Top fall trails in southcentral Wisconsin, Pt. I

Gibraltar Rock State Natural Area

There’s no better way to experience autumn colors around southcentral Wisconsin than a hike.

The brilliant yellows, oranges and red

of maples to the scarlet and russets of oaks...the crisp, fresh autumn air and

the last warm rays of sunlight before winter arrives...the crunch of fallen leaves and acorns beneath your boots...stopping to enjoy a warm

mug of apple cider or a caramel apple pulled from your backpack – it all calls for an afternoon on the trail.

Fortunately, there are plenty of great autumn trails around southcentral Wisconsin to hike. Some are right out your back door, while some are a day trip that you can do in an afternoon.

Columbia County
Day hikers can head to the top of a 200-foot butte and enjoy incredible views of the Wisconsin River Valley and Lake Wisconsin at Gibraltar Rock State Natural Area. The 2.2-miles round trip Gibraltar Rock segment of the Ice Age National Scenic Trail climbs the butte’s northeast side. It’s a spectacular hike to take in autumn, when harvest colors abound along the trail and the surrounding countryside. A red oak and basswood forest dominates the butte’s sides. The red oak’s leaves vary from scarlet to orange and light brown while the basswood nicely accents the red oak’s colors with chartreuse to yellow-green leaves. From Portage, take Interstate 39 south then Interstate 90 south/east. Exit onto Wis. Hwy. 60 and go right/west. In Lodi, turn right/north onto Wis. Hwy. 113 then left/west onto County Road V and lastly left/south onto Gibraltar Rock Road. Park off the road at the curve in about 250 feet. The Ice Age National Scenic Trail enters the woods 125 feet to the east on the road’s left side.

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Hikers can learn about how pioneers used trees and climb an observation tower on the Nature Trail Loop at the MacKenzie Center. The 0.4-mile loop runs through a sugarbush, a logging museum, and a forest of oak, hickory and pine. Near the trail’s end, hikers can climb a 40-foot observation tower to see the quilt of farmland and woods surrounding the fairly flat plains surrounding the center. From Poynette, take County Road Q/CS east out of town. Turn south onto Park Road. The center’s main parking lot is on the right/west. The trail is east of the parking lot across Park Road.

Dane County
Day hikers can walk through a maple forest and enjoy an impressive view of the Wisconsin River Valley at Brigham County Park west of Madison. Four stacked loops totalling about a mile in length head through the woodlands east of the campground. Each autumn, the maples turn yellow, orange and red in the woods and about the campground, making for a perfect fall day walk. From Mt. Horeb, take County Road ID west. Near Blue Mounds, turn right/north onto Cave of the Mounds Road then right/north onto County Road F. Enter the park with a right/east onto Park Road, park in the lot, and walk the road east to the nature trail trailhead.

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Hikers can stroll through a new deciduous forest past effigy mounds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum. A 0.75-mile trail loops through the 52-acre Wingra Woods, which grew in the mid-20th century on what had once been farm fields. Yellow-, orange- and red-leaved sugar maples dominate the woods and are accented with amber-colored basswood, golden-bronze beech, and green hemlock. Yellow birch and hemlock grow on the north slope of a hill near for a sample of the northwoods. In Madison from the intersection of U.S. Hwys. 14 and 18, go north on South Midvale Boulevard. Turn right/east onto Nakoma Road, next right/south onto Seminole Highway, and then left/east onto McCaffrey Drive, using the arboretum's west entrance. At the roundabout, go north onto Arboretum Drive. Park in Wingra Springs Lot on the road's right/north side.

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Pretty autumn colors await in a small forest at Governor Nelson State Park, located south of Waunakee on the north shores of Lake Mendota. Leaves in the park’s woodlands turn orange, scarlet and olive while the adjoining prairie grass glows a fiery red. The 1.18-mile Woodland Trail also passes a 358-foot panther effigy mound and several conical mounds. From Waunakee, take Wis. Hwy. 113 south. Go right/west onto County Road M then left/east into the park. Leave your vehicle in the last parking lot on the road, just southwest of the boat landing.

Dodge County
Hikers can explore the ancient Niagara Escarpment rock formation in wooded Dodge County Ledge Park. The roughly mile-long Ledge Trail circles above and below the 50-foot high escarpment while heading through a small forest of maple-basswood, oak, and lowland hardwoods. A scenic overlook offers a fantastic view of massive Horicon Marsh, which serves as a stopover for tens of thousands of migrating birds and whose grasses glimmer gold in autumn. From Mayville, take County Road V south. Turn right/west onto Raasch Hill Road then right/north onto Park Road. Take the first left/north into the park and leave your vehicle at the first lot on the left/west (across from Campsites 19 and 20).

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Autumn colors add to the impressive beauty of a large effigy mound grouping at Nitschke Mounds County Park east of Beaver Dam. A 1-mile woodchip trail, lit in leaves of yellow and orange with the occasional red, winds through the park and the mound. An estimated 39 animal effigy and conical and linear mounds sit in one corner of the woods. The mounds likely were constructed between 800 CE to 1100 CE, and rank among the best surviving examples of the Mound Builders’ culture in the state. From Beaver Dam, take County Road E (East Burnett Street in town) east. After crossing Wis. Hwy. 26, the park is on the left/north.

Green County
A variety of fall colors – including the golds of shagbark hickories, rich yellows of birch, and the bronze of dried prairie grass – await hikers on the Havenridge Nature Trail in New Glarus Woods State Park. The 4.2-mile trail heads through each of the park’s landscapes. Some of the trees here are enormous, as the hilly New Glarus Woods escaped the logger’s ax in the 1800s. Basswood, black walnut, elm and oak also can be found in the park. From New Glarus, head south on Wis. Hwy. 69. enter the park by turning right/west on County Road NN. Park in the first lot on the road’s left/south side.

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Tree leaves along the scenic Sugar River turn gold each autumn, making for a wonderful walk. The 2.5-mile round trip Sugar River Trail West runs on an old jeep trail that hugs the Sugar River between Brodhead and the Decatur Lake dam. Closer to a floodplain forest, this side of the river offers more trees than the Sugar River Trail that travels through farmland east of the waterway. From the junction of Wis. Hwy. 11 and County Road E in Brodhead, go north on the former. Turn left/west on Decatur Road. The parking lot and trailhead is at the Sugar River’s west side.

Wisc. trail heads to summit of 200-foot butte

Gibraltar Rock rises 200 feet above the surrounding countryside.

Ice Age National Scenic Trail-Gibraltar Rock segment map.
Click for larger version.

Day hikers can head to the top of a 200-foot butte and enjoy incredible views of the Wisconsin River Valley and Lake Wisconsin at Gibraltar Rock State Natural Area.

The 2.2-miles round trip Gibraltar Rock segment of the Ice Age National Scenic Trail climbs the butte’s northeast side. It’s a spectacular hike to take in autumn, when harvest colors abound along the trail and the surrounding countryside.

To reach the trailhead, from Portage, Wis., take Interstate 39 south then Interstate 90 south/east. Exit onto Wis. Hwy. 60 and go right/west. In Lodi, turn right/north onto Wis. Hwy. 113 then left/west onto County Road V and lastly left/south onto Gibraltar Rock Road. Park off the road at the curve in about 250 feet. The Ice Age National Scenic Trail enters the woods 125 feet to the east on the road’s left side.

Red oak, basswood forest
The trail starts at a little more than 1020 feet above sea level and makes a gradual uphill climb through a forest dominated by red oak and basswood.

Red oak leaves fully change color after the sugar maples already have passed their prime, so this is a great hike for later in the autumn. The red oak’s leaves vary from scarlet to orange and light brown.

Basswood nicely accents the red oak’s colors with chartreuse to yellow-green leaves. Depending on the amount of sunlight received, sometimes the leaves turn a deep yellow with hints of orange.

At 0.7 miles, the trail turns steep. That’s short-lived, though, for in 0.1 miles, you reach the flat butte’s summit, which tops out at 1,246 feet and is Columbia County’s highest point.

The butte formed around 480 million years ago when this part of the continent was at the edge of a great sea. Wind and rivers brought quartz sand from the continent’s interior to here. With each new layer, the sand hardened into stone. Erosion over the eons has removed the surrounding quartz sand that once blanketed this part of Wisconsin.

Later, the sea reclaimed the land and covered the sandstone. As ancient sea creatures died, their shells fell to the sea floor, forming limestone. Wind from tropical storms stirred and concentrated the limestone into what is known as the Platteville-Galena dolomite cap. This cap, which is more erosion-resistant than the underlying sandstone, keeps the butte in place.

Butte-top views
While tall, fragrant red cedars dominate the butte top, there are plenty of breaks in the woodline to see the surrounding countryside, a quilt of farmland with woodland patches, a pretty scene in autumn.

Directly to the butte’s north is Lake Wisconsin, a widening in the mighty Wisconsin river. Devil’s Lake State Park with its forested bluffs is to the northwest. A leatherleaf bog is to the southwest directly below the butte.

Be sure to look to the south of hiking in autumn or spring. That side of the butte is a sheer 100-foot rock face, and migrating raptors ride the thermals formed by the warm cliff face.

Take a few minutes as well to look at what’s beneath your feet on the butte. A thin layer of soil blankets the dolomite cap, allowing a dry prairie to take root. You can spot asters, bergamot, big and little blue-stem, bird’s foot violet, blue eyed grass, goldenrods, lead-plant, pasque flower, prairie drop-seed, prairie smoke, side oats grama, and whorled milkweed.

At 1.1 miles, the trail descends along the butte’s north and western sides. This marks a good spot to turn back. If you have a little extra energy, though, the Ice Age Trail continues for 0.7 miles to County Road V, making this is a great hike for arranging a pickup.

Trail heads to quiet beach at Wisconsin Dells

Birchcliff Beach, courtesy Amy Bayer, Flickr.

Topo map of Chapel Gorge Trail.

Chapel Gorge Trail
loops to river
near Upper Dells

Day hikers can head to a quiet beach in the gorge that makes up the Wisconsin Dells.

The Chapel Gorge Trail runs 2 miles through what may be Wisconsin’s most visited state natural area. Neighboring Wisconsin Dells is a major tourist destination, and the popular boat rides into the Dells of the Wisconsin River State Natural Area always generate pictures of the river gorge and its fantastical slot canyons, particularly Witches Gulch. The 1300-acre area is an oasis of Mother Nature in a region that is more akin to Disneyland meets P.T. Barnum.

The natural area’s cliffs are closed to rock climbing and the side canyons closed to hikers. The best way to see them is via one of the commercial boat tours. Still, one official trail does cut through the natural area, offering access to portions of the dells that most visitors don’t know even exist.

Ice Age flashfloods
To reach the hiking loop, from Wis. Hwys. 13/16/23 in downtown Wisconsin Dells, go north on River Road. After passing the Birchcliff Resort entrance road, turn left/west into a parking lot. The trail leaves from the lot’s west side.

The loop’s stem first crosses a hardwood forest then goes under a power line and back into a woods. After veering south then west, the trail splits. Go left/southwest, following a former service road.

Eventually the shaded path descends steeply down the cliff side and reaches the south side of small secluded Birchcliff Beach on the Wisconsin River. The beach marks a sandbar on a river bend.

From the beach, you can can see the sandstone cliffs to the north where the river enters The Narrows. The beautiful rock formations were formed when glacial meltwater at the end of the last ice age roared through the sandstone, which originally was sediment at the bottom of a shallow 500-million-year-old sea that hardened into rock over the eons.

Rare plants
Thanks to the range of exposure to sunlight and moisture availability, the gorge provides for a number of unique micro-ecosystems. Indeed, the cliff cudweed – a tiny aster – is found only in two places on Earth, and one of them is the gorge. Among the other rare plants are the fragrant fern, Lapland azalea, maidenhair spleenwort, round-stemmed false foxglove.

The sandy uplands above the gorge ecologically are a bit more like the rest of Wisconsin in the plant species it supports, but even here a range of forests can be found. Among them are dry oak/pine forests, an oak savanna, and a northern mesic woods that boasts hemlock, red oak and white pine.

After taking in the views, walk to the beach’s northern side and head northeast back into the woods. The trail climbs to the cliff top and at the Upper Dells swerves east.

Upon reaching the junction with the stem trail, go left/east onto it toward back to the parking lot.

Learn about trail guidebooks available in the Hittin’ the Trail series.