Hiking Category | Jacob Emerick's Blog

Snowy Drive Down the Peshekee Grade

Katie and I woke up at a small Ishpeming motel to find the ground covered in snow. This was more than a little surprising, as it was the second week of May, but the Upper Peninsula likes to misbehave in the late spring. We packed up the car with Logan and headed west on US-41 towards the Peshekee Grade to find the remains of the Iron Range & Huron Bay Railroad.

During the turn of the century, when the Champion-area iron was first discovered, an ambitious plan was made to build a 36 mile-long railroad to Huron Bay, MI. The track would go through the Huron Mountains and involved deep rock cuts, woodland trestles, a huge ore dock, and a dangerously steep northern grade. Because of the grade and the poor quality of work it was torn up, never to be used. $2.2 million was spent with only vague remnants of the grandiose plan.

We turned north on the Huron Bay-Peshekee Grade Road, which follows the railroad's route fairly close (at least the southern portion of it). The first section of the road was paved...

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• Tags:
• logan
• peshekee highlands
• katie
• snowstorm

Eastern Cliff of Clark Creek Valley

Cliffs have quickly become one of my more recent hiking interests. Like mountains, they offer some excellent views of the area, and the sharp relief can make for some interesting routes and rock outcroppings. Good cliffs are hard to find in the Upper Peninsula, thanks to the millennia of erosion gnawing down on the terrain. An unexpected ally can help keep the steep rock face from getting buried by its own sedimentation - flowing water.

A river or a creek flowing at the base of a cliff can wash away any sort of debris that is eroded off of a cliff. I've already seen a number of examples: downstream of the McClure Basin (Dead River), southeastern edge of Mulligan Plains (Mulligan Creek), and the deep gorge near Cliff Lake (Cliff River). Mulligan Plains is the most interesting; with steep slopes stretching along the entire eastern wall, it is only the southern half, with Mulligan Creek flowing at the base, that the cliff's steep rock face is exposed. Today I was hoping to find another exposed cliff face on the...

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• Tags:
• old growth
• bushwhack
• cliffs

Cliffs of Mulligan Plains

The -15ºF air hit me like a brick wall as I stepped outside of my car at Mulligan Plains. Unaccustomed to the cold Upper Peninsula mornings I quickly covered my nose and mouth with a warm scarf before heading down the plowed two-track. The sun's early rays had only just begun showing over the eastern cliffs and I didn't have time to wait for the valley to warm up; there was a long, hard hike before me.

Last summer marked the first time I visited Mulligan Plains without stopping by Mulligan Falls. I had always known that there were other attractions in the narrow valley but had never made a direct effort to see them until then. The main goal of today's trip was to revisit one of these sights: Rocking Chair Lakes. My route wouldn't be an easy one but did a promise some awesome views of the plains. I planned to start near the bridge over lower Mulligan Creek, follow the top of eastern cliffs to Rocking Chair Lakes before looping back to the car, resulting in a 6 mile hike with plenty of vertical distance change.

The first climb of the day was a familiar rock cliff directly southeast of the bridge over Mulligan Creek. Having seen this hill on every one of my visits to Mulligan, I had often thought about climbing it and the potential views it would offer of the...

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• Tags:
• mulligan plains
• bushwhack
• cliffs

Katie and I at Mulligan

It's no secret - I really like Mulligan Plains. This remote section of Marquette County is off the beaten path and contains many hiking adventures, including waterfalls, cliffs, and lakes. So when Katie and I headed up north on a cool fall day before hunting season I made it a point to take her to Mulligan and show her one of my favorite Upper Peninsula destinations.

Even though we slept in at the Ishpeming hotel quite a bit, we managed to make it to the creek before noon. The easiest place to visit at Mulligan are the falls north of Silver Lake Basin, so we took the county roads up along the western edge of the plains and parked at the foot bridge over Mulligan Creek. Faith and I had visited this area a year ago and had taken a convoluted route to the falls that involved crossing the creek over a beaver dam and bushwhacking through some terribly thick pine trees. A four-wheeler had given us this route before, but I didn't want to follow it today.

Katie and I crossed the narrow, shaky bridge over the creek and headed up the narrow two-track. Instead of cutting across the creek, like I did last time, we cut off the trail (which bends northwards) and continued along the side of the creek. The trees weren't thick on this side of the creek, but we did have to go up...

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• Tags:
• mulligan plains
• waterfalls
• katie

The Last Waterfall Hike

My last hike for the waterfall project was on April 29, 2009. For the last two months I had been on a crazy schedule re-visiting all of the waterfalls I found last summer and collecting accurate coordinates with a new GPS unit as well as finding new falls within my radius to add to my site. Since I was leaving for Wisconsin the very next day, I decided to make this adventure legendary and visit Mulligan Falls.

Mulligan Falls is located northeast of the Silver Lake Basin outside of the remote Mulligan Plains. There are no trails or roads within a mile of the lowermost waterfall, which Faith and I had found last October. I had heard rumors of upper waterfalls, so I set an ambitious route that would take me several miles upstream. The area around Mulligan Creek is cluttered, rocky, and swampy, so I planned on the hike taking several hours.

I left early in the morning and made it to Ishpeming around 7:30 in the morning. After stopping for gas and some snacks, I headed north along Teal Lake Road, driving over the Dead River bridge...

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• Tags:
• mulligan plains
• waterfalls
• bushwhack

Epic Hiking Adventures Plan

One of my fondest memories of my years in Houghton, MI is the waterfall project of 2008-2009. Even though it took an actual project to get me to explore the beautiful wilderness of the Upper Peninsula, I really looked forward to my hours of wandering through the woods. After the epic adventures of those months, living in Appleton, WI sometimes seems bland. Now that I have a job and regular hours, it seems like the right time to start a new project and enjoy the wild outdoors of the Upper Peninsula again.

When I started to plan out this new project I had several possibilities. I could go back to waterfalls, expanding the radius west to the Porcupine Mountains and south to Wisconsin border. Another option would be to switch to other geologic features, like mountain peaks or lakes, and create a sister site to my waterfalls one to document my visits. However, I decided that numerous hikes would end up being a hassle, especially since these types of projects involve dozens of sub-mile-long hikes and lots of driving in between. Instead, I decided to limit myself to twenty adventures over the course of a year, with each adventure taking approximately one day to complete. This will allow me to drive up on Friday night, explore on Saturday, then drive back down and rest on Sunday...

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• my site
• adventure

Driving through the Huron Mountains

The roads in the Huron Mountains are the result of years of logging, recreation, and lack of maintenance. As the only maps of this area show all possible routes as random, haphazard wiggles, it takes time to understand which roads are drivable and which are barely fit for walking. Once you understand the main routes, though, much of the area becomes accessible by normal cars.

County Roads 510 and 550 connect Marquette to Big Bay. Big Bay Road, or Country Road 550, is the eastern one and is paved, more direct, and takes you past Sugarloaf, Hogback, Presque Isle, and other popular destinations. If you're looking for a more scenic route, 510 meanders further west but is gravel and require a respectable low speed. It does pass the Yellow Dog Falls and meets up with Blind 35 and the Triple A, although it doesn't actually go to Big Bay - you need to reconnect with 550 to do that. County Road 510 does have a bit of interesting history, as it was part of the planned route for M-35, the highway that Ford stopped. You can read about this on Michigan Highways.

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• Tags:
• huron mountains
• peshekee highlands
• yellow dog plains

Red Road Cliffs

Most visitors to the Keweenaw Peninsula will remember The Cliffs by their name alone. A sudden up thrust of stark rocky cliffs stretching from Mohawk past Phoenix along US-41 with towering trees and large piles of poor rock is hard to miss, and for those adventurous enough, rewarding to climb. A variety of waterfalls and old mine ruins are located near this area, and an easy climb yields views from several hundred feet of rolling hills to the south. Far away to the southwest near Marquette is a similar treasure, much less known to tourists and adventurers: the Cliffs of Red Road.

I first got interested in Red Road during a hiking adventure in mid-July 2009. I was driving from Clark Creek to Mulligan Plains along the Dead River Basin (north of Ishpeming) when I glanced to the north and saw dark, towering cliffs. It was far too wet that morning for a side trek, so I pushed off this adventure to late August.

There's not much historical information regarding the highlands north of the Dead River Basin. It was heavily logged at one time, but...

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• Tags:
• mulligan plains
• bushwhack

Volcanic Plugs of Ottawa Forest

The Ottawa National Forest includes almost one million acres of lakes, rivers, waterfalls, and forested hills of the Western Upper Peninsula. Stretching from the Peshekee Highlands north of Champion to the Michigan-Wisconsin border, the forest contains the Sturgeon River Gorge, McCormick Tract, and Sylvania Wilderness Area. Among its treasures are some unique geologic features to Michigan - three volcanic plugs.

A volcanic plug is the remains of an ancient volcano. Once a volcano becomes dormant and succumbs to the powers of erosion, only the toughest rocks, the hardened volcanic plug, will remain. The size and condition will depend on the type and age of the volcano, and chances are that it will not be in an ideal chimney shape.

The most popular volcanic...

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• Tags:
• mt kallio
• haystack mountain
• silver mountain
• baraga plains
• ottawa national forest

Rocking Chair Lakes

Perched high above Mulligan Plains are the two small Rocking Chair Lakes. A rustic camping site of the Escanaba River State Forest, these lakes offer scenic views and a peaceful escape for the adventurous. Ever since I first visited Mulligan Plains in the October of 2008, I hoped to have the chance to visit the lakes, and I got my chance almost a full year later.

It was a cool, rainy July morning in 2009 when Logan and I headed to Mulligan Plains after a night of camping on the Yellow Dog Plains. While the official route to the lakes involves driving up County Road AKC, I doubted my vehicle could make it more than half a mile on the poorly maintained route. I headed up the unnamed but well-kept county road on the west side of Mulligan Plains and cut over on a convenient driveway near the lakes. As the plains are only two thousand feet wide or so, this route got me close to the start of the trail without damaging my car more than necessary.

I had to double back to find the remains of County Road AKC as...

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• logan
• mulligan plains
• old growth
• campsite