What (and Where) Is The Ice Age Trail?

Imagine a wall of ice two miles high slowly grinding south from the Arctic and across the landscape, growing several feet each year. It scoops up everything in its path, from giant boulders to grains of sand like a giant bulldozer, and shoves the debris across the landscape ahead of the ice. It even sloughed away softer rock from mountains, razing them and leaving behind only small hills of the hardest bedrock. This happened many times in the past, the most recent occurred from 100,000 to 10,000 years ago, and was called the Wisconsin Glaciation.period.

When the landscape of ice melted away, it left behind many unique geological features. The rock and other junk that had been scooped up and frozen in the glacier was deposited in formations with names like kames, moraines, and drumlins. It's natural features like these that spawned the concept of a trail built through Wisconsin with the express purpose of exploring the terminal edge of the last glacier in this part of the country.

Nine small sections of the trail were put into place as a scientific reserve in the mid 1960's. It was expanded slowly in the mid 70's, and in 1980 was officially recognized as a National Scenic Trail. Now it covers almost 1,200 miles from end to end, but it still isn't completed in 2019 – almost half of the trail features no formal path and you have to follow country roads and highways to get between segments. These so-called “connecting routes” will change over time as new sections of trail are put in place, but are currently discordant reminders that handshake deals for land access don't always work out in the long term.

Currently, the Ice Age Trail is one of eleven designated National Scenic Trails, in such storied company as the Appalacian Trail and Pacific Crest Trail. It winds approximately 1,200 miles through the state of Wisconsin, making it one of only four NST's which are contained entirely in one state, and one of two of those over 1,000 miles long (the other being the Florida trail). It is also built and maintained almost exclusively by volunteers.

There are no fees or registrations required to hike the trail (although some sections may require an entrance fee to access them due to being in state parks or the like), but on the other hand there aren't a lot of the designated caches and shelters as there are on other National Scenic Trails such as the AT and PCT. There's not really anyone keeping track of who is traveling along the route or who has completed it, unless you voluntarily submit a notice to the Ice Age Trail Alliance.

The trail varies from very flat terrain to climbing to nearly the highest point in Wisconsin. It meanders through shady old-growth oak groves to boggy swamps, and down main thoroughfares of numerous small towns. It snakes its way through 31 of the 71 counties in the state, and offers plenty of opportunities to connect (or reconnect) with nature and people in equal measure. Whether you're interested in history, geology, animals, botany, birding, adventure, photography, or any other such past time, it's likely there's at least one section of the trail to fit your needs.

And this summer, 2019, you'll find the Magic Woolies traversing the entire length of the Ice Age Trail on foot, backpacking and camping for a major portion of it! I'm amazed how many Wisconsinites have no clue they have a major trail running quite literally through their backyards, let alone through the entire state. Were you aware of the IAT before reading about it? Have you hiked a more well-known segment of it, like Devil's Lake, or Lapham Peak, and thought that's all there was to it? Are you one of those in the midst of segment hiking it over multiple years? Leave us a comment below and let us know!

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