NEW BIKEPACKING ROUTE TO WISCONSIN WATERFALLS WINS TOP AWARD Bikepacking basics
A Wisconsin bikepacking route has earned top honors from Bikepacking.com, a website that publishes routes and information on bikepacking, essentially backpacking with a bike.
The route, the Wisconsin Waterfalls Loop, was awarded the best new weeklong route by the website. It beat out routes in New Mexico and Switzerland to win the award, which was determined by editors of the website based on originality/intent, quality of documentation, and which route they would like to ride most.
The 382-mile route loops around northern Wisconsin, passing 28 waterfalls along the way and is estimated to take six to eight days to complete. About 85% of the route is on unpaved roads.
The route begins in Cable, travels east through the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest, then turns north to the WisconsinMichigan border at Hurley. From there, it heads west to the Bayfield Peninsula, then south back to Cable.
In addition to waterfalls to see along the way, the route includes suggestions for restaurants, lodging (mainly campgrounds) and other points of interest, like old Civilian Conservation Corps camps.
Dave Schlabowske, who developed the route, said he always tries to include local restaurants, taverns, convenience stores and other unique stops in his routes because stopping at those places is part of what makes bikepacking in northern Wisconsin so great.
“It's not just a backcountry experience,” he said.
Schlabowske, who moved to Seeley from Milwaukee after retiring in 2020, previously worked as the executive director of the Wisconsin Bike Fed and Milwaukee's first Bicycle Pedestrian Coordinator. He calls himself a “proud son” of Wisconsin and all the outdoor adventures it has to offer, especially when it comes to cycling.
When riding around northern Wisconsin, he said, he often stumbled on waterfalls he didn't know about and got the idea to create a route that passed some of them. He first tried to develop a route that started, fittingly, at Dave's Falls in Marinette County, then headed west to waterfalls around Superior. But he decided that route had too many bad connections — paved sections with bad sightlines and narrow shoulders that made for dangerous riding — plus, it was a point-to-point route that would have required a shuttle.
So instead he started the route in Cable, not only because it's near his home but also because the town has a free municipal parking lot with bathrooms and water where people can leave cars overnight.
“It's a great place to start little adventures,” he said.
The town is also at the center of the CAMBA trails, a 300-mile network of routes that the International Mountain Bicycling Association has designated as a bronze-level Ride Center, a prestigious designation that "recognizes the pinnacle of mountain biking communities.”
The new (and final) waterfalls route starts on those trails and offers a variety of terrain throughout, from hilly sections with "baby head" rocks (that's rocks the size of baby heads) to flatter, more traditional gravel roads, to sandy sections that Dave's friends have coined “Davement” — which sometimes doesn't even look like a trail.
“I try to avoid anything with motor vehicles, if possible,” Schlabowske said. “I want to have the most backcountry experience, the most relaxing experience, where you don't have to worry about sharing the roads with cars and trucks. And to do that, sometimes I could choose a paved road, but instead, I choose an old logging road that maybe hasn't been maintained for the last five years, so you might have to push your bike for a mile.”
Schlabowske said hike-a-bike sections like that are part of bikepacking now, and many riders are used to them.
“A little bit of adventure and orienteering is part of the fun,” he said.
Bikepacking is one of the newer additions to the cycling adventure roster. Schlabowske said it's basically backpacking — i.e. carrying all of
your camping gear, clothing and food yourself, but on a bicycle instead of your back. And it differs from bicycle touring, which people have been doing for decades, in the types of bags that carry your gear and the routes you take.
In bicycle touring, gear is typically carried in panniers (bags) that are attached to racks screwed on to specially made touring bikes. But unless those racks are especially high quality, they're prone to breaking when subjected to constant vibrations on rougher roads and trails. So bicycle tourists typically stick to paved routes.
“That kind of limits you in terms of where you can go,” Schlabowske said.
In order to venture onto rougher routes, cyclists began making bags they could strap to their bikes. Soon an industry developed around the new bags, strapped to handlebars, seats and frames. The new gear opened a new world of exploring the backcountry by bicycle.
“It's the same ethos as backpacking,” Schlabowske said, in terms of trying to find routes that are off-the-beatenpath. While you could backpack on the partially paved Glacial Drumlin State Trail between Milwaukee and Madison, for example, most people choose to backpack in wilder places like the Porcupine Mountains in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
The same applies to bikepacking. You can do it on any road, but most bikepackers look for maximizing unpaved sections on their routes — not only for the wilderness experience but also for safety away from cars and other motor vehicles.
It can be done on almost any kind of bike, although gravel bikes (a type of hybrid bike) and mountain bikes are usually preferred, especially for routes that include sections on single-track trails. Some people use fat bikes, bikes with large tires that are filled to a lower pressure, which makes it easier to ride on sand and softer surfaces.
Summer and fall are the best times for bikepacking, especially since most mountain bike trails are closed during wet weather and the freeze-thaw times of year in order to prevent bicycles from leaving ruts and causing permanent damage.
And while you can't get to quite as wild of places as you would if you were on foot, you can still find a remote experience — and get to more places.
“I like it because it offers just the right amount of speed," Schlabowske said. "You can cover more distance than you can backpacking, and you can see more things and visit more places than if you're on your feet."
In 2012 Bikepacking.com launched and put the sport on the outdoor adventure map.
But Wisconsin wasn't on the map just yet. When the website launched, it didn't have any routes in the Upper Midwest. Schlabowske wanted to change that, and by 2014 the website published his Tour de Chequamegon, a 107-mile route around Cable that's also a guided ride held every fall.
“When they published that route, it brought a lot of people to our tiny little town of Cable,” Schlabowske said. While most of those people are probably coming from the Upper Midwest, he said he has gotten queries about the route from around the world, including riders from Belgium and Japan.
And on a Thursday or Friday in the summer, the municipal parking lot in Cable — behind the Brick House Cafe on Randysek Road, where both the Chequamegon and Waterfall routes start — is full of people heading out on a bikepacking trip, Schlabowske said.
Bikepacking in Wisconsin
The Bikepacking.com award will no doubt attract even more riders to the Cable area, but it's not the only spot for bikepacking in Wisconsin. While most of the state's rural roads are paved, especially in southern Wisconsin, the Driftless Region offers some good bikepacking opportunities, Schlabwoske said.
So does the area around Wausau, which is home to a growing bikepacking community led by advocates like Shane Hitz, the director of the Ironbull Red Granite Grinder, a series of bikepacking races held in central Wisconsin in October.
Hitz has developed a handful of routes in central Wisconsin that he shares on his website (shanehitzadventures.wordpress.com) and a Facebook page he runs (North Central Wisconsin Gravel and Bikepacking).
Among them are the Tour de Nicolet, a 310-mile point-to-point route from Wausau north through the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest to the Wisconsin-Michigan border north of Land O' Lakes. The route includes sections on the Jack Lake and Nicolet-Roche singletrack mountain bike trail systems in Langlade County.
While routes through the pine forests of Wisconsin aren't as dramatic as those through mountain landscapes or as exotic as trips to foreign countries, they still have their merits, especially during a pandemic, when people are more hesitant to travel to those far-flung destinations.
“I've always tried to create accessible adventure for people,” Schlabowske said. “I think the Driftless Region and Northern Wisconsin are kind of like the Loire Valley of French cycling. We're not the Rocky Mountains, we're not the Alps, we're not Kyrgyzstan. You don't need a passport, but you can still get lost, it's still an adventure.”
More information: For more on the Wisconsin Waterfalls bikepacking route, see bikepacking.com/routes/wis consin-waterfalls-loop.
The 2022 Tour de Chequamegon will be held Sept. 23-25. The ride includes food, guides and support from Wheel & Sprocket. Riders must provide their own bicycles and camping gear. Registration ($495 per person) is now open. The ride regularly sells out. For more, see chequamegon.com.
Contact Chelsey Lewis at clewis@ journalsentinel.com. Follow her on Twitter at @chelseylew and @Travel MJS and Facebook at Journal Sentinel Travel.