Chequamegon Section Added to Wiki Guide

Marengo River Valley (photo by RMA)

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received from Ed Ronkowski and Marty Swank

The Chequamegon Chapter of the NCTA has written a good description of the section of trail that their chapter maintains. They cover Copper Falls State Park through the Chequamegon National Forest.

Following is a sample of the guide, describing the trail where the photo above was taken.

Two hundred yards southeast of the Marengo River Bridge is 50 yard spur trail to the small Marengo River Adirondacks Shelter on the bank of the river. The shelter can sleep 4 people and has a fire ring in front. A few small brook trout can be caught in the deeper pools of the Marengo River after the start of trout fishing on the first Saturday in May each year. A trout stamp is required, and the popular spots along this narrow river are quickly fished out.

Climbing up out of the Marengo River Valley, the trail comes to the 50 yard spur trail to the south to the most scenic section of the Chequamegon Segment, the Juniper Rock overlook. The overlook has a grand unobstructed view in three directions over the Marengo River valley. From the spur trail intersection it is another .6 miles east to the Forest Road 202 Trailhead parking.

Anyone who is looking for a nice segment of off-road trail should consider central Wisconsin!

See Chequamegon Chapter of the NCTA

Update on NCTA Wiki Guide

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by JHY

The Wiki Guide to the North Country Trail was launched on April 24 of this year. The premise is that because this trail is so long that the best way to get up-to-date trail information is to have those who are using the trail write it.

At the end of the first hiking season it's rewarding to see that a number of people have entered their knowledge to share with everyone, but there is still a long way to go.

Most recently, the Wisconsin Brule-St. Croix region has been added to the Wiki. This covers most of the central area of that state, and is nicely arranged in segments.

One of the drawbacks is that there is, as yet, no consistency in the way the entered data is organized. At this point, that is probably secondary to simply trying to gather as much information as possible. The entries are monitored by Matt Rowbottham, the North Country Trail Association's GIS Specialist.

Several people have spent quite a bit of time making entries, or encouraging others to do so. Their efforts are all appreciated.

As with any Wiki, anyone can enter information. If you have hiked a section of the NCT recently and are willing to check for an entry about that section, it would be greatly appreciated. Create an entry, if there is none, with whatever you can remember about the trail. If there is an entry, check it for accuracy and detail. Feel free to edit!

See NCTA Wiki Guide

Finally! NCT Trail Guide - DIY Wiki Style

from the North Country Trail Association

At long last... there is going to be a guide to the North Country Trail! And it will be built by the people who are out working on it and using it week after week.

Although several people have seriously considered doing a guide, the only effort that came close to covering the entire trail was make by Wes Boyd (editor of the North Star NCTA magazine at the time). He came really close to finishing, and finally made the entire work available for free. It is now seriously outdated, and has been taken off the web site.

But something even better has arrived! Using the same software as Wikipedia, the framework for a user-built guide has been added to the new NCTA web site. Anyone can log in and add or alter entries. To date there is only a small amount of information entered. But that will probably change rather quickly. The site was only publicly released today.

The guidelines are:

• Respect authors' and publishers' rights and do not add any content from existing guidebooks, websites or other sources that may be copyrighted.
• Please do not use it as a forum to push an agenda regarding allowed uses and activities on the NCT.
• Be respectful, but by all means push the content (and other contributors) to high standards of accuracy and creativity.

If you work on a section of trail, start entering what you know. If you have recently hiked a section of trail, start entering what you know. Most important... start entering what you know! In no time, we'll have a constantly up-to-date trail guide!

See NCTA Wiki Trail Guide