• Introduction
• Trekking habits
• Trekking partners
• Trek journaling
• Some of Chris' wilderness treks

Introduction

	Snowy pines in Chris' country. Click on photo for high-resolution imagery. (Photo courtesy of Chris Hallaxs' digital archives)

This forensic behavioral profile of Christopher Charles Hallaxs' wilderness trekking habits represents a months-long compilation of information gleaned from:

• interviews with Hallaxs family members and friends;
• interviews with Christopher Hallaxs' friends and acquaintances;
• interviews with Lake Superior State Forest managers and private property owners;
• interviews with Tahquamenon Falls State Park personnel;
• a review of Christopher Hallaxs' personal effects;
• a detailed examination of print and digitally-archived photographs from Hallaxs family members;
• a detailed examination of Christopher Hallaxs' digitally-archived photographs
• a review of Michigan State Police reports
• a review of Chippewa County Sheriff's Office search-and-rescue operation's logs;
• an exhaustive search of Internet message boards, Web sites, and other digital archives;
• SAR operations in bush Christopher Hallaxs was known to frequent;
• and CSI operations at remote wilderness bivouac sites—both temporary and semi-permanent ones, some complete with equipment and provision caches—attributable to Christopher Hallaxs.

 

A Chris Hallaxs poem:

Everything that I ever thought there was,
turned to nothing when I reached for it.
--no, rather that things that once existed
came to never have been,
apparently because I touched them.

...so maybe I was only mistaken.
Start simply and anew

So I thought I stood on Earth,
           but
I noticed my footfalls leave flat black holes
in endless eternal nothing wherever I tread.
           and
at some point I unthinkingly wandered in a circle.
           now
there is nothing to do but go around
in ever smaller spirals within this closed loop
as my feet use up the ground beneath me.
           soon
there will be nothing left to stand on or see.

Nothing but me

but then I fear and KNOW that I will not be able
   to help myself
I will at last have only myself to look at,
   and I shall get around
to wondering if I am real, so I shall look.
..then there will be nothing.
—Chris Hallaxs, FortuneCity.Com Web site, undated

 

 

Solitude/Oblivion     Moon snow scape. Click on photo for high-resolution imagery. (Photo courtesy of Chris Hallaxs' digital archives) Wander white wide-open space   this beautiful empty barren place   to be alone with wind that moans   and ice that cracks like brittle bones   or sometimes pops in shattered shots    underfoot, where nothing rots   or grows or moves nor may decay   before the frost has passed away. Wraith-while serpents of air and snow   flit fleeting fast and slithering slow winding 'tween and writhing 'round   ice and stones on lifeless ground maybe fleeing or merely following   wind: howling, freezing, hollowing? Tarnished light, sun pale with blight   obscured by ragged clouds in flight throughout thin daylight know no peace   from wail of wind, nor at night surcease from a cold as deep as timeless sleep   that does but frailly hold life and keep the single comfort that's here to know   lie unknown, alone under silent snow. —Christopher Hallaxs (Source: found among Chris Hallaxs' personal effects)

A skilled land navigator who was proficient with map and compass, Chris' wilderness treks typically lasted two to three days. On occasion, his wilderness sojourns would exceed a week or two in length.

Tough and durable, both physically and mentally, he was known to go without sleep for up to two days at a stretch in the bush.

A Chris Hallaxs trip journal: Exploring Lake Superior's ice formations

On living in the Upper Peninsula Yep. I've only lived in the UP for 11 years now I lived here for about 6 years straight without ever finding any inclination or reason to go back below the bridge, though. :-) I now have a sister and brother in law who live 20 minutes south of the bridge, so that has recently changed somewhat. My whole family, extended and all, somehow ended up here over the course of a couple years. It wasn't planned, it just kinda happened. I don't miss anything I'm missing out on. I've always been rather self-entertaining, maybe out of necessity, perhaps. In any case, about the only moderately annoying things are no broadband internet, and not being able to get a Pepsi (or whatever) at 3am. Both are not really that huge a deal, all things considered. —Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, September 5, 2003

The '92/'93 winter pushed up some amazing pressure ridges in front of Paradise. East wind may have also been a factor.

I assume that wind blowing across miles of ice can exert tons of lateral force from the airflow drag.

There are always pressure/expansion-contraction cracks just past the last shallow, 3-foot depth or so, sandbars.

The ice inshore from that is literally sitting on the bottom for most of the winter. The ice on each side of the crack lifted up into a lean-to "A" shape with the crack at the top.

These actually became from 4 to even as much as ten feet high.

Standing shoreward, they obscured your view out into the lake. In most places they eventually pushed together enough that the two leaning sheets of ice met vertically, and from this precarious position then flopped over on top of one another in a giant sandwich to lay on top of the lake ice until spring.

I walked out and stood on the sandbar piles at one point, looking down into one of these "A"-shaped tunnels from the end.

It was way more than big enough to have walked down, only there was open water underneath, of course.

It would have been entirely possible, (if stupid :-) to launch a canoe in one end and paddle through this blue-green cathedral the 70 feet or so to the other end. A day later or so it too sandwiched up and fell over.

It's also fun to bundle up and go for a 3am walk on known-stable ice on nights when it is well below zero, because of the mentioned loud pops, shots, and even bangs it makes.

In fact, your footfalls or weight moving over the ice will trigger these.

You can have some fun jumping up and down and hearing a wave of sound effects ripple out from you, or hearing a series of loud crackings in the distance, get louder, seem to pass right between your feet under you and move off into the distance again as it keeps going.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, July 20, 2003

A Chris Hallaxs trip journal: The North Country Trail (NCT)

"A good storyteller is" A good storyteller is someone who has a poor memory, but hopes that everyone else's is worse —Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, January 24, 2004

The only parts I'm on much at all are the ones right around the Tahquamenon area, and even then, most times I only use short bits en route to a heavy deer trail or abandoned logging road or such.

I occasionally see parts of it in the Hiawatha National Forest off south of Whitefish bay, west of M-123 and north of M-28, but am not really familiar with them, and haven't been on the actual official trail there in over a year, I think now.

This summer I've twice been out to the falls from Paradise, using first the snowmobile trail, and then cutting over to and picking up the NCT about halfway there, somewhere around the "Timberlost" or "Old Stove Road" part. The part I was on seemed decent enough.

It only wants for foot traffic, though it is also nice to be by yourself. Once this was on foot. Another time was via mountain bike, which maybe is not kosher, but I didn't even see anyone, much less run them over.

Well, I might break rules, but aside from that technicality, I do above all attempt to generally behave and act (sorta) respectable!

I have a special fondness for the river trail part of the NCT that runs between the upper and lower tahquamenon falls. See, it gets so much foot traffic that the trail is pounded hard, and quite a few times I've walked it in the pitch black dark totally by feel.

This is somewhat tedious, but easy because a single step off the trail is instantly obvious by the feel underfoot, even through shoes.

If I'm intending on wading across or around in the river or something like that, or just want to feel the ground underfoot, I'll go without shoes though, which makes it even easier.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, December 15, 2002

A Chris Hallaxs trip journal: The Fiborn Quarry & Caves

Currently jobless, but content Oh well. Could be worse. I could have a fabulously well-paying job somewhere in a city, have lots of expensive toys sitting around, and never have any time to use them because I was busy paying for them. It seems you can either afford to have an interesting life, or have the time for it, but not both. If someone knows of a way around this, let me know :-) —Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, January 11, 2003

The nearest caves I know of around here, and these are true caves with running water, would be the ones southwest of Trout Lake.

I visited the area last spring at the end of April, I think it was. There was still snow in places, anyway.

The Michigan Karst Conservancy owns the area, and I saw signs there to the effect that one needed permission to explores the caves.

According to local sources, there is still enough of a cave system there that you can do a bell crawl into an area almost big enough to stand in, and large enough for a fair number of people, where there is a short waterfall.

I've also heard that you need to crawl along in a pushup position for a bit, with your face inches from water. Since it was 40 degrees or so on the day I was there, I was not extremely interested in going underground in mud and running snowmelt water anyway.

This abandoned quarry almost qualifies as a ghost town as well, if you are into that sort of thing. Index of some more information about the area, though it concentrates more on history than the actual caves.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, March 20, 2003

The Fiborn Quarry near Trout Lake, Michigan, in the Spring of 2002. Click on photo for high-resolution imagery. (Photo courtesy of Chris Hallaxs' digital archives on FortuneCity.com)

[Descriptive narrative for photo at right.] Ruins of the engine house and loading bins in Fiborn quarry, near Trout Lake, Spring of 2002.

There was still snow to be found in the corners of the woods. This picture was taken from the rim, looking down into the quarry.

If I remember right from pacing it off, the building to the right, the engine house (so called because it was built and used to house and repair steam locomotives) was something like 35 feet wide and 85 feet long.

It is tall enough to make a two story building. I add this for some idea of scale; it is open inside. All but a two or three sheets of the sheet metal roof were still intact as of this picture.

There are two structures to the left. Prominently shadowed and up against the edge of the pit to the left is something that was apparently just a combination berm and structure to hold up the bridge that ran out to the loading bins. You can see the remains of the lower structure of the bins immediately to the right, though they show paler here, and are also behind some brush.

Apparently, rail cars and/or dump trucks hauled the limestone from the quarry bed up around to the top, then out across to the top of the loading bins. Rail cars entered the quarry bowl and stone was dumped from the bins down into the cars. Most of the stone then was taken to Sault Sainte Marie in either Michigan over the years when the quarry was still operating.

While the history is interesting, of equal and related import is that this site once had one of the larger cave systems in Michigan.

These caves were almost entirely mined away for the limestone, but two sinkholes remain in the quarry floor, where small streams run in from the edges and then simply vanish into holes. They go underground for a few miles or something to dump into the nearby Hendrie river, if I remember correctly.
—Chris Hallaxs, FortunceCity.Com, undated

Soldier Lake & Delirium Wilderness

Rustic cabins I know what you mean [about staying in rustic cabins]. Just any place where it doesn't rain on you overnight is good, and if it is tight enough to keep wind and bugs out, that's fabulous. During the last couple of years, I have run across a handful of deer blinds that quite possibly exceed those specifications. The best example stands 12 to 15 feet in the air on four large posts, is about 7 or 8 feet square, shingle roof, propane heat, and sliding vinyl or aluminum windows. I'd be fabulously thrilled to be able to pull something that luxurious out of my backpack at whim. :-) —Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, February 13, 2003

I spent a long day wandering around the Soldier Lake area one time with no particular goal or direction.

The area SEEMS pretty much high and dry; sandhills with scattered dry lakes at odd spots, of which Soldier Lake itself is one.

There's probably a technical term for these lakes, but I think of them as stranded bits of long-receded Lake Superior, stuck between ancient sand dunes.

I walked for a bit southward on the NCT from Soldier lake, and another time I drove around for a ways on a road that heads south off of M-28 right after you pass Soldier Lake campground heading east.

This area has a huge cleared-off area which apparently was once used as a military firing range, because there are long 10-foot tall berms bulldozed up in a regular formation.

They seem to be spaced roughly at 100-yard intervals, which makes sense for target practice.

On top of one the larger ones, you can sift your fingers through the sand and pick out literally handfulls of fully steel-jacketed, lead core .30 caliber bullets.

If you had one of those cat litter box sifters or similar, you could probably gather a five gallon bucket of bullets in fairly short order. I'm getting to a relevant point, really.

I stopped here once to sight a rifle in, and after doing so drove all over the road that heads farther from the huge clearing. It's all the same sandy jack pine plains as far as I noticed.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, March 3, 2003

More of Chris' wilderness trip journals

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