Tri-County Corridor and Tuscobia State Trail Extend Snowmobiling Adventures

By Dean S. Acheson

Park your daily ride in either Cable or Hayward, and unload your real ride—your snowmobile—and take it for an adventurous trip on scenic trails that span Sawyer and Bayfield counties.

At your fingertips, which should be curled around the throttle, are hundreds of well-groomed and marked trails through county, state, and federal forests and across frozen expanses of the many lakes that dot the area.

You won’t have to ride the same trail twice—unless you want to—during your visit, even if it’s for an entire week. The interconnecting trail systems allow riders to travel from location to location on the lake and trails without having to trailer their machines.

The Hayward Lakes region—with its rolling hills, hardwood forests, tall pine stands, and pristine lakes—serves as the hub of the Sawyer County trail system, featuring over 600 miles of groomed trails. A journey south from Hayward on Trail 31 takes riders across the frozen Lac Court Oreilles and along Sand Lake before joining the Tuscobia State Trail just east of Birchwood.

The well-known Tuscobia State Trail is also listed as Corridor 10 on the maps. It crosses Sawyer County from east to west, passing through Draper, Loretta, Winter, and Radisson as it makes its journey across northern Wisconsin stretching from Michigan to Minnesota.

Traveling southeast from Hayward, snowmobilers can tour the undeveloped Lake Chippewa Flowage, Wisconsin’s largest wilderness lake.

The Cable Area has over 1,200 miles in interconnecting snowmobile trail systems, making it one of the largest trail systems in the United States. It connects with the surrounding county trail and the Tri-County Corridor. Uncrowded trails and the solitude of the Chequamegon National Forest bring snowmobilers back again and again to the Cable Area.

The Chequamegon adds 300 miles of snowmobile trails. In addition to the designated trails, there are nearly 1,000 miles of National Forest roads that are not plowed in the winter months and are open to snowmobile travel.

Riders should consider Trail 63, which travels north through Cable, Drummond, and Grandview en route to Mason. Along this trail, riders will cross the 200-foot Namakagon River Bridge, the 585-foot 18 Mile Creek Bridge, and the 325-foot White River Ramblers Snowmobile Bridge, each worthy of a photo opportunity.

Trail 7, traveling east out of Cable, brings riders to the scenic Lake Namakagon, the 10th largest natural lake in Wisconsin. From here, a trek south on Trail 8 provides an excellent opportunity to view all the natural beauty of the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest as riders travel along the Rock Lake Semi-Primitive Area.

The Northwest Wisconsin ATV & Snowmobile Corridor Trail Map features Ashland, Burnett, Douglas, Iron, Rusk, Barron, Chippewa, Washburn, Price, and Sawyer counties. This map will help you plan a trip to Northwest Wisconsin, and individual county maps will help you navigate the trails.

Contributing writer Dean S. Acheson is a Wisconsin native with a long career in newspaper and magazine writing and editing. He considers himself semi-retired and enjoys fishing, scuba diving, snowmobiling, photography, and, of course, travel. “I’ve been blessed with traveling throughout Wisconsin and the UP, seeing the diverse communities, taking in the festivals, chatting with the locals, and hiking the trails.”