This year, I decided to plan a hiking trip to Isle Royale National Park in the U.P. Early Sunday morning, on June 26th, I started the loooooong drive north. I hadn’t been to the U.P. since I was a kid and I have never driven that far by myself before, so I wasn’t really sure what I had gotten myself into. After 10 hours of driving past trees, snowmobile trails, small towns and brand new casinos, I finally made it to Houghton, Michigan. I had never been to Houghton before, and I have to say it was way prettier then I ever thought. It’s very hilly and lays right on a channel. It almost reminds me of Seattle, except way smaller. My plan was to stay the night in Houghton at the Super 8 and then leave for the island the next morning.
Once I got settled in at my hotel, I found my way to the nearest supermarket called Econo foods and bought some goodies for the night. I didn’t sleep well that night because I was so nervous about making sure that I would wake up in time to leave and get to the airport. The next morning, I woke up, packed my gear, and drove over to the Houghton Memorial Airport where I would be boarding the seaplane that would take me over to the island. Once I got there, I waited in the small waiting area until two other people showed up to board the plane with me. Kevin and Christine were a couple from Georgia who were back home in Michigan for the 4th of July weekend and they decided to spend a week of their time over at the island hiking, camping and fishing. Around 9:30, our pilot, Dave, showed up to escort us out to the tarmac where we would be getting on the seaplane. I had never been on a plane before that only seated 4 people!
Before we boarded, Pilot Dave handed each of us these inflatable lifejackets to where, the kind where you pull the emergency cord and they instantly blow up. I joking said that they remind me of a scene from Tommy Boy where Chris Farley is wearing one and pulls the cord and almost chokes because it was too small for him. He just says, “Ha, that’s funny” and doesn’t even crack a smile. That’s when I realized that Pilot Dave was a no non-sense non-joking kind of guy.
This is what I would have looked like if I accidently pulled the emergency cord on my flotation device.
After that awkward moment, Pilot Dave loaded our gear on and then Christine and I took the back two seats and Dave and Kevin took the front seats. Flying to the island only took about 30 minutes, as opposed to a 6 hour boat ride from Houghton. We landed smoothly on the islands west side harbor called Windigo.
After unloading my pack, a girl met me as I walked towards the main check-in point. She pointed me over to an area where one of the rangers was giving an orientation to all people arriving to the island. After our brief orientation, I made my way to the ranger station where I needed to sign in and give the rangers a basic idea of where I was planning on hiking and camping for the night. Ironically, as I signed in at the ranger station, I noticed a family from Wisconsin with the last name of Dickinson had just signed in right before I had. After I signed in and got my park pass, I headed over to the little camp store to buy some white gas for my stove. I wasn’t allowed to fly with fuel, so I had to purchase it once I arrived to the island. After filling my two little fuel tanks, I spent a few moments eating a powerbar and putting the rain cover over my pack, since it had just started to sprinkle. Around noon, I was finally ready to hit the trails!
Me ready for my big hike....no make-up and it's raining....that's my excuse for looking so bad!
My plan to get across the island was to take this trail called the Greenstone Ridge Trail which basically runs along the center of the island along it’s ‘mountain’ ridge. The elevation there isn’t that much, so starting off along the trail there wasn’t too much of an incline. The first section of the trail was 5.9 miles and it was a nice, flat, well-traveled trail without many obstacles. I couldn’t have been on the trail more then 20 minutes when I encountered this group of young girls and a guy, maybe in his 20’s, leading them West towards Windigo. They looked worn out and dirty and some of them were actually laying in the trail. They asked how far they were from Windigo and I told them they were really close and just had about 20 minutes more of walking. One of the girls told me they had been hiking out there for 6 days and they were dying to be done. I told them good luck and stepped over the ‘dying’ girls who were laying in the trail and being pulled at to get up by the other girls. Other then that, the only obstacle I really had was this large family of about 6 people whom I kept leapfrogging with along the trail.
Trail head marker. This is the only sign you will see that indicates that you are in the right location.
At the ‘Island Mine’ trail head, this family was resting and having a snack. I said hi and passed them to continue the next leg of the trail which was 4.8 miles long. I thought I walked fairly fast, but within about 10 minutes I could hear this group loudly talking and quickly approaching behind me. Because I was obviously walking slower then they were, I stepped off the path and let the family walk past me. Once they were ahead of me, I continued forward. About 30 minutes down the trail, there was the same family sitting and taking a rest again. At this point I was getting a little annoyed and really hoped that I wouldn’t be leapfrogging them for the next 2 days as I crossed the island. As I passed them, I said hi again and this time I asked them if they were the Dickinson family from Wisconsin. The dad piped up and said, “No, we’re the (forget name) family from Iowa”. I told them the reason I asked and said thanks and went on my way. Again, after about 15 minutes of hiking they were noisily coming up behind me and I pulled over to let them pass. Luckily, the dad asked if I was heading to Lake Desor to camp for the night. I said that I was going to try and get as far as I could before dark. At that point, in my mind I was thinking that I was totally going to get passed Lake Desor so I didn’t have to keep running into them! Eventually, as I’m going along the ridge I finally see this little inland lake called Lake Desor where there is designated camping.
It was about 5pm at this time and the rain was really starting to come down at this point. I took a chance and thought that I had nothing else to do but walk, so I was going to keep going and make it to the next camping location which was a mere 7.8 miles away. Along this next section of trail, things were going pretty good other then there were no other hikers that I ran into. I felt pretty warm, so I just let the rain soak me and I trudged thru the woods. After 3.5 miles I finally reached this look out tower called Ishpeming Point. It was still early, but because it was raining harder and harder the sky was getting darker quicker then I had thought. I did a map check and saw that I only had to go 3.8 miles more before I would be making the .5 miles decent to Lake Hatchet. I debated as to whether or not I should try and just camp at this look out tower, even though camping was not allowed there. But, I kept moving forward because in my mind I was ‘almost’ there. As I’m hiking further into the island, the trail is getting narrower, it’s raining harder, I’m getting fatigued, it’s getting darker, fog if rolling in and I’m realizing that I’m very alone out here.
Yeah, that's the width of the trail for most of my hike. You can see how easily it would be to lose this.
Sometimes the trail isn't a trail and you have to follow piles of rocks like this (stock picture from google)
Because I’m hiking along the ridge of the island, sometimes the trail goes over these little outcroppings of rock. Going over these areas of rock are a little bit confusing because sometimes you follow them like a trail, but sometimes you need to pay attention and look for little piles of rocks that direct you in the right direction to walk over these outcroppings.
With that being said, I get to one of these outcroppings and I just start walking over it because it looks like the trail. But, after a few minutes of walking I realize that the outcropping ends and there’s no trail. Ok, don’t panic, just turn around go back where you came from. So, I walk back, but then I can’t find where the trail ended when I started walking over the rocks. I walk back and forth looking for the trail to no avail. As I’m starting to get panicky, my stupid Nalgene bottle slips from my hand, hits the ground, pops open and all my precious water starts pouring out. I had two full bottles of water, but the other bottle I had drank, so this was the last of my water. I quickly pick up the bottle to save what little water didn’t pour out. My mind is starting to race as to what I should do. Since no one is with me to slap my face and tell me to get a hold of myself, I decide to take a breather and regroup my brain. I take off my pack, and even though I’m already soaked, I put on my rain coat because I’m starting to get cold now. I take a few sips of water and I take a few deep breathes. Ok, go back to where you came from and find where the trail ended at the rocks. After what seemed like forever, I found the trail! Praise Jesus! In order to get my bearings, I follow the trail back west for several steps and then turn around so I can get a fresh look as to where I need to go. I finally see that the trail followed around the rocks instead of going over the rocks like I had initially done. I was so fricken happy, I actually started to run! Finally, around 8pm I made it to the Hatchet Lake trail head. I almost cried I was so relieved! The .5 miles to the lake and campground were by far the hardest .5 miles I had to go. Going to the lake was downhill from the ridge and it was like walking down steep steps with 35 lbs on your back for ½ mile. I wasn’t looking forward to having to go up this trail the next day. Finally, I see the small sign and various trails which lead to each one of the campsites.
I hurried to the first one I came to. The site was just a flat, cleared out area where I could throw down my tent. It was still pouring rain and I was freezing, so I dumped my pack, tore off the rain cover, pulled out my tent and assembled it as fast as I could. I didn’t bother hanging my food or anything, I just grabbed my whole backpack and threw it inside my tent and crawled in. Once inside, I pulled out my mat and my sleeping bag. I was freezing and soaked, so I stripped down to my underwear and crawled inside my bag to warm up. After warming up a little and dozing on and off, I pulled out some thin rope from my bag and strung it across the inside of my tent to fashion a sort of clothes line so I could attempt to try and dry out some of my clothes. After that, I just snuggled back in my bag and slept. After the first day, I had walked 19.1 miles.
Finally, around 8am the next day the rain finally stopped and the sun came out. I didn’t get out of my tent until around 10am though. When I finally got up, I started pulling everything out of my tent and laying it in the sun to try and dry. Luckily, I still had another shirt, a pair of sock, my Tevas, and a work out type of bathing suit that was still dry. I changed into the bathing suit and walked down to the lake to get water to filter. The lake was small and peaceful and I think I was the only person in the area. Except for the loons screaming at me, it was very quite and pretty. After filtering water into my 2 Nalgene bottles, I shook out everything as best as I could, packed it back up, ate a powerbar and started on my way. Since my tennis shoes were soaked, I decided to wear my Tevas for the day’s hiking. I also (wrongly) figured that since there were areas on the trails that were wet and muddy, that I would just wear my Tevas with no socks so that my only other pair of socks wouldn’t get wet. As I started out, walking up the .5 mile trail to get back on the Green Ridge Trail took me about 20 minutes and I had to stop several times to rest. Once I got to the trail head, I started out on my longest section of the Green Ridge trail which was 7.2 miles long. That was hard, not because it was 7.2 miles, but because I didn’t see another person along that whole section of trail and because it’s nerve wracking to be on a trail that long without seeing a trail marker to know that you are actually following the right trail and not lost in the woods.
This is my only evidence that moose exist on the island...
View from the Green Ridge Trail
Around 3pm, I finally hit the West Chicken Bone trail head. I took a minute to take off my pack, look at my map and eat a powerbar. After a few minutes, a dad and his son came up to the trail head from the direction I was heading. Finally, human contact! We chatted briefly about where we were heading. I said I was planning on making it to Daisy Farm to camp for the night. The dad looked at my like I was crazy, looked at his watch and said, “We left Daisy Farm this morning at 9am and it’s 3pm now”. I wasn’t worried because I knew that I was walking like a maniac, so I knew I would be able to get there before dark. Then the dad says, “you need to check your feet”. I looked down and saw that both my heals were bleeding and I had blood all over my shoes and my ankles. Oops, so much for walking without socks on. At the time, I actually didn’t feel anything, so I just blew it off and told the dad thanks and I’ll worry about it later. I’m pretty sure he thought I probably died somewhere in the woods. After my encounter with them, I continued eastward along the Green Ridge Trail for 1.5 miles until the next trail head. Once here, I just kept going for another 4.2 miles until I would reach the Daisy Farm Trail. Along this 4.2 miles stretch, I encountered a few groups of people hiking westward. It was nice to at least have people to say hi to. Around 5pm or so, I finally hit the Daisy Farm Trail head. From this point, it was just a mere 1.9 miles to the south coast of the island where I would camp for the night. After about another hour, I could hear lots of people talking and I popped out of the woods into the Daisy Farm campground. Since this campground was on the coast, it was more established then the other campground I had stayed at. There was a pavilion with picnic tables, docks for boats and some of the campsite had these lean-to cabins which were screened in with a door! The ‘cabins’ are first come, first serve, so I walked around a little and found one that was empty.
I dumped my pack and started to take out my still-damp clothes to dry. Once I got things set-up in my little cabin, I took my filter and Nalgene bottles down to the dock to get some water. I scooped up some water in this large plastic bag to let the sediment settle before I started to filter it. As I waited, I walked into the freezing lake Superior water to cool off my feet. The water stung my feet and I had no idea how bad they really were at this point. After numbing my feet for a few minutes, I walked out to the end of the docks where a couple of girls were hanging out. I asked them if they could take a picture of me, since I wasn’t getting many of myself hiking. They did and we started to chat for a minute. They seemed really impressed that I was hiking the island by myself! I found out that they were with a group of other college age kids at the campground who were from Minnesota. They were employed by some DNR group whose job it is to go on hiking trails in national parks and help clear them out for hikers. They actually hike into the island with chainsaws to cut trees which have blocked areas of the trail. After thanking them for taking my picture, I went back to the little water station I had set up to filter some water. Where I was sitting, there were 3 guys sitting there talking and filtering water too. After a few moments, I started talking with them. These 3 guys were here at the island doing research for a couple of different universities on a certain kind of butterfly. They were only at the island for a couple of days to gather some butterfly specimens, then they were heading back to their respective colleges where they would write papers on their findings. As I finished up filling my water bottles, one of the guys asks me how I finished before they did. I had to school them in the fine art of water filtering. Lol. I told them that their filter was probably clogged because they were filtering directly from the lake, instead of using a bag to let sediment settle out of the water first. I told the one guy to just use my bag to filter the rest of his bottle. After he did that, then I told them that they should probably sand the filter to clean it up at little. I pulled this little scrub pad out of my filter bag and told them to use it to sand their filter. Like a typical boy, the guy takes the pad and just scrubs the hell out of his filter. In my head I was screaming, “NOOOO, scrub gently or you’ll ruin the filter!!”, but it was too late and I didn’t have the heart to tell them they were doing it wrong again. Afterwards, they thanked me and I hobbled back to my cabin to eat and go to bed. I was so tired, I just ate another powerbar and crawled into my sleeping bag. Day two I walked 15.3 miles.  |
| The Looney Loons of Isle Royale |
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| Rock Harbor |
My room at the Rock Harbor lodge and the view from my room
The next day was Friday and it was also the day I had to depart the island. The plane wasn’t talking off until 3pm, but I needed to check out by 10am. When I went to the office to check out, one of the workers there told me that the plane might be early in order to avoid the weather coming over the lake. I asked what time, and they just said to “hang around the area and listen for the plane”. That made me a little nervous, but I told her that I wasn’t moving and that I would be sitting in the café next door if they hear any news about the plane. Finally, around 2pm, I decided to get my stuff and wander down to the docks where the plane was planning on picking me up. When I got there, there were 2 other people waiting for the plane as well. Both of them were workers on the island and they were leaving the island for the holiday weekend. They had been told that the plane ‘might’ be really early, so they had both been waiting at the docks for several hours. I was so glad that the plane had not come that early and I was glad that I had waited in the café because the temperature had dropped and it was freezing outside. Around 2:30, as we sat there expecting the plane to show up any minute, a ranger approached us and told us that the plane had canceled all the flights for the day. Our only choice was to either stay another day and see if we could get off the island on Saturday, or we had 5 minutes to get on the last boat leaving for the mainland. Even though my feet were killing me and I could barely walk, I ran as fast as I could over to the other docks where the boat was getting ready to depart. Once I got there, the captain gruffly asks me if I have 50 bucks to ride the boat. I thought he was kidding and I told him my flight on the plane had been canceled. He was kind of a jerk because he berated me a little by saying that the boat and the plane are run by separate companies and that I have to pay just like everyone else. Thankfully, the rangers there were nice enough to tell me that the plane company would probably refund my money and they would take care of telling them that I was on the boat and not going to ride the plane the next day. The captain said that I could pay for my ticket once we reached the mainland in 3 hours. The only bad thing was that the boat was landing in Copper Harbor, which was about an hours drive north of Houghton, where the airport was. I asked the ranger how was I supposed to get to Houghton, and he just told me that a lot of people just ‘get a ride’ and to just make friends with someone on the boat. So, you’re telling me to hitchhike? He laughed, but didn’t say yes or no. Just as I was about to get on the boat, one of the workers that was supposed to ride the plane with me came running up. She had decided to take the boat back too, instead of wait another day to get off the island. Luckily, she also had to get to Houghton somehow. I felt a little better knowing that I had someone else to hitchhike with! Once on the boat, we found a place to sit and we started talking. Her name was Lauren and she grew up in Grand Haven. She actually is a science teacher for the GR public schools, but was up at Isle Royale for a few weeks doing a project for the DNR for her master’s degree towards science teaching. She was supposed to meet her boyfriend at a campground just north of Houghton for the 4th of July weekend and her car was waiting for her with all of her stuff in it in Houghton too. The other problem was that there is absolutely zero cell service on the island, so we had no way of telling anyone our change of plans. Then, I realized that the butterfly guys I had met the other day were somewhere on this boat heading back to the mainland too. So, I found them and explained our situation, hoping to scam a ride for us with them. Unfortunately, they were staying in Copper Harbor for the night and were not heading through Houghton until the next day. Luckily, somewhere over Lake Superior, Lauren got cell service. She quickly texted and called her boyfriend to give him the update. He said that he would drive up to Copper Harbor, pick both of us up, drive back to Houghton, drop me off at the airport and then drop her off at her truck and they would both drive back to the campground. Thank God we had a ride!! Finally, after 3 hours of being on the boat, we docked at Copper Harbor. When both of us got off the boat, we both exclaimed at the same time, “OMG it’s so hot here!”. On the island that day, the temperature had to have dipped well into the lower 50’s, but on the mainland it was about 90 degrees. Funny how that dern Lake can make such a difference in temperature. Anyways, once we got off the boat and both paid our fees, we waited a few minutes for Lauren’s boyfriend Jay to show up. We didn’t have to wait long and he was there to pick us up and take us back to Houghton. After about an hour of driving, we finally reached the airport. I thanked them both for being so kind and driving me to my car. Once they left, I was so excited to get out of my grubby clothes and get into the fresh, clean clothes that I had stashed in my car that were waiting for me. By this time, it was around 8:30pm, 5 hours later then when I told Gary I would be hitting the mainland. I immediately called him to let him know that I didn’t get eaten by wolves. He had already known where I was because he had called the flight company to see where the heck I was when I didn’t call around 4pm when I should have been on the mainland. The rangers on the islands had come through and had notified the flight company of where I was and they had relayed that information to Gary. Once I was all organized, I took off from the airport and started my long 10 hour journey home. Somewhere around midnight I crossed the Mackinaw Bridge. It was really cool driving over it at night and all lit up. That evening I was able to make it all the way to Gaylord before I had to pull into a rest stop to sleep for a little while. I didn’t get much rest, but after about 3 hours I started driving home again. Late morning, I called Gary to let him know that I had made it back to Holland and I needed him to pick me up from dropping off my rental car. When he arrived and saw my bruised covered body and my bloody, blistery, oozing feet he just shook his head. For some reason, he was not at all surprised by my condition. After he dropped me off at home I dumped my stuff and crashed. It was a hard trip, but I’m glad I did it. After this, it will be a while before I decide to go hiking again!
