Crust Skiing
It just doesn't get any better than this – skiing anywhere and everywhere on the top of the frozen snow By Bob Kovar I probably should not be telling anyone of this
remarkable occurrence-in-time that graces the moors and forest floors of the northwoods every year in the spring. While most of you are staring blankly at the skis up on your wall, and long after you've stood up the long underwear in the corner for summer ... there are very few of us in the north enjoying the absolute best cross country skiing in the world.
Crust skiing. You've probably heard about it and dismissed it as just another silly northwoods legend. Hodags, Dillinger,
bare-footed guides maybe, but getting up at dawn to ski across a swamp? Well, just maybe there shouldn't be room for skepticism in your fanny pack.
I'll be the first to admit that the word "crust" didn't exactly make my heart ache with desire – at least, not at first. The dictionary defines crust as: 1.) The hard outer part of bread; 2.) A coating of dry, hard blood or pus. Sounds great, eh?
In the northwoods in spring, crust takes on a whole different meaning. Spring nights can
be long and cold. The March sun, however, is like a heat lamp in a cold bathroom as it tacks across the sky a little further north each day. On clear nights it can still dip down to 15 to 20 below zero, yet sunny days can easily warm into the 40s. Not even Martha Stewart could make a better recipe for thawing and freezing snow. Warm, afternoon snow freezes solid overnight with the strength to carry many hundreds of pounds of weight before you could break through into the soft dough
underneath. It's a remakable phenomenon, unless you are a ruffed grouse trying to dive into it for cover. There are a lot of grouse looking like Steve Young wandering around the north country in March.
Manitowish Waters is situated in the heart of northern Wisconsin's lakes region. The area is covered with lakes, rivers and streams – prime crust hunting territory. More importantly, there are abundant wetlands, some 30% of the township, and the only steep topography occurs on the
occassional moraine left by retreating glaciers thousands of years ago.
The great Powell Marsh is the main wetland feature comprising some 5,000 acres of the local landscape. It also happens to be up-and-over the beaver dam behind my house. Crust Mecca. Mountain bikers have Moab, climbers have Everest, college students have Partners Pub in Stevens Point and crust skiers have the Powell. This huge open expanse is perfect for freezing hard at night and warming during the day. The floor
of the Powell is covered with leatherleaf and hummocks of grasses and sedges – all of which disappear under a normal year's snowpack. There are a number of lakes within the marsh surrounded by lovely, small stands of tamarack, spruce and an occassional small pine. The tree line around these lakes thins out as you get farther away until you are in the wide open marsh that can stretch in some places to the horizon. In the summer you would be up to your navel in muck and covered with mosquitos
the rest of the way up. So how can such a harsh environment be so wonderful?
Its 5:30 a.m., -10F and I've been up for an hour waxing my skating skis and waiting for daylight. As the sun rises, I can see the beautifully thick, white hoarfrost that has stuck on every branch, twig and blade of grass in the marshy end of Wild Rice Lake in front of my house. My trusty wild-eyed golden, Daisy, has been whining at the front door since she saw me set my skis outside the door to cool. She
loves crust too.
As the sun peeks over the pines at the east end of the lake, we are out the door and walking down the hill that the sun had burned the snow off of yesterday. Once on the lake, I put on my skis and it's off towards the series of beaver dams that hold the Powell back from our lake. The crust is perfect. There is a very shallow layer of soft snow on top and it is lightening fast. Daisy has her tongue out by the time we crest the final beaver dam and it's out into the
Great White Yonder. Since there are no trails, I decide by wind direction which way to go every morning – with the wind when it's cold. I decide this morning to cruise what I call the Ike Walton Loop. I ski along the open marsh along the backside of Wild Rice Lake towards the Trout River. When the river is frozen, I drop down and cruise there for a while and then cut back up to the big marsh. I saw some water there yesterday, so today I'm weaving my way in and out of the spruce trees towards
Ike Walton Lake. I pick a spot where I can't see any of my previous tracks and just fly across the virgin crust, V-2 all the way; it's exhilirating! It's such a beautiful morning I ski over to Big Crooked Lake, Little Trout Lake, across the cranberry marshes over to Hwy 47 and then back home.
Parts of this morning's cruise were on unknown territory for me and that made it even more fun. I found an old, abandoned, horse drawn sickle bar mower sticking up out of the marsh in the middle
of nowhere. I can see how they got it stuck, but how did it get there in the first place? I ski across a few other tracks of some friends that are addicted to crust like myself, but see no one. I skied for almost three hours and got back home just as the sun was beginning to beat the crust into submission.
I had been on an incredible journey, following my dog, the best skiing of my life, and it was only 9 a.m. The next morning, like a crow, I skied across town to the Discovery
Center, cross country over swamp, lakes, woods, across the airport – you can go anywhere! The only boundaries are roads. Almost.
There are two obstacles that I have run into in my expeditions that I should probably tell you about as long as I'm spilling my guts. One has to do with the strong spring sun. My forehead, which in recent years has come to resemble a clear-cut back forty, has been burnt so bad that my wife had to look at my dental records to see who she was sleeping with. SPF
30 means that it takes 30 seconds to Singe one Penguin Friend at the ozoneless Arctic Circle. Our more southern exposure allows us a little more time for our foreheads to fry, but I recommend the grease for that continental sauteed look.
The other obstacle on any given morning in March is the Spring Blizzard. One such morning two years ago I left home with my trusty canine on crust smoother than a baby Rhesus monkey's bottom (Baby Monkey Crust) in a light snowfall. I reached the middle
of the Powell and it started snowing so hard that I was actually choking on the flakes. It became a whiteout within minutes, a million albino-man march. I stopped to try and get my bearings and realized that there was not one single bearing left to be had. It was like being a molecule on a piece of copy paper. I looked to my dog, my hero, my all-knowing, all-smelling Daisy, for direction. Surely she would know the way home. All dogs have that Lassie "sense of direction," right? Well, part of
the in-breeding that has taken place in golden retrievers over the last few generations seems to have given them this amazing ability to walk when their master walks, run when their master runs, and stop when the lost master stops. I'd take a few strides, she'd take a few strides. I'd stop; she'd stop. In short order we both realized what nincompoops we were out there in the middle of the Great Swamp. Our tracks were gone in minutes.
My small, rodent-sized brain told me to ski back
into the wind, which I did for 45 minutes until I came upon a recognizable tree line that appeared like a ghost 10 feet in front of me. This same brain suggested to me that in the future I carry a compass, though the suggestion was predicated on the fact that a compass would really take the fun out of the whole ordeal.
In conclusion, I am starting to feel badly that I've told any of you about this, and I think that if you do try it you'd probably never enjoy it as much as I do, so you
may as well forget about it, go back to your single speed mountain bikes with the stale air in the tires, your muddy running shoes, your Nordic Tracks, your crowded gyms, your poor, pathetic spring lives ... and forget you ever heard about this. For those of you who like the idea of being burned and lost, in the middle of the most beautiful place on a sunny spring morning, bring your best waxed bread knives and come cut the Crust!
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