Dave's Hiking Blog: IAT 8-31-13 to 9-2-13 Milwaukee River Segment

For Labor Day I got the kids and the wife and we headed up to KMSF North. We stayed at Shelter 1 the first night and then jumped up to the northern end and hiked south. We stayed at shelter 4 the second night and then shelter 2 the final night. The shelters in the northern unit were not as nice as the southern unit. Shelter 5 appeared to the best of the bunch. It is set off the trail a few feet in a nice forested section. There is a nice log bench someone made at the fire pit and privy on site. We stopped here for lunch the first day.

Shelter 5 looked like a great place to spend the night.

Privy at shelter 4. Best privy I have ever seen on any trail.

Shelter 4 is near Parnell Tower. It is .4 miles down the IAT and then another .6 miles down a connecting trail to the parking lot and tower. I know because we moved our car this day and I made that trip 7 times before we left the shelter the next day! The shelter itself is set off the trail about 50 feet. There is a brand new privy (pic to the right) that is down the trail another 10 feet or so and then around a corner. We didn't even find it till later at night, but it looks brand new. A little fly problem on the inside though. Bugs in this part of the trail were BRUTAL. Nearly ruined our trip to the point of wanting to go home. The mosquitoes were just relentless. The shelter has a concreete floor that adds to the clean factor. There were two birds nests in the rafters - and the droppings on the floor to let you know - but they appeared to be empty while we were there.

Shelter 4

Shelter 3 was the only one I did not stop to check out. It is about .75 miles off the IAT and I didn't feel like taking the extra walk just to check it out. Shelter 2 is a dump. The worst out of all the KMSF shelters. There was about a 4 inch wide hole dug in the back corner of the shelter from God knows what digging in there. A pile of rat poop on the benches inside about 3 feet wide. And of course it rained while we were there so we had to get cozy in the shelter for awhile! It was nasty there though. No easy place to park or access to anything. Skip shelter two if you can...

Shelter 2

Shelter 1

Shelter 1 is nice. It is about .5 miles from the parking lot on HWY H. There is a water pump about half way there. There is a trail that leads from the shelter directly to the water pump, but it is a lot easier to find going down then going up. The shelter was decent enough and we didn't have any problems there other than road noise that was very loud through out the night.