One thing that Washington County has that a lot of other counties don't is a long stretch of Wisconsin's Ice Age Trail. On this week's episode, Mark Muellenbach, the chapter coordinator for the Washington/Ozaukee County Ice Age Trail Alliance joins me to talk about the trail and the upcoming Mammoth Hike Challenge.
of our state. Today, we're talking about the Ice Age Trail with Mark Muellenbach, the chapter coordinator for the Washington and Ozaukee County Ice Age Trail Alliance.
So Mark, I'd hope that most people who are listening to this, who live in Washington County or the area at least, would know what the Ice Age Trail is. But if you could give us a little bit of background on what the trail is and how it came into existence for those who might not know, that would be a good way to start, I think.
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And today we don't have a national park, but we have, you know, the Kettle Moraine State Forests do a good job of preserving that glacial topography, and we have the Ice Age Trail. And for those who don't know, it's, you know, one end is at Pottawatomie State Park near Sturgeon Bay. It follows the Lake Michigan shoreline for a little bit, cuts across to Kettle Moraine North at Manitowoc.
It comes down through the Mid Kettles, the Southern Kettles, and then a Janesville that goes west a little bit, ties into some bike trails down there, and then it goes straight north all the way up to Antigo. And then it takes a hard turn and it goes sort of straight West till you get to Interstate State Park on the Minnesota border.
So it's almost:
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I mean, we should all be proud that we have it, take good care of it, and use it as much as we can. Where does the Washington County chapter start and end?
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If you kitty corner that, that's where the trail goes, and then we follow the Oconomowoc River for a little ways, we go through Holy Hill, and then kind of the Pike Lake through Slinger, then you, we don't have a trail between Slinger and West Bend, we go through the county, or the, yeah, the city parks in West Bend, just the west side of Highway 45, At Kewaskum, we go behind Little, um, Sunburst, and then we cross east across the Milwaukee River at County Trunk H, and then we tie into the Kettle Moraine North trail system.
And then we, just south of Dun, not Dundee, um, Newfane, if you know where the biking, the bike trails are at Newfane.
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I like the Holy Hill and the Polk Kames area because I love Kames. And so on the Holy Hill property, we have trails that go to the top of two of them. And on top of one of them, there's a 20 ton erratic sitting on the very top. Oh, wow. That's a while. Yep. There you go. It's wow. Personally, I like the ups and downs.
So if you're in the glacial blue Hills in West Bend, there are some eskimos in there, the girl scout property by Lucas Lake, you have some really nice. Terrain changes there. I like to say I, I enjoy the geography of glacial moraine. So I, I know all of it. It's really cool. There were some wild things happening here 12, 000 years ago.
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Just great. Yes.
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Or is it kind of early October?
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And then there was one tree that was red. And so you're looking, you're walking through this golden, you know, follow the yellow brick road. And then there was some red leaves sprinkled in the gold.
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Wow. Yes, so it's almost all volunteer. And you can just imagine with the Emerald Ash Borer going through here, we have trees coming down every time the wind blows, the grass grows every summer. So does the honeysuckle and the grape vines, and they're all conspiring to close the trail, put it back to nature.
So we have to keep it open. And then there's always improvements. Last year, we built two boardwalks over some puddles, so you don't have to get your boots wet anymore. And then like in West Bend, if you're familiar with where the trail crosses right at Culver's, if you look carefully on the south side of Highway 33, just a hair west, we have a sign, that will be the future parking lot, and the trail will cut across Cedar Creek right there into Ridge Run Park.
Oh, very good. So we are one permit short of putting that in.
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Let's see, October, November. We skipped December. January, we couldn't get it for, that's our annual meeting where we elect officers, etc. We couldn't get that, so one of our members owns a private business in Germantown. We'll be there for that. It's posted on the Ice Age Trail, so everybody's welcome. And then we're back at Ridge Run again, February, March, April, May, and June.
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But I really try hard to get out at least every other weekend.
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So the Mammoth Hike Challenge is coming in October. Tell us a bit about what that is and how people can get involved.
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And the idea is then was to hike 40 miles a mile for each of the years. So it was so popular it's back this year. We call it 41 and 21. So we upped the miles. So you have to hike one more mile this year, anytime in the month of September. It's free. So the price is right. You know, so, and, and after you, part of doing your 41 miles is you should also visit three of our Ice Age Trail communities.
So communities partner with the Ice Age Trail and we form the symbiotic relationship where we bring tourists in. They provide a reason to come to your city. And in our, in Washington County, we have Slinger and we have West Bend.
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Like for instance, we're going up towards Sturgeon Bay this weekend. So the challenge starts in October, but if we were up there, we could go. Tour that community and that trail, right? And that would count toward
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What is it?
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Or if you go out on some of our maps, we will tell you the mileage. So if you do a complete segment, you just double it. If you're doing out and back and however you want to do it.
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I'm going to do it. I'm going to get fit here in October and I'm going to walk the 41 miles and hopefully get, you get a patch at the end, right? If you get them all.
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org to learn more. And then if somebody wanted to get involved with the Ice Age Trail Alliance, again, we, we talked about the, the meetings at Riverside Park, but how can people get involved? What do they need to do?
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Our email address is under the Washington Ozaukee County chapter. I'll show up to one of our meetings. I have people, I just checked the email today, I found three guys who want to join us. We are part of the National Park Service. So you are required to fill out a disclaimer, you know, in case you get hurt, you have insurance.
Other than that, just show up. You can learn as many skills as you want. And this is assuming you're doing, we call them boots and suits. So the boots are the people who clean up the trees and mow the grass and create the trail. But we also have suits. We have secretaries and treasurers. I'm the coordinator.
I'm the treasurer. I could really use somebody to be my liaison with West Bend and Slinger, because we could work a lot closer if somebody could dedicate their time to it. West Bend has a lunch and learn they're asking us to present, but I work in Milwaukee and I just can't take two hours out of my day to go up to West Bend and present, but it would be nice to have somebody.
