Proposed Site: Boot Lake and Jones Spring Trail Area
The main route I've been looking at so far for a combo hiking/fishing/hanging is to park at Boot Lake (the boat launch or the public campground, need to ask the DNR about overnight parking at those locations) Friday afternoon/evening, hike 3/4 mile west to Fanny Lake. Fish and hang Friday night until a set time, such as 9am Saturday morning, then hike and fish about 2 miles to Wichser Lake, possibly continue on another 1-1/2 miles to Perch Lake. There are backpacking camping sites at both lakes. Sunday hike back north, fishing along the way, by the same route if we liked it that much or by a route east of Saturday's hiking to have different scenery. The east route has more hills (none more than 150 feet) and less water thus less fishing spots.
The most interesting thing about maneuvering in this area is the trails. They are an eclectic conglomeration of snowmobile, cross county ski, hiking, fire lanes, etc. Thus virtually zero trails go directly to a spot. We'll end up taking a hiking trail south then snowmobile trail northwest then a cross country ski trail southwest then a fire lane south east, etc, etc to get where ya want to go. Well, the routes I'm looking at so far are short (3-1/2 miles as the crow flies, maybe 5 miles on the ground, each day on Saturday and Sunday at the longest), we'll be interspersing fishing with walking and the scenery will be gorgeous.
If the group agrees that this is a good idea for the 2015 WI Spring Hang, we can then start working on the finer details. Such as checking with the WI DNR about overnight parking, posting a map with the proposed routes in this thread, whether blazing (marking with trail tape) some or all of the route is desired, what time we plan on leaving Fanny Lake (if some are coming up Saturday morning rather than Friday evening, it'd be good for them to know approximately where we'll be and when), what fees (State/National Park, Trail, etc stickers or passes are required), etc. I am a big fan of getting free maps, especially snowmobile maps in these types of areas, from the local tourism boards. I'm also going to get a topo of the area this week and fine tune the routes and mileages because this is an area I will be going to many times.
For me this is a super easy, super laid back trip. I figure that's best with a group of people who have unknown (to each other) physical, skill and wilderness comfort levels. By way of comparison, if solo I'd be covering a lot more miles. For example Boulder Lake to Perch Lake to Fanny Lake and back to Boulder Lake looks like a medium (about 25 miles) weekend of mostly hiking with a little fishing to me.
Rose Lake Area map - overview of the area showing trails and sites.
http://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_...rdb5330980.pdf
Jones Spring Trail map - tighter view of the trails and sites.
http://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_...rdb5196622.pdf
Jones Spring Trail topographic map aka topo.
http://www.trails.com/topomap.aspx?trailid=HGM067-034
Jones Spring Trail Guides:
http://www.trails.com/tcatalog_trail...lid=HGM067-034
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