What? The SHT?

Northern Minnesota: it’s pretty great.

Don’t look now, everybody! Don’t look now, but The Right Honorable Lord Scrub is back after a full six years in the wilderness (actually, civilization) and he’s got answers to the questions nobody asked! Such as, “That’s correct, I am indeed planning to start the Superior Hiking Trail at the end of August and publish a journal about it, on the Internet. What’s that? Oh, it’s a series of tubes. Thank you, I will be taking no further questions at this time.”

So, yes—after sweating through the hottest month in the recorded history of Tucson, Arizona (a distinctly uncomfortable place in any July, let alone a record-breaking one), I’m headed up to the North Woods to cool off over a couple hundred miles of larchy, loony, lakey, sprucey, moosey walking. The Superior Hiking Trail hugs the north shore of, you guessed it, Lake Superior for 300 miles, and what it lacks in elevation change it promises to make up for in pristineness, silence, and lots of lake views. I am nothing if not an enthusiast for our northern forests and lakes, and the unfortunately-acronymed SHT has been on my radar for over ten years now. I’m pretty excited to finally be doing the SHT.

I’ve decided to hike the trail northbound out of a vague aesthetic desire to be moving toward wilderness and autumn rather than away from it. I plan to start from the Martin Street Trailhead on the northeastern edge of Duluth, MN; this is the “traditional” southern terminus of the SHT, though it’s no longer as far south as one can go. If I felt obliged to really walk the whole thing, I could spend the first 50 miles of what is now officially the SHT route weaving among the suburbs and parks surrounding Duluth and not being allowed to camp anywhere, but that has little appeal to me.

Despite being a comfortable, feasible thru-hiking option right now, I believe the trail is unlikely to be popular with other long-distance types for a number of reasons: blessedly, there is no Guthook app for the SHT yet, which keeps people in the dark about the trail’s existence; “Minnesota” doesn’t register to your average Stylish Young Outdoorsperson as a place that will garner Instagram likes, ergo it’s worthless to go hiking there; and also, the shuttles that normally ease a thru-hiker’s logistical burden are running at a severely reduced capacity due to Covid-19. For all these reasons and more, I don’t anticipate this being a classic “social hike,” as the AT and PCT were in the Before Times. That said, I do have many friends in Duluth and the surrounding area who will not only be helping me with trailhead access but may be tagging along here and there as I matriculate toward Canada. So I won’t be completely alone for 250 miles ... I hope.

Thanks to the pandemic, the level of planning that’s been undertaken for this trip (and it isn’t especially long or remote, as long-distance trails go) far exceeds that of any other hike I’ve been on. If the world was free of pestilence right now, I would be winging it—barely planning a thing, hitching on a whim into small towns for cheeseburgers and lutefisk, posting up for days on end at random roadhouses … strange food, novel drug experiences, ill-advised haircuts, waking up behind a dumpster clutching the neck of an aquavit bottle with a moose staring at me … fights, hijacked construction equipment, friction with law enforcement, drunken indiscretions with nameless barmaids … scorbutic gums, emotional lability, lice, delirium tremens on filthy motel mattresses, venereal disease, etc., etc.—you know, all the classic thru-hiker hijinks. But as it stands it’s shaping up to be a pretty square thru-hike. I should barely be leaving the trail, in an effort to abide by Covid best practices. Every resupply point has been vetted, every calorie counted, every ounce of instant rice and beans weighed out on a kitchen scale and apportioned into a crisp Ziploc. I’m even carrying a stove now, for the first time ever on a long hike. Yes, this one will definitely feel different compared to the spontaneous romps of years past.

A quick scamper down the Maine Appalachian Trail (pictured here in 2014) will hopefully ensue after the SHT goes down.

After the SHT is over with, if I’m still intact, the car still runs, and I haven’t been called back to work (LOL at the last one, I’m employed by an airline in 2020, joke’s on me), it’ll be onward to Maine and the Appalachian Trail, southbound from the big daddy Katahdin down to Gorham, NH. If and when that bridge is crossed, you’ll hear about it here.

My gear list for the SHT/AT Northwoods Stroll 2020 is here. My sole source of trail data will be this book. All planning info came from the SHTA and their handy website. Any questions? Ask away in the comments! Seriously, AMA … I just, I just want someone to talk to me …