trail or bridge, a fox behavior thing, but we settled on the ever hungry, constantly hunting weasel.

Unlike the more northern sections, this one has roaring rivers cutting through deep canyons and some tough elevation gain.. Having pushed reallllly hard power hiking the last few miles trying to beat nightfall, we got to camp very late, it was close to 9:00. We were so fried. The late arrival into camp left us just enough time to pitch tents, hang bear bags, filter water and eat a quick meal. We slept next to the lulling Kimball Creek under birch trees   hunting