Rock Cut State Park - Hike around Olson Lake 4-2-11

This was a neat hike, if a bit of work. There were lots of creeks for the beagle. Three big ones and many small ones. Swamp land. Impassable thickets to go around.

This was probably the best time of the year to try this. I think it would be a lot harder to get through once stuff started growing. There is a lot of swampy areas that would probably have a lot of mosquitoes once the mosquitoes hatch.

We had to make three tries to get around the worst of it before we found a path though the thick brush. It is hard to tell where the park ends in a lot of spots because it is not posted.

If I was to try it again, I would not bring the beagle. Being chained to a beagle who has her own ideas about what way to head, and with a tendency to go under obstructions rather than around them was an extra complication.

Now that I know there is a way to get there, I would head more or less due west from the pole in the middle of the field on the north side of the lake to the fence line along the tollway.

GPS trip computer showed 4.33 miles. 3 hours and 47 minutes. The swamp and heavy brush made for some very slow going in spots.

Once again I managed to lose at least one snippet of video I took.

Here is the GPS track. It reported 4.4 miles, very close this time to what the GPS trip computer showed. Note that Olson Lake is not even shown on the topo map and neither is the pond to the northeast. Very few of the small streams we went over are shown either. On the bright side, the topo map does seem to accurately depict the annex boundaries.

We were hiking in the Olson lake annex on the east side of the tollway as shown on the park map. Started at the trail head (big dot) labeled dog training area.