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.