Am I overreacting about bushwhacking being a bad idea for an upcoming trip?
Posted: Thu May 11, 2023 11:31 am
Me and a few friends are doing a 9-day backpacking trip to the island early June. We're taking the ferry into Rock Harbor and are planning on hiking to Windigo via the Greenstone Ridge, then back to Rock Harbor via the Minong Ridge. It'll be around 100 miles total, and I've planned out (potentially) each day and it should be doable with enough preparation. However, my friends are set on bushwhacking each night to find a campsite. While it sounds fun, I've looked further into making that work with our planned route and it seems like a really bad idea, except for maybe a couple nights in some specific areas. Here are my concerns with this:
Looking at satellite imagery of the island, most zones that we'd be near at the end of our hikes are so unbelievably thick that it'd be almost impossible for all 5 of us to find a good spot to pitch our tents. A lot of these areas also look very swampy, and after what was apparently a heavy & late winter, and wet spring so far, I'd imagine that will only be worse. Also, looking at pictures from campgrounds gives me a decent idea of what we'd be bushwhacking through, and it just looks miserably thick in most areas.
A hammock would be a better option than a tent for cross-country camping, but we also plan on staying at campgrounds that have firepits which I've heard hammocks are not at all good for the campgrounds, and I absolutely do not want to take both my entire hammock setup, and my tent + sleeping pad. That's redundant and with as much hiking as we have to do, carrying extra weight like that would just make it unnecessarily more difficult. I also highly doubt everyone in this group has a full camping hammock setup (e.g. rain tarp, bug net, underquilt).
A big reason they want to bushwhack is to get away from the people, and get close to the water for fishing. But with cross-country camping we obviously have to be at least 200 feet from the water, and all the campgrounds on our route are pretty much right on the water. Also, in early June in the least visited national park in the lower 48, I'd imagine we won't have to deal with many, if any, people at a lot of the campgrounds.
Bushwhacking and stepping into a foot deep swamp by accident would also make our footwear absolutely miserable for the rest of our hiking, assuming we're all bringing hiking boots (some may bring trail runners, but most will probably have boots).
We also need to time the first half of our route to be at the Voyageur II dock at 9:30am on either a Monday, Wednesday, or Saturday to pick up resupply packages so we don't have to carry 9 days worth of food. That'll require somewhat careful planning, and the hassle of bushwhacking could easily eat into our routes to the point where we miss the delivery, which would obviously suck.
Am I being unreasonable about any of this? Or do I happen to have any of this wrong? If I can't change their mind then unfortunately I'm considering just doing the route alone, since I want to make this trip as enjoyable as possible and actually complete the planned backpacking loop.
Looking at satellite imagery of the island, most zones that we'd be near at the end of our hikes are so unbelievably thick that it'd be almost impossible for all 5 of us to find a good spot to pitch our tents. A lot of these areas also look very swampy, and after what was apparently a heavy & late winter, and wet spring so far, I'd imagine that will only be worse. Also, looking at pictures from campgrounds gives me a decent idea of what we'd be bushwhacking through, and it just looks miserably thick in most areas.
A hammock would be a better option than a tent for cross-country camping, but we also plan on staying at campgrounds that have firepits which I've heard hammocks are not at all good for the campgrounds, and I absolutely do not want to take both my entire hammock setup, and my tent + sleeping pad. That's redundant and with as much hiking as we have to do, carrying extra weight like that would just make it unnecessarily more difficult. I also highly doubt everyone in this group has a full camping hammock setup (e.g. rain tarp, bug net, underquilt).
A big reason they want to bushwhack is to get away from the people, and get close to the water for fishing. But with cross-country camping we obviously have to be at least 200 feet from the water, and all the campgrounds on our route are pretty much right on the water. Also, in early June in the least visited national park in the lower 48, I'd imagine we won't have to deal with many, if any, people at a lot of the campgrounds.
Bushwhacking and stepping into a foot deep swamp by accident would also make our footwear absolutely miserable for the rest of our hiking, assuming we're all bringing hiking boots (some may bring trail runners, but most will probably have boots).
We also need to time the first half of our route to be at the Voyageur II dock at 9:30am on either a Monday, Wednesday, or Saturday to pick up resupply packages so we don't have to carry 9 days worth of food. That'll require somewhat careful planning, and the hassle of bushwhacking could easily eat into our routes to the point where we miss the delivery, which would obviously suck.
Am I being unreasonable about any of this? Or do I happen to have any of this wrong? If I can't change their mind then unfortunately I'm considering just doing the route alone, since I want to make this trip as enjoyable as possible and actually complete the planned backpacking loop.