Thirty wolves, 550 moose and one nervous camper... Piers Pickard heads into the wilds of the USA's least-visited national park
Something woke me. I strained my ears and heard the forest hiss outside. I must have imagined it.
No, there it was again. A definite snuffle, right at the door of my tent.
Zipped into my sleeping-bag, zipped into my tent, zipped into the flysheet, I suddenly knew what a worm feels like on the end of a fishing-hook. The only sensible thing to do was close my eyes and hope for a quick death.
Somewhere in the back of my mind a tiny voice was saying, “Relax! It’s just a fox – no wolf would ever come this close to camp.”
But it was the middle of the night. I was camping on my own in the least-visited national park in the United States, surrounded by the biggest body of fresh water on the planet. A much louder voice in my head was shouting: “You’re going to be eaten by wolves!”
No, it wasn’t rational. But then there were 30 wolves prowling round the island at that precise moment.
I knew this (and wished I didn’t) because Isle Royale’s wolves, along with its 550 moose, have been the subject of the longest-running predator-prey study in the world. Isolated as it is in the middle of Lake Superior, the island’s ecosystem is as simple as nature will allow. There are no other mammals bigger than a beaver, which means that scientists can see exactly how the wolves and moose interact.
At 544 sq km, the island has plenty of room for the three packs to spread out, so the chances of me actually running into the wolves was pretty slim. But as it is 99% protected wilderness – forest, inland lakes and bogs, criss-crossed by a handful of hiking trails and sprinkled with a few campsites – you get the impression that you are in their back yard.
{page]
Which is why, in the middle of the night, it is easy to let your imagination run as wild as your surroundings. Especially in a park that receives fewer than 20,000 visitors a year – that wouldn’t even count as a busy weekend at the Grand Canyon.
The island isn’t as inaccessible as many Americans would have you believe. The ferry from mainland Minnesota took only three hours to cross the frigid waters of Lake Superior. Just seven of us got off the boat and surveyed the three wooden buildings that made up the second-biggest settlement on the island.
As soon as we did, the feeling of peace was palpable. But it was much more than the simple absence of noise. In fact, there was plenty of noise – waves crashing, birds screeching, trees whooshing – but it was the kind of noise that relaxes you. The nearest road was back on the mainland, my phone had no signal and even planes are banned from flying overhead. From here on in, I had to carry everything I needed on my back.
But first, there were some rules. A park ranger called Valerie (who immediately impressed me by being dressed exactly like Ranger Smith in the Yogi Bear cartoons) met everyone on the pier. She congratulated us on making it to Isle Royale, but warned that the place was addictive – almost two-thirds of visitors come back, a higher return rate than any other national park in the US. “Once you have been here, it gets in your blood,” she told us. “I’ve spent the last seven summers here now, and I love it.”
We then had a lesson in Leave No Trace camping. It was all common sense stuff – leave what you find, take out what you bring in and be quiet around camp – but it helps the wilderness stay that way.
Then came the bit we’d all been waiting to hear: wolves.
“Right now, it’s early season,” Val said, “so the wolves haven’t worked out we’re back on the island yet. That means you’ll still see plenty of signs of them – scat and prints. Chances are, you won’t actually see a wolf. But remember: they’ve probably seen you.”
With those words ringing in our ears, we went our different ways. One couple picked up their canoe and headed for the nearest inland lake, followed by a pair of anglers. The other two from the boat were hikers like me. Tom and Laura were at university in Wisconsin. When I asked why they had chosen Isle Royale for their holiday, Tom told me: “Everybody I’d asked about Isle Royale would say, ‘I’ve heard it’s amazingly beautiful, but I’ve never been there’. Well, I wanted to be the guy who’d been there.”
And it was beautiful. Tom and Laura set off on one trail, I walked into the forest on another. I soon realised that there was no Bryson-esque monotony to the forests here. The woods had different personalities that made them a joy to hike in. One minute I’d be crunching along through dapple-lighted, peely-barked paper birch forest. The next I was padding, silent as a wolf, on a bed of pine-needles, under thick boughs that blocked out all sunlight. Or I’d come to a planked walkway over a vermillion swamp, sunlight reflecting off the still water. With every step I took, civilisation felt further away.
Admittedly, the first night wasn’t such a success, what with the fox doing a wolf impression outside my tent. Its snuffling kept me awake long enough for me to sleep in the next morning. In the light of day, I felt a little foolish and, ahem, wolfed down my breakfast, eager to get on my way and explore further.
While wolves may not have been sniffing around my camp the previous night, I saw signs of them everywhere that day. Before I’d walked more than a kilometre I came across fresh scat on the trail. Then, where it was wet, the clay soil had fresh prints in it. Big prints. I followed them along the trail, playing detective among the paper birch, and realised that a wolf had tracked a moose along here very recently. I could feel the excitement rising. Now, with the sun shining and the birds singing, I would have loved to catch a glimpse of a wolf or moose.
But even if I didn’t, there were plenty of other things to spot. As I walked beside one of the island’s inland lakes, I heard a plopping sound as two sunbathing turtles realised they were being watched and swam off. As I ate my lunch, lying back on a flat rock, I watched a bald eagle circling above the shore. And in every lake I passed, there were loon.
The loon is a curious bird. For a start, it’s big. An adult can reach a metre high. They are black and white, with evil red eyes and heavy bones, which mean they can dive to 60m, but also mean that they look like they’re about to sink. Watching one take off is like watching a jumbo leave the ground – it needs a good long run-up, and it’s always a surprise when it actually makes it. But the most amazing thing about the loon is its call.
Or rather, its calls. For the loon has four completely different calls, each of which has a name. There’s the tremolo, which sounds like an owl that’s been told a dirty joke; the plain old hoot, which it uses to talk to its family members; the yodel, which means go away; and the wail, which it uses to chat to other loons in the evening... and sounds exactly like the howl of a wolf.
After a great day’s hike, I camped on the shore of one of the inland lakes, determined that no snuffling foxes would bother me this time. I went to sleep feeling pretty smug, thinking I was some kind of Davy Crockett. Then, in the middle of the night, I was woken by the most mournful howling I’ve ever heard.
Yes, it was a loon. No, I didn’t know it was until after three blood-curdling wails, when it burst into a giggling yodel. On the ferry on the way to the island, Fritz, the captain, had told me: “You know the only way to tell the difference between a wolf and a loon? Easy – they sound the same, but only one will make the hair on the back of your neck stand up.”
I wondered what possible evolutionary advantage it could give a species that can already fly to be able to scare the wits out of people by howling exactly like a wolf in the middle of the night? That wasn’t going to help it survive. In fact, if I’d had a gun, it would have been a distinct evolutionary disadvantage.
So for the second morning in a row I woke up late, sun on my tent-canvas, feeling slightly sheepish (albeit in wolves’ clothing). I hadn’t really expected to see a wolf, but I was disappointed that I’d gone two days without seeing a moose. And when, later that day, I did see a moose, it wasn’t quite what I expected. Just after lunch I spotted some furballs on the trail. A few metres later, moose fur covered everything. Ranged along the trail-side were a couple of gnawed leg-bones, tendons still attached. The wolves had had lunch here too, and probably only a week or so ago.
By the time I walked into camp on my last night, that was still the closest I’d come to seeing moose. I’d given up. Then I almost banged into 500kg of bull moose, standing at the edge of the campsite.
He eyed me as he munched placidly on tender young sprigs of spruce. I was close enough to see the fine down that covered his antlers.
In the end, he mosied round camp for 45 minutes (at one point, strolling right past a picnicking family), before finally bedding down for the night at the very centre of the few tents.
After dinner I went out to find him again, and there was a female moose ten metres away in the other direction. Half an hour later, the male gave me a nod as he sauntered past my tent.
Two hours earlier, I’d been worried about going home without having seen one of these gentle giants. Now my main worry was not tripping over one if I had to pee in the night.I went to sleep to the sound of chomping.
No fear of wolves this time, just the light of the full moon. I went out to check for the northern lights, but clouds had moved in. They scudded across the moon, making my shadow fade in and out on the birch leaves at my feet.
The silence was huge. There was wind in the trees and the crashing of Superior on the reef off-shore. No people, no electric lights – just me and Mother Nature. As the full moon suddenly jumped out from behind the clouds, I shivered involuntarily. I told myself it was just the cold, and turned back towards my sleeping-bag.
Somewhere in the distance, a loon howled...
When to go: Ferries to the island start in May and finish in October, but services are limited at the beginning and end of the season. July and August are the busiest months, and biting insects can be a real nuisance then. The best time is late May to early June when the moose are calving, visitor numbers are low and signs of winter wolf activity are everywhere.
Health & safety: All water on the island, except at Rock Harbor and Windigo, must be considered polluted by the eggs of the hydatid tapeworm. Boil all water for at least two minutes or filter through an adequate (0.4 micron) filter. Chemical purifiers will not kill the eggs. All hikers should carry a good first aid kit. There is a first aid centre on the island, maintained by the Park Service, but it is a long way to the nearest hospital. While the wolves are not a problem, it is unwise to approach moose too closely, especially when a mother is with her calf.
