The Pipeline
After running The Pipeline trail in Northern Wisconsin last month, I figured it might be a good idea to start a page about the trail, since it is a well known trail, but is hard to find information about.
First things first, here is one of the few pages I have found on the Internet with a little history on The Pipeline: Pipeline Restoration Project
The closest town to The Pipeline is Lakewood, Wisconsin. McCaslin Mountain Campground is not very far from The Pipeline and is where I stayed at, so that’s where I will give you directions from. For info on the campground, go to their website here.
From the campground, you want to go East on CR-F for a few miles until you come to Chickadee Road, which will take you into the Nicolet National Forest. You will take a right and head South on this road until you reach Bucks Ranch Road. Here you will take a left and head East again for a mile or two until you see yellow pipes sticking out of the ground. This is The Pipeline trail.
When I got to the trail, I ended up taking it South to CR-W and looping back to the campground. However, you can also take the trail further North, and you can also continue further South once you reach CR-W. I was told that once you go South past CR-W that the mud holes can be very deep and requires large tires, so beware of that. When I was on the trail, it was very dry. Supposedly, this trail is usually pretty wet and muddy. Thankfully I picked the right time to check it out 😉
Below I have created a map of my route colored in yellow (click the map for a larger version). I added the red lines on the sections of the trail that I bypassed because of large mud holes or that I did not continue on during my loop.
For those of you that would like a waypoint to input into your GPS, here is the waypoint for the point that I turned onto the trail (named ‘The Pipeline’ on the map below):
Latitude: 45°19’33.64″N
Longitude: 88°19’30.83″W
More pictures from my trip down The Pipeline can be found here.
If you have any further questions, feel free to leave a comment and I will do my best to answer them. Hopefully this will help some of you out there looking for information on The Pipeline.