We have a wolf problem

“We have a wolf problem,” the park ranger told me. 

I had just gotten off the boat at Rock Harbor in the Isle Royale National Park and was trying to register for my backcountry camping pass. Some of younger wolves, it seems, had started to raid campsites on the eastern end of the island, stealing food off of picnic tables and ransacking anything that smelled edible. One boy scout, the ranger told me, had a leather hiking boot stolen by a wolf.

Welcome to Isle Royale, the least visited national park in the lower 48. Getting to the park is an adventure in itself. We had driven from Minneapolis up to Grand Portage, just a half hour south of the Canadian border. From there, I hopped on a boat that reaches Windigo, on the western end of the island in the middle of Lake Superior, in two hours. It then takes another six hours to circumnavigate the island, dropping campers, hikers and paddlers at various stops along the way, before reaching Rock Harbor at 3 p.m.

That left only a few hours of daylight to get my permits and hike three miles to the first campsite along my route, appropriately named Three Mile Campground. My plan was to cross the entire island on a 40- mile solo trek along the Greenstone Ridge Trail, before catching the boat back to the mainland in 5 days. 

This hike had been a dream of mine every since I learned of Isle Royale and its wolf population. I had already canceled one trip to go there. We had returned from my mother’s funeral just in time for this one.

While Isle Royale is the least visited park in the contiguous U.S., it is one of the most revisited, with more than 90% of visitors coming multiple times. Some people do take the ferry two hours to Wining, spend a few hours exploring the western end of the island before getting back on the boat. There’s really not much to see at the harbor in Windigo, nor does the daily schedule allow for much hiking. And you really have to hike Isle Royale to appreciate its beauty. 

Once a playground for people escaping the heat of midwestern cities, the island used to have resorts and even a golf course. But today, nearly all of the island is wild forest. There are no roads, no scenic turnouts, not even much infrastructure for the park. There is a lodge at Rock Harbor, and the requisite National Park Service visitor centers and gift shops. But to explore the park, you’ve either got to paddle a boat or don some hiking boots.

Three Mile Campground is close enough to Rock Harbor that sites include a picnic table and a “wolf box” to lock up your food from canine thieves. I talked to a few people who said they had seen wolves at the campgrounds, but I got through the night with no sightings.

The following morning, I hit the trail by 7:30 a.m., with plans to hike at least 12 miles to my next campsite. I was walking long a narrow boardwalk through the lush green forest, when I heard a noise in the woods off to my left. I turned quickly to see what wildlife might be causing the commotion, perhaps too quickly. The momentum of my pack turning pulled me off of the boardwalk and I stepped off the wooden plank, my right foot sinking into the muck.

I tried to brace myself, but the heavy pack — with five days of backpacking gear — drove my hand and my knee into the boards. I finally stabilized myself and got up see my knees bleeding and what appeared to be a fairly hefty shard of wood imbedded in my palm.

I used the tall grass, still wet with the morning dew, to wash the muck off my leg, then hiked to the end of the board to try to clean up my cuts and scrapes. I had some antiseptic wipes in my first aid kit, but lacked a pair of tweezers. I tried getting the splinter of wood out of my palm but was unsuccessful. I’d try to borrow some tweezers from other hikers if I could.

Despite my accident, the miles went by quickly. My route climbed from the campground up to a ridge that ran along the spine of the island. And while the route undulated through moderate peaks and valleys, it was a pretty mellow route.

After a couple of hours I stopped to eat a snack and dug through my pack for anything I could use to dislodge the splinter. The best implement I could find was a plastic spork, but its tines were too thick to be effective.

Later I ran into a pair of hikers at a trail intersection and one of them thought he might have some tweezers. The best he could do was a safety pin, which also was not up to the task. Soon a wolf researcher came up the trail with a bucket of batteries to swap out in the dozens of trail cameras he had set up along the route. He had a pair of needle nose pliers, but they proved a bit blunt to get at my splinter. I asked him how the wolves had gotten to an island in the middle of the Superior. I had read that they had swum there, but that seemed unlikely giving the distance from the mainland. Most biologists believe the wolves came over when the lake froze. That happens only every few years now. Others believe the wolves were brought there. The researcher also told me that before the wolves and moose arrived, the island had caribou, lynx and snowshoe hare.

While I had planned on hiking just 12 miles that day, I completed that distance before noon, and it seemed a little silly to stop then. I decided to push on to the next campground eight miles away. Little did I know that those eight miles were probably the toughest part of the entire trail. Nonetheless once I had committed, there was little point in turning around and no water sources to make a campground any earlier.

The next day, I was faced with another conundrum. There was only one campground left between my current site and Windigo harbor. So I could either hike six miles and get there really early or hike 18 miles to the end. Given that I had two days left before my boat departed, and having just logged a 20-mile day, I decided to take the shorter day. I reached the next campsite by 11 a.m. and settled in for a long day.

The one saving grace was the campsite had a nice little beach and I was able to go swimming in Lake Desor. The water was warm and crystal clear, with a soft sandy lake bottom. The day was just warm enough for me to sit on the shore and the sun dry me.

The following morning I packed up my things and headed out early, making to Windigo harbor before noon. I had two immediate concerns. The first was to find a pair of tweezers to remove the wooden shard from my palm, and the second was to determine whether I could get back to the mainland that day, rather than waiting another 24 hours for my scheduled departure.

A park ranger gave me a set a tweezers, an antiseptic wipe and a bandaid. But the wound had swollen around the splinter and I wasn’t able to pry it out. I did manage to squeeze out an inordinate amount of pus. This thing was badly infected.

However, there was a boat at the dock and I learned it was leaving in a couple of hours. I tracked down the captain and he said there’d be no problem coming back with them a day early.

Windigo has a nice gift shop and cafe, and I was willing to pay any exorbitant amount they would charge for a cold beer. I was stunned when the cashier asked for $2.65. That’s got to be the best bargain in any park service concession I’ve ever come across! I sat out on their deck, drinking my beer, eating a bagel with peanut butter, waiting for the boat to leave. 

On the boat, I sat next to a man who had spent the previous week volunteering on a restoration of a lighthouse perched on a small rock several miles off the shore of Isle Royale. The captain brought the boat alongside the rock so we could all get a good look at the old lighthouse.

Once I got back to shore, Mrs. 123 picked me up and we drove straight to the hospital in Grand Marais. In the ER, a doctor administered a local anesthetic with a needle in my palm. It might have literally been the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced. With my hand numbed, he started probing for the splinter with a needle. Eventually he asked for a suture kit, and used the forceps to pull out the wooden sharp, about the size of a fork tine. Mrs. 123 couldn’t believe the size of it. The doctor gave me a bottle of antibiotics and sent me on my way.

The hike across Isle Royale was beautiful and a true wilderness experience. My only regrets was that most of the route was forested. I had expected that hiking along the ridge, I would see  stunning views of the island and the lake. Mostly, I just saw forest.

The island does have a lot of trails that follow the shoreline, and if I ever go back, I’d like to explore some more of those. I’ll just try to avoid the boardwalks. Or at least bring some tweezers with me.

Days: 192

Miles Traveled: 23,770

Next stop: Apostle Islands