Travel Blog: finishing the Tecumseh Trail

 

On Saturday, June 15, I completed my first thru-hike of a trail, the Tecumseh Trail in southern Indiana. The trail is a point-to-point that starts up in Morgan-Monroe State Forest, and terminates in remote Brown County forest at the border to the Hoosier National Forest. The published length of trail is 41.1 miles, however every person I've spoken to clocks much higher mileage than this IRL--one person claiming 12 more miles via GPS. This was my experience too, as 3.5 miles planned became 5, 8 miles became 9.5, and (this was just damned delightful) 19 miles became 22.5. 

This is a really challenging trail for a lot of reasons:

• Camping areas are extremely restricted, with mandatory 11 and 14 mile days in some places
• Water on the trail is seasonal and sketch, necessitating either packing in a lot of water or stashing along the route
• Indiana may not have mountains, but goddamn does it have hills
• Trail maintenance in some areas is on the rough side
• The southern section is a high percentage of road walking--lots of gravel, asphalt, and in one notable stretch, extremely busy two-lane highway with no shoulder (and no, not the section they recommend a re-route around, a different section)
• It was my first multi-day backpacking trip, so I wisely chose to make all of my mistakes on this trip to get them out of the way, thereby increasing the difficulty substantially

I already put up a post about things I learned about backpacking on this trip that I'd not seen elsewhere, so I'm not going to rehash that. But I do have some general reflections, and a few cool pics, that I thought I'd share. 

Day 1

Into the woods....

I had already completed the Low Gap loop in May, which overlaps about 6ish miles of the start of this trail, so I picked up the trail near Bear Lake. Low Gap, by the way, is absolutely gorgeous and a complete delight of a hike, with some really lovely scattered site camp sites.

The level of panic I was experiencing in the preparation and travel process was epic. I was in the middle of an audit at work (audits = Robyn's own personal, customized hell) and scrambling to get paperwork submitted that was unexpected. I put off packing until the last minute cause hey, I've been backpacking for overnights, how much harder can packing for a 4 day trip be? Funny story, it can be a lot harder. Actually it really isn't, other than food and water. But never underestimate what the increased stress can do, especially when you're unexpectedly time pressed and barely have any idea what you're doing. 

I got to Bear Lake two hours later than I'd wanted to (like 4pm), but I had a very short hike in of 3.5 miles to the first shelter before evening and wasn't concerned. I had lost a liter of water in the travel when it (most likely) got siphoned out through the drinking tube, so watch out for that in the future. Did I say 3.5 miles? Yeah, that was the one that ended up being closer to 5. But still, I got to camp--Fox's Den--well before dark, so that was fine. But I hadn't seen any sign of good water, which worried me, especially after I lost 1/5 of my water before I'd even started. It was a cute little shelter though, with some precut firewood and what I think was either some kind of summer camp or maybe roving werewolves in the distance, which made for a comfy night.

And here is the infamous "it almost but in fact did not kill me" bear hang.

Why did I do this? There aren't any bears in Indiana.

Day 2

Day 2, otherwise known as "The Day of All Mistakes" honestly went about as well as could be expected. I did make some big errors, but those have already been well documented in an entire other post about things I learned, so go read that.

The trail itself was really quite lovely. Almost entirely in cool, shaded forest. The trail was well-maintained, well-marked, and just generally a really great hike.

I got to Charlie's Shelter at 11am and stopped for lunch and to filter some water I had actually found on the trail. Charlies is an amazing space. If I ever hike the Tecumseh again, I'm going to go out of my way to camp there.

In back is a huge firepit ringed with boulders for chairs, a picnic table, and open lawn if sleeping in a building isn't your jam.

I went 3x further than I'd originally planned, which was stupid AF, but I made it to Yellowwood State Forest Campground, which I will tell you now so your spirits aren't crushed the way mine were, has no showers, no lake swimming, and no soda machine. 

It also has no backcountry/scattered site camping, so I was in primitive with the car campers. The allure of potable water was just too much to resist. I mean, all the water you want? For free? And you don't have to carry it any further than from the spigot to your camp site 50 feet away?! What luxury!

It's really weird how quickly perceptions of things change out on trail.

Anyway, things were great until about 9pm, when a whole group of (let's assume) IU co-eds showed up and struck camp 50 feet away (yes, right next to the water). They were just really getting going around 10pm, but I didn't care, because I had ear plugs. 

Pictured: woman, nearing twilight, discovering that she hates car campers.

Day 3

heavy sigh What can I say about day 3? Considering how much further I'd gone the day before than planned (22+ miles total), I was in surprisingly good shape. I had 10 miles to go to get to where my car is parked, and another 2 miles to get to the terminus. I figured I could knock that out pretty easily, camp at the terminus, then head back the next day. 

[Morgan Freeman's voice] This is not what happened.

I don't have much good to say about the last section of the Tecumseh Trail. The first part that overlaps Scarce O Fat loop is actually pretty well maintained and enjoyable. After that though.... Well, how much do you like hiking on gravel and asphalt? Cause that's pretty much what you'll be doing.

My least favorite white blazes.

The majority of the last section of this trail south of Yellowwood is some variety of built environment. It is hot, it is hard, and it is very often dangerous due to car travel on a busy section. I'm not sure I have anything particularly positive to say. It wasn't a nice change of pace, it wasn't neat to see, it was frankly pretty miserable. It has one thing going for it, which is that it goes through Belmont, and the only reason this is a good thing is because there is a soda machine in Belmont. 

Don't get too excited about Belmont though, I think this soda machine might be the only service business here.

After Belmont, you wind down numerous roads and through neighborhoods. All of this is poorly marked. If you don't have a GPS, I have no idea at all how you'll find your way. 

And then finally, in the last few miles, you go back into forest! Sort of. You hit some extremely poorly maintained and badly overgrown trail sections. There are almost no blazes to be found. There's a gigantic tree down across the trail about every 100 yards. Much of it has been cut open wide for mountain bike trails. So it's hot and unshaded. 

Real talk, by the time I got to the parking lot where I'd stashed my car, there was absolutely no chance I was hiking the last 2 miles just to get to the terminus. I didn't see any reason to think the trail conditions would improve, and I was absolutely done. I got to my car, stripped my clothes, "washed" with a body wipe, changed into putatively clean clothes, and drove in to Bloomington to get a Queso Burger at Red Robin.

So did I really finish the Tecumseh Trail? Yes, I'm calling it, I did. I am not going to move the goalposts every time something doesn't go exactly to plan. Was I 2 miles short? Sure. Was I overall 6 miles over the published length? You betcha. Was I past done? 100%

Would I recommend this trail? Everything north of Yellowwood, yes.

And the feeling of accomplishment is real. 

Peace.