Porcupine Mountain Wilderness State Park

North Trout Lake

Last Friday, Ali and I were rarin' for some adventure.  We'd been hearing a lot about the U.P. and all of the awesome outdoor opportunity that it had to offer, and we'd been planning to check out the Porkies at some point in time.  Porcupine Mountain Wilderness State Park (a mouthful, I know) is on the western edge of the U.P., about 5.5 hours due north of Madison.  It has the largest virgin hemlock/birch forest west of the Adirondacks, and it's seated right on the shore of Lake Superior - aka, it's awesome.  Thus, Ali and I set off Friday evening with a plan to hike around 20 miles by the lake and through the woods over two days.  After 4+ hours of driving, we stopped just south of the Michigan border in the Northern Highlands-American Legion State Forest for the evening.  The weather prediction when we left Madison had guessed that Friday would be clear and cool, that Saturday would be cloudy and 50s, and that Sunday might bring a snow/rain mix, so we brought the warmest gear we felt like carrying.  Friday evening, we used all of the warm gear, and it was still super, super cold.  We were the only campers in the entire North Trout Lake Campground; the ground was nice and soft from all of the pines, and a loon provided a lovely morning serenade while we prepared our cocoa and grits.

Just outside our tent

After breakfast, we gathered our gear and jumped in the car for the remaining 1/1.5 hour drive.  We took a brief detour in the hopes of grabbing some sleeping bag liners, but the most-promising outfitters didn't have much beyond fishing gear and some apparel.  The drive into Michigan was stunning - tons of lakes, dense birch woods, rolling hills, and only two deer that felt like jumping into the road.  We got our first view of Superior when we hit the engineer's highway that leads into the park, and it was all the better since the Porcupine Mountains were popping up right in front of us.  (Granted, these "mountains" top out just shy of 2000 ft.)  We filled out all of the backcountry camping stuff and hit the trail.

We had 11 miles (9.5 along the Lake Superior Trail and 1.4 inland on the Big Carp River Trail) til our campsite for Saturday night.  The trail started in some old-growth, open woods.  There had been rain the previous week, and the ground was still a little mushy from it.  There were buds on the birches, but they didn't really look ready to open the first day.

Within a mile or so, the woods changed from old, broad evergreens with some birches/maples to something with much shorter deciduous trees and much more rocky soil.  The closer we were to the lake, the tougher it looked on the plant life.  Assuming that things could get purchase in the rock, they looked like they had been terrorized by wind and frost.  Blossoms on the trees were faring poorly, unless the tree was still in the shelter of the rare rock ledge.

Some of the best looking blossoms near the lake

Eventually, we were up and over the tiny ridge that had been blocking our view of the lake, and for another mile or so we were in and out of the stronger deciduous stands.  Within the woods, the ground was much less rocky, but only if the trail didn't have us in the middle of a springtime creek.  I was really happy that I had brought along my waterproof boots (there was a lot of walking through rather damp ground), but they didn't help my feet out much on the rocky terrain. 

Some areas we were beside the creek instead of in it

Adventure Ali

Other parts, we were just trudging through water

A few miles into the trail, the trail maintenance started being a bit worse for the wear.  It was clear that the trail crews haven't started their season yet, and it seemed like we couldn't go more than 100 yards without coming to another downed tree covering the trail.  We got into a rhythm of weaving on and off the trail to avoid both trees and small ponds.  I don't envy the work ahead for trail crews; it looks like the winds off the lake must keep them busy year round.

Halfway through the day, we finally made Lone Rock.  The temperatures were dropping, and clouds were moving in at a rather brisk pace.  The woods a bit back from the lake had turned from birch to hemlock, but downed trees and watery trail continued to slow us.  We took a bunch of trail-mix/picture breaks before the halfway point, and we had lunch shortly after Lone Rock.  The slow pace, cool weather, and threat of a storm kept us moving through the afternoon.

Another coniferous-to-deciduous change had us hoping that we'd soon hit the Big Carp River and finish for the day, and while we did stay in birch/maple/basswood forests until the river, it seemed to take forever to get there.  The terrain became more rolling, which kept us out of the swamped area a bit more, but my feet were getting sore from all the rock, and we kept having to dip back down to hike on more rock by the lake.

We did get to see some bald eagles nesting, complete with both parents.  The male eagle was perched on the nest when we first came upon it; we flushed the female of the pair a short ways down the trail; and shortly after, the male went racing down the coast of the lake.  While we saw some turkeys at the trailhead, the only wildlife that we saw on trail were the eagles and some grouses (though we did have turkey, deer, racoon, and maybe a small bear's tracks on the path).

We started worrying that we had somehow missed our connecting trail around 6 that evening.  Clouds were still coming in, and the breeze was still bringing in cold air.  We knew that there were a couple of primitive cabins and campsites (not to mention the mouth of a river) right where the Big Carp Trail runs into the Lake Superior Trail, but it was getting late in the day.  We refilled our water bladders at a stream (with campsite!), set a definitive time to set up camp, and headed up a ridge into this glorious, soft-ground kind of wood.  There were tiny purplish flowers (white with purple stripes on further inspection) carpeting the floor of the forest.  It definitely gave me a second wind.  We climbed higher and higher up on the ridge, until I could just see the lake dip into the woods before another ridge.  That turned out to be the river we had been searching for, and the rest of the day was just cruising through nice hemlocks beside a cascading river until camp.  (There were something like 20 small falls on the river, with one rather spectacular drop right before our site.)

Home sweet home

We got into camp around 7 on Saturday, and as soon as we were in warm, dry layers, I started dinner while Ali gathered stuff for a fire.  My hands were freezing since I dropped my gloves somewhere on the trail, but the camp stove provided enough heat for my fingers to manage the jambalaya and chai cheesecake preparation.  By the time dinner was ready, Ali had a beautiful fire going.  As soon as dinner was over, we took our bear bag to the provided bear post (15' steel rod with a couple rods sticking out from the top).  I'm not sure whether it was just because our bag has a smallish handle, but the thing was nigh impossible to get up on the post (and it would have been even tougher to get our bag down).  Still, we didn't feel like being eaten by bears, so we put our bag on the hooks at the top of the 40lb stick you use to get your food on the post and propped the hooks at the top of the post.  Had an enterprising bear been really interested, we would have been hiking out hungry the next day.  We relaxed by the fire until we were good and warm and jumped  in the tent for the night.  Thankfully, it was at least 10 degrees warmer Saturday night (enough to get us back within our sleeping bags' ratings).

Sunday morning, we were up and on the trail after a fire, some trail mix, and an orange.  We stayed in the same mixed forest that exists further inland from the lake, and generally paralleled the river the first half of the day.  It wasn't long before the sun burned through, and instead of getting snow and rain, we had a day of blue skies, budding birches, and (unopened) wildflowers.  A week or two later, the trip would have been chock-full of flowers, but we'd also be risking black fly season.  The second day was 9 miles (8.2 on trail + 1 getting back to our car), and the going was far easier.  The only downed trees we saw the second day were from lightening and they weren't generally blocking the trail.

River Crossing

The trail also wasn't as swampy, though the "boardwalks" (aka 2x4 bridges) were worse for the wear.

Three miles into our day, we left the side of the river, and started edging our way up the side of a ridge.  There was some climbing, though it tended to be very gradual.  At the end of one ridge, we looped around to another ridge, which, Smokies-style, we had been staring towards (across a valley) for a while.  From there, we had our first almost-strenuous climb of the day, and it was 100% worth it.

At the top of the climb, we scrambled up to a rocky escarpment that hung over a valley between the ridge we just climbed and one further over.  On one side of the valley, you could see a bit of Lake Superior, and the Lake of the Clouds (a really popular Porkies sightseeing destination) sat at the other end of the valley. 

Though the trail did get rocky again, the sights and flowers kept my mind off my feet.  We traipsed along our ridge toward Lake of the Clouds the remainder of our trip, only occasionally dropping back into the woods (the area reminded me a little of Devil's Lake).  The breeze dropped enough for us to have a warm, sunny lunch at one of the outcroppings, and you could both see and hear the two creeks below.

Lake of the Clouds

The trail dumped us at a visitor's center/actual boardwalk that provides access to the Lake of the Clouds and its Escarpment Trail (a path for a future visit), and we had another bit of walking on the side of the road to get back to our trailhead.  The birches were actually starting to unfurl their leaves, what with the warm weather and bright sun.  We dropped our packs, went back in the Lake Superior Trail to (unsuccessfully) look for my gloves, and then headed home.  All in all, an amazing trip.  I'm excited to see the Porkies in the fall (someday) and winter (200" snow = awesome XC skiing).

Lake of the Clouds

Piers Gorge and the Paint River

Pier 3 of Piers Gorge

Two weekends ago, the weather had been warm and springy enough that I decided it was time to drag out my boat.  When I first moved up to Wisconsin, I kayaked a fair amount, but after getting into my grad school project, that tapered off (aside from some rafting/flat water paddling).  And boy, was it time to return.  I tagged along with a couple from Hoofers (the UW Outdoors Club), and we headed up to the base of the Upper Peninsula (U.P.) for a weekend on a pair of rivers. 

The Lovely Piers Gorge Trail

We loaded gear early Saturday morning (a ton of gear), got on the road, and drove so far north I thought we'd hit Norway.  No, really.  There's a place called Norway, MI that we were just shy of.  Bad puns aside, we turned onto this nicely wooded dirt road on MI DNR land and headed up the the parking lot of Piers Gorge (http://www.americanwhitewater.org/content/River_detail_id_2299).  After some delicious summer sausage/jalopeno popper/orange lunch, we got into our gear and started the (not horribly) long trudge upstream.  Piers Gorge is a section of the Menominee River that just straddles the state line.  There are four "piers" (aka rapids or drops) which are labeled starting downstream on the section, and there's a super-useful trail that runs up the ~1 mile area.  It was a pretty overcast and chilly day, but there were several groups of people out hiking for whom we must have supplied plenty of entertainment. 

Misicot Falls

 The two folks I was boating with hiked up to the top of the 3rd pier (aka Misicot Falls), but since it was my first day back in a while, I put in just shy of the falls itself.  Misicot reminded me a bit of Frank Bells on the French Broad - there's a horseshoe drop at the very beginning that you need to hit right.  Instead of two holes and some scattered eddy service downstream, there's a pushy wave train that forces you right into a boulder (Volkswagon Rock).  If you flip at the falls, you pretty much have to tuck and scrape over the boulder to avoid the possibility of injury.  (See why I skipped this one?)  If you're upright, you have a chance to get into a broad eddy on river left, and with the flows we had, you could even go right of Volkswagon.  (See how it's still mildly wimping out?) 

The hike down to my put in

Downstream of Pier 3 is Pier 2 (the Two Sisters).  As the common name might suggest, this rapid is composed of two holes.  The first sister is easily avoidable, but not too meaty looking.  The second sister is a river-wide drop, with a lovely V leading into a hole (and then perhaps another little hole) on river right.  The ferry between the river-left approach to the first sister and the river-right approach to the second sister thankfully wasn't too difficult. 

Second Sister

From Further Back

And since I was avoiding the questionable-looking stuff on the left of second sister, I also had easy access to a wimping-out eddy that avoided the other little curly wave at the very end of the rapid.  The area between Pier 2 and Pier 1 was pretty nice.  There were some little waves and class 1 things, so it was enough to keep it interesting and enough so that I could still relax and goof around.  The major feature of Pier 1 is a pretty wide wave called Terminal Surfer. 

Part of the Pier 1 Wave

It didn't look all that tricky, but I also didn't do more than clip the side of it.  (There were some lovely bean-can surfs upstream that had everything I wanted - especially since it was a cold day and since I was still getting used to everything.) 

Rock Garden/Eddies at Pier 1

Directly downstream of Pier 1 was a calm fishin' pool and the takeout, and since the run was just over a half mile long, we repeated it 4 times.  If nothing else, the portaging will have me in good shape now.

Post river, we drove into one of the nearby small towns and hit a local diner.  A surprisingly delicious salad, incredible italian bread, and a nigh overwhelming chicken fried steak later, I emerged toasty warm and ready to crawl in a tent.  My boating buddies recommended stopping by the laundromat to dry out our wetsuits (ankles got wet getting in/out of the boat), socks, and anything else that needed it.  That turned out to be one of the most genius ideas I've encountered.  There is nothing like having dry gear to put on in the morning (my drypants should get here any day now and resolve this issue).  We were back in Michigan before nightfall, headed into some really twisty and largely unlabeled dirt roads to our camping spot/the put-in for the Paint River for the next day. 

The Campground/Put In

We got to the campsite with some luck, and grabbed some of the massive amounts of downed wood that haven't been scavenged at all this season.  We could have easily packed the huge fire ring 5-6 times with the stuff that we gathered (this fire ring was something like a yards high and a yard/yard and a half in diameter), so even though a lot of our wood was as dry and light as driftwood, we kept an inferno going for hours.  Eventually, the day's hiking and paddling caught up with us, so we popped the tents up and tucked in against the mist.  It was a cold night, and the coyote population was one of the strongest I've ever heard, but I did manage some sleep. 

The next morning, I was out of the tent and having something of a coughing fit (thank you Madison allergies + cold/moist weather) as soon as the sun had warmed my tent sufficiently.  Granola, an apple, and a liter of orange juice got me feeling slightly-human, and from there I got into my gear so that one of my companions could run shuttle with the car.  The shuttle was pretty brief, so we soon got in our boats and hit the water.  The first bit was perfect for an early morning float.

Early on the Paint

The river was calm, and the river was very much like others I've been on in the upper Midwest - dark water, heavily wooded, lots of evergreens, lots of birds of prey, and some very nice rock outcroppings along the shore.  The first couple of rapids we hit were nothing to write home about - a couple of splashes and maybe some rocks to avoid. 

Then we paddled into this area where rock walls shot up on either side of the river, and the gradient got more interesting pretty quickly.  We headed into this class II wave train, and though I saw my companions skirting around a hole, it didn't look terribly tricky.  Until I got to the top of the wave right before it.  The hole wasn't all that bad, but I was lined up on its edge and headed into it sideways.  It tipped me, I braced, and the wave right after it finally managed to get me upside down.  The river was graciously deep, and that was wonderful considering it took me a solid second or two to remember to tuck in the bracingly cold water.  I didn't bother even attempting a roll since I had neither practiced recently, and I also was a bit worried about what might happen to my shoulder.  I pulled out, grabbed my boat, and headed to a nearby rock.  The rapid wasn't long at all, so it wasn't too difficult getting out and getting the boat emptied. 

Saw a bit too much of this

We headed downstream, the rock walls disappeared, and when we saw them coming up again, we decided to scout the next batch of rapids.  This mini-canyon was much longer than the last one, and while the first drops looked simple, the last two looked like trouble to me.  There was one sticky looking drop that required a very tight line followed by another very sticky looking ledge that  offered the option of a gentler drop that would push you into a couple pin rocks.  Having had my swim for the day, I hiked the quarter mile downstream.  The people I was boating with had been on the Paint before, and thought that the rapid I hiked was the last of the day, so we stopped on shore for a bit so that we could find the car (apparently some hike up a ridge). 

First Bit of the Problem

Second Part of the Problem

I hung out by the boats, since I didn't know the area and was feeling much worse for the wear between my allergies-turning-cold and the cold water.  We ended up looking for the car a couple hours, since the actual last rapid of the day was still downstream. 

I stood by this tree for quite a while

Horserace rapids is usually a boulder garden with some tricky places to get your boat stuck, but with the higher flow we had, a lot of the technicality looked washed out.  Unfortunately, by the time we decided to run downstream, I was feeling sluggish and a little dizzy.  Both of those things aren't very good for river-running, so I hiked my boat some more (and this time around a rapid that I could have probably run).  We had planned to do a second run on a different section of the Paint.  Between the late hour (early afternoon, but we had a 4-5h drive home) and my problems, we bailed.  A rather disappointing end to the weekend, but we did go scope out some nice falls on the way home.  And it was definitely worth the bother to get outside and get paddling again.

Actual Entrance to Horserace Rapids

In other exciting news, I went to a roll clinic last weekend at the pool, and with proper instruction, I no longer hurt my shoulder when I try to roll!  Hurrah!!

Anyhow, more from the U.P. will get posted after some backpacking this weekend.