Hike Location: Brunet Island State Park
Geographic Location: west side of Cornell, WI (45.17479, -91.17061)
Length: 2 miles
Difficulty: 1/10 (Easy)
Date Hiked: August 2018
Overview: A semiloop through nice forest on Brunet Island.
Park Information: https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/parks/brunetisland
Directions to the trailhead: The entrance to Brunet
Island State Park is on the north side of SR 64 on the west side of Cornell
just before crossing the Chippewa River.
Enter the park, pay the park entrance fee, and drive the one-way park
loop road to the beach parking area at its southern end.
The hike: Flowing
for 183 miles on a northeast to southwest course, the Chippewa River is one of
northwestern Wisconsin’s main waterways.
The river gets its name from the Chippewa or Ojibwe people, who
controlled most of the river’s watershed until the Treaty of St. Peters in
1837. The watershed contains much of
northern Wisconsin’s vast white pine forests, and the river became a major
transportation route for cut logs in the mid to late 1800’s. The large lumber and paper industries fed by
logs floated down the river made the City of Eau Claire the regional center it
is today.
Located
above Eau Claire where the Fisher River joins the Chippewa River, Brunet Island
State Park protects more than 1300 acres including its namesake 179-acre island
at the two rivers’ confluence. The park
is named for Jean Brunet, a French nobleman who built the first sawmill and dam
in Chippewa Falls, a city near Eau Claire, in 1836. Later Brunet built a trading post just
downstream from the park, and the site of the trading post is marked with an
historical marker along SR 178 southwest of Cornell. In fact, Cornell was originally named Brunet
Falls after this trading post.
The park
came to be in 1936 when the Northern States Power Company donated the island to
the State of Wisconsin. The Civilian
Conservation Corps (CCC) built some structures here in 1938, and today the park
offers a pair of campgrounds totaling 69 sites, a riverside swimming beach, a
boat landing, a ballfield, a playground, and some picnic areas.
For hikers, the park’s longest
trail is the 3.1 mile Nordic Trail, which is located on the main land rather
than the island and (as its name implies) is designed primarily for
cross-country skiing in the winter. Yet
most local experts believe the park’s best hiking trails lie on the
island. This hike explores the short and
flat island hiking trails, which offer a nice walk through mature forest along
with good Chippewa River views. After my
previous two rushed hikes in Minnesota (rushed in order to finish the hike as
fast as possible, thereby getting myself out of the bugs as fast as possible),
I had a very relaxing, pleasant, and low bug hike on Brunet Island.
 |
| Start of Timber Trail near beach parking area |
From the
beach parking area, head north across the paved park loop road to reach the
signed start of the Timber Trail. Trails
on Brunet Island are not marked, but they are easy to follow with signed
intersections. The single-track dirt
trail heads in the general direction of north through a nice forest that
features maple and birch trees. The
understory is fairly open but contains some ferns. I saw a pair of pileated woodpeckers in this
section of the woods.
 |
| Hiking the Timber Trail |
Just past
0.3 miles, the signed Pine Trail exits right.
Turn right to leave the Timber Trail and begin the Pine Trail, the
longest trail on the island. The Pine
Trail embarks on a meandering course through the north-central part of the
island, which as the trail’s name suggests is dominated by pine trees. Where the east arm of the park loop road
comes into view, the trail curves left to remain in the forest.
At 0.7
miles, you reach the north end of the Pine Trail where it intersects the north
arm of the park loop road. Cross the
road to begin the Jean Brunet Nature Trail, a 0.6 mile loop through the
northernmost part of Brunet Island.
Almost immediately you reach the trail intersection that forms the
Nature Trail’s loop, and options go straight and right. Continue straight to hike the loop clockwise.
 |
| Chippewa/Fisher River |
The trail
descends slightly to reach the bank of the tan-colored Chippewa River. The Chippewa and Fisher Rivers have numerous
islands near their confluence, so the land mass you see across the river is an
island and not the other bank. For the
next 0.3 miles the trail curves right to follow the bank of the Chippewa/Fisher
River, which stays in sight to your left most of the time.
 |
| Inlet of Fisher River |
The trail
surface turns to asphalt just before you need to turn right to leave the
asphalt and continue the Nature Trail’s loop.
This turn is not marked, and if you reach the park loop road on the
asphalt trail you have missed this turn.
In that case, backtrack about 50 yards to find the trail. The last leg of the Nature Trail features a
few interpretive signs as it heads west with the park loop road through the
trees on your left.
At 1.2
miles, you close the Nature Trail loop.
Turn left to get back to the park loop road, where two options present
themselves to finish the hike. One
option is to simply retrace your steps 0.7 miles along the Pine and Timber
Trails, but some of the retracing can be avoided if you do not mind a short
road walk. To execute the second option,
turn right on the park loop road and walk against the one way traffic for a few
hundred feet to the signed north end of the Timber Trail on the left. Hiking the Timber Trail south its full length
returns you to the beach parking area to complete the hike.
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