Porkies 2025, Day 4: Big Carp to Section 17

Last time: Excessive deference -- Links to all of my adventures.

Looking out the Lake Superior cabin's east window

Wednesday May 28, 2025: I woke up with a headache, presumably brought on by too much relaxation. The day was gray and warmer than we'd yet seen on this trip.

Morning was normal: Tea, oatmeal with freeze-dried raspberries, and a trip to the outhouse perched on top of Mt. Everest (aka the lakeshore bluff).

We packed up, ready for a big-ish day of hiking. We would reverse course, undoing almost all of our steps on the trip so far, and end up at the Section 17 cabin near the Little Carp River Road trailhead.

As we heaved the screen door closed for the last time, we talked about the Lake Superior 4 bunk cabin. We both liked it, especially because it had a nice view in the spring (and no view to speak of once the brush has grown up). Its location is a bit unfortunate: While the official trails avoid the cabin area, there are many criss-crossing trails that are easy to mistake for official ones, and many of them go right past the cabin. So there had been a decent number of randos walking past the cabin, although not as many as there would be in a few months. We had seen plenty of groups walking up to the directional signs and map posted out near the river, stare at them for a good long while, and then head off in a random (and unlikely to be correct) direction.

We had no choice but to hike up the giant bluff to the outhouse, while the lakeshore in front of the Lake Superior cabin remained easily accessible. The Little Carp cabin was exactly the opposite: easy to get to the outhouse, hard to get to the lakeshore. As Sarah pointed out, the outhouse wasn't optional, whereas going down to the lake was easier to say "nah, I'll do that later." That was her reasoning for preferring the Lake Superior cabin to Little Carp, despite both of them being quite lovely in other ways. I generally agreed, and I also liked the Lake Superior cabin's view of the lake this early in the season. I would gladly return, although I think that I still prefer the Big Carp 4-bunk cabin for its gorgeous setting right next to the river.

Lake Superior trail, ferns, and boardwalk

We hiked 1.2 miles west on the Lake Superior trail to the Little Carp River bridge, where we again sat on the rocks and enjoyed rice cake sandwiches. This is one of my very favorite places in the Porkies, and I was glad to see it multiple times on this trip.

After that, we spent the rest of the day hiking back up the Little Carp River trail. The trail was as picturesque as ever, but we were both surprised at how different the trail felt in this direction -- it was quite noticeable since we'd just hiked the opposite direction three days ago. Partly this was because we started with the flattest, easiest section near the lakeshore.

The unbridged stream crossings came and went quickly. We took a quick rest at each, but we were feeling healthy and hearty, so we mostly pushed onwards. We met a few other people on the trail, including a photographer with only a daypack and a giant tripod. That, plus some people walking a dog and one solo hiker, made this the most people we'd seen all trip so far.

Sarah making the first Little Carp crossing 

The Little Carp River trail gets hillier the farther inland you get. As we started climbing those hills, the day warmed up, and we started to sweat. Soon there were even a few bugs hanging around us. None of them seemed to be biting, but they were certainly annoying. I kept my bug net pushed up on my hat, ready to come down whenever the bugs figured out how to bug us.

We followed our rule and stopped for a snack 1 hour after the last river crossing. Like on our first day, this break was at a random place in the woods, and we sat quietly eating a snack with bug nets hanging around our hats.

The Little Carp trail was generally dry and lacking mud. It's usually one of the best-maintained trails in the park, and relatively easy to hike. But it wasn't perfect, and there were several places where the trail needs significant work. Because the trail stays so close to the river for most of its lower 6 miles, it's susceptible to washouts from spring flooding or flash flooding at other times. This has happened in several places over the last few years, including this one, perched along the side of a steep hill that makes the washed-out trail even harder to bypass without wading in the river:

A difficult trail segment

As we walked on, we talked about how neither of us had the usual "food fantasies" that have plagued us on previous trips. We had been more intentional about packing enough calories on this trip, especially by looking for the largest dinners we could find, and that made all the difference. Well, almost -- talking about not having food fantasies nonetheless led to a long and involved conversation about our favorite restaurants, individual meals we remembered, and where we might want to stop and eat after the trip. While I wasn't necessarily daydreaming about a greasy hamburger and onion rings... I did bring up a few places where we could get them.

As we hiked through untouched beauty, we continued to talk about things that weren't in front of us. We had designed this trip with several possible endings based on the weather and how we were feeling. Our endpoint today was a cabin within 1 mile of our car, so one option was to walk out right away. Feeling happy, healthy, and enjoying the good weather and relative lack of bugs, neither of us was interested in that. Another option was to sleep in the cabin tonight but leave tomorrow. We also felt ready to stay another full day in the woods, so that wasn't necessary. The third option was to hike tomorrow on the Little Carp River trail to our last cabin, Lily Pond, and then return to our car the next day by reversing back down the trail yet again.

That sounded almost good. Lily Pond is one of our favorites, but hiking the last few miles of the Little Carp River trail didn't sound fun. That segment is more of a tunnel of green as the trail cuts away from the river, and it has some muddy spots as well, certainly more than we'd seen all trip.

We decided on a previously unconsidered fourth option: Hiking out to our car and driving to a different trailhead, which would give us a better (and shorter) trip in to Lily Pond.

Little Carp river next to the Section 17 cabin

With those discussions ringing in our ears, we arrived at the turnoff for Section 17 cabin. This was our second time at Section 17. The first time was 10 years ago, but Sarah had been so exhausted on that trip that she barely remembered the cabin. I had also forgotten many of the details of the cabin. It's tiny, among the smallest 4-bunk cabins in the park (there is one 2-bunk cabin that's much smaller). The bunks have a strange arrangement, with one -- and only one -- of the top bunks turned perpendicular to the other three. The floor is some kind of smooth laminate rather than the gnarly and pitted wood of other cabins. Because it's so small, Section 17 cabin has very little storage -- just a couple of cabinets, probably half of what other cabins have.

The physical location of the cabin is also unusual, and quite different from most others in the park. For one thing, it has a moat -- or more specifically, it's on the opposite side of the Little Carp River from everything else (and this is the exact opposite of the other nearby cabin, Greenstone Falls, which is right on the trail). There is a large and well-built bridge leading across the river. The cabin sits in a private notch in the woods, hidden deep inside the trees, but with the sound of the rushing river audible even inside with all of the windows closed.

Starting at the river, the land near Section 17 rises in a series of remarkably flat "steps" that form a series of river bluffs, almost like terraced hillsides. One very narrow stretch of flat land parallels the river, perhaps just a dozen feet deep and quickly squeezed into the river by the following terraces. Behind that, Section 17 is perched on the next terrace, about 10 feet higher. Shortly behind the cabin, the next "step" rises steeply 100 or more feet above the cabin. The log book claimed that I could get 1 or 2 bars of cell service by climbing this last hillside, but I wasn't about to try.

Section 17 cabin. Yes, the tree is growing into the steps.

After we had opened up the cabin to air out, Sarah took a nap on a bench, and I took a walk along the terrace on which the cabin was perched. The cabin's "step" of land was perhaps 50 feet deep, and stretched up and down the river for a quarter of a mile. The much taller "mountain" behind the cabin pushed its way closer to the river, forcing the lower levels of terraces to narrow and eventually disappear. The stretch of land was covered in wildflowers: Canada Mayflowers, Trout Lilies, Wintergreen, Jack-in-the-Pulpit, plus ferns, grasses, and many other plants all beneath a deciduous canopy. The canopy kept down denser brush, making it easy to bushwhack along the nice flat land.

The woods were getting more buggy, although those bugs still weren't biting, so I walked around with my bug net pushed up onto my hat. I eventually bushwhacked my way back to the cabin. As soon as I arrived, I realized that my bug net was missing -- not something I wanted to be without, as each day seemed to be buggier than the one before. I backtracked along my meandering path and quickly found my bug net. I recognized the spot: It was where I had stopped to look up at a particularly tall and beautiful tree, and the net had slipped right off the back of my head.

When Sarah laid down for a nap, she had also set out the solar shower. On this nice sunny day, the shower heated up quickly. Once we had unpacked, we both cleaned ourselves up again with pleasantly warm water.

Next we both wanted to read, but also be outside. So we moved out to the bridge, sitting right in the middle, dangling our feet over the edge, enjoying the beautiful river, and reading. It was a wonderful setting but also turned out to be extremely uncomfortable. The bridge had been designed with walking, not sitting, in mind, so we ended up sitting upright with no backrest or laying down flat on the hard boards. In the end we didn't last for long.

Zig-zag bridge to the cabin, not meant for reading

Back at the cabin, we curled up on my air mattress and enjoyed a quick nap. Then it was dinner time. Tonight's meal was another new one, a risk we were willing to take on a day with a long hike, since all we wanted was calories. This one was Peak Refuel Sweet Pork and Rice. It was fine, and certainly had a lot of calories, but it was also overly sweet. I guess "sweet" is right there in the name, but the meal was almost sickeningly sweet. On the positive side, we finally drank the 12 ounce can of hard cider (actually "Pear Pop") that I'd been carrying this entire time. It made the sweet pork and rice go down a bit easier.

After dinner, we played some more solitaire. At this point, I think I need to explain what we're doing: This was a sort of multi-player solitaire that we'd learned from Sarah's sister-in-law, modeled on the classic Klondike. However, players share their ace piles, meaning that anybody can play any legal card onto one of those piles. It could be played competitively (first to empty their board wins), but we prefer playing cooperatively: try to clear out everybody's boards. We hadn't done so yet.

To play the game, each player needs a deck of cards, and the decks must have different backs so that they can be sorted back out into decks afterwards. This cabin came with two identical decks of cards. Sarah carefully went through and marked one of the decks with an identical small mark on each back, which let us play the game. And then we won. Our first try today, we fully won the game, with both of us emptying our boards. That had literally never happened to us before. We exchanged high-fives, and then started packing up the cards, because it wasn't going to get any better than that.

Another Little Carp River view

As night came on, we laid back to read again. I've often noticed how much lighter the lakeshore cabins are, and this cabin, deep in the woods, was dark. I put on my headlamp and lit a small fire in the woodstove. It wasn't as critical as on previous nights, but it did warm up the small cabin fast. We hadn't collected any firewood, but there was a lot in the cabin and stocked outside. There was also no working saw in the cabin -- there were handles, and blades, but no bolts to attach the two together.

Our stomachs were full and we were cozy, so we crawled into bed, read a bit longer, and fell asleep. Well, Sarah fell asleep. I struggled to get to sleep, and then kept waking up. I heard mice in the walls (and likely other places in the cabin too). A strange squeaking and whooshing sound made me wonder if an owl had captured a mouse just outside the window. In addition to all of that, my bed was strangely uneven. It wasn't until the next morning that I noticed that my mattress (always hard and unpleasant) was lying on top of a large chunk of foam. No other mattress, in that cabin or any other that we visited, had this arrangement. It probably had a lot to do with my uncomfortableness.

Next time: A convoluted trek to Lily Pond

Miles hiked: 5.9

Total miles: 17.0

Day 4: Route in blue