SHT: Day 23

Superior Hiking Trail: Day 23

9/7/2023

Pincushion Trailhead - Cliff Creek Camp

SHT miles: 8.8 mi

Spur miles: 0.4 mi

Total miles hiked: 9.2 mi

Elevation gained: 1,398 ft

Animals seen: smelled a skunk

Elevation chart created on AllTrails.com

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Up at our normal time of 6:30am for our last showers, last minute packing and a good hearty brek of biscuits and gravy with bonus bacon. We loaded the truck and headed to Pincushion trailhead. It was rather busy there and after a few laps around the parking lot we found the correct trail for the SHT and waved goodbye to Deb.

Man, Yoda was heavy, possibly the heaviest Yoda has ever weighed or I have grown accustomed to our dialed in gear weight. It was a struggle. Taking a zero threw off the groove that we had built up and with the added weight of four full days of food (in Yoda, Jake had a full four days of food in his pack) I was struggling to make an adequate pace. C’mon trail legs, where you at?

Jake found a sitting rock

We stopped to chat to two ladies, sobo thru’s, who were slackpacking this section and they absolutely fell head over heels in love with Leinie. I know I’m biased, but he was honestly the most popular hiker this season on the SHT. 

We decided to take the spur trail to summit Pincushion Mountain. We had done it previously on our very first backpacking adventure ever and we were nostalgic. We also had a goal of single digit miles to warm ourselves back up and therefore ample time. We met a local g’pa named Ron who hikes Pincushion from town on a regular basis, sometimes with his granddaughters in tow. 

The miles were a slog with the heavy weight. I felt like I was dragging, nowhere near the energy or power I felt coming into Grand Marais. We ended up stopping at an overgrown Barner Falls overlook for an early lunch. Coincidentally we had stopped here for a break years back during our first adventure. It’s also where the sap spot on the butt of my hiking pants came from and I have never been able to be wash the spot out despite numerous attempts. We weren’t as ravenous as we normally are. It was weird. I felt like we were in a funk. Taking that zero really messed with our routine. While we both agreed it was needed for a mental break, it was turning out to be difficult to return to trail mindset. 

We passed the next trailhead parking lot and noticed a “sick” (Jake’s description) vanlife van tucked away in the corner. Just passed the trailhead we ran into a dayhiker and her dog Penny who we had crossed paths with a few days prior while slackpacking. She gave us some good beta on the coming campsites, confirming our goal of Cliff Creek for the night.

Overcast all day

The trail turned rugged and it was full of mud from the recent rain. The heavy pack felt like I was hiking with a resistance band pulling me backwards. Maybe there is something to these ultralighters after all. Hmm.

We passed a bunch of sobo hikers, a literal shitton. Most were thru hikers and some were section or dayhiking. Trail is getting busier now that Labor Day has passed. The busiest time for thru hiking of the SHT is right after Labor Day weekend, and most thru hikers go sobo for the convenience of ending at Duluth. 

We arrived at Cliff Creek pretty early and chatted with our neighbor for the evening, Angela. She is a sobo thru from Texas. She had thru hiked the Colorado Trail and we chatted about different trails we’ve done. She recommended the Gila Wilderness Loop in New Mexico which as been on the back of my radar for the past year. 

We feasted on Mexican rice and brownie brittle while enjoying a campfire. The fire was perfect now that the weather has turned chilly. The rain pushed out the humidity so once the sun went down, the temp started dropping. We disbanded and crawled into our tents around 8pm.

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