North Country Trail Tag | Jacob Emerick's Blog

Wetmore Hike Part A - Sugarloaf Mountain

Just a few miles north of Marquette is a small collection of interesting locations that I had ignored for far too long. Casting them to the bottom of my list as 'easy tourist' stops, I've driven past the Wetmore area to more appealing remote locations beyond Big Bay numerous times. I rolled into the Sugarloaf Mountain parking lot on a cold, damp morning with an ambitious plan to visit several of these locations in one fell swoop.

Looking north towards Wetmore Beach from Sugarloaf

My first destination was an easy climb up Sugarloaf Mountain. It had been a rough night camping near Diorite, with high winds and freezing temperatures robbing any chance of a restful sleep, and I was thankful for the wide paths leading up the mountain. There are two trails leading up the mountain, an 'easy' and 'difficult' route, and I took the difficult route uphill (I'm pretty sure it's shorter). Both trails were well-trod and easy to follow with stairs built on the steeper sections.

The air was cold and damp with a thin fog clinging to ...

• Tags:
• huron mountains
• north country trail
• shoreline
• wetmore

Lookout Mountain

Emily and I had just finished a long hike along Norwich bluff which left us soaking wet, cold, and tired, but there was still several hours of light left in the day. We drove down the bumpy Victoria road east from Norwich Road to the start of the houses near Victoria Dam, parking at a small gravel turn off by an unoccupied white house. Lookout Mountain was south of here, along a section of the North Country Trail. North of us looked a bit interesting, though, so we took a short detour to the top of a large poor rock pile.

Cloudy view from the poor rock pile

The Victoria area is built around the ruins of a large, profitable copper mine from long ago. A historic town, some old names, and a large dam are all that remain here today, though. I am not sure where the exact shafts are located, though I did hold a small hope that Emily and I would find one today. We stood atop a large poor rock pile that cascaded down the hill below us, clearing a view of the Ontonagon River valley and some rain-shrouded hills in the ...

• Tags:
• north country trail
• ottawa national forest
• trap hills

Norwich Bluff

A cold, misty morning wrapped around Norwich road like a tunnel as I barreled south from Ontonagon. I was meeting a friend at the North Country Trail parking area near FR630 and was running late. It turned out that Emily was also behind schedule, and we met at the small parking area at the same time. We both donned extra clothes in hopes of keeping dry through the slow drizzle before jumping into my car and driving up Victoria Road.

Misty two-track on the way to Gleason Falls

The Norwich Bluff hike had been on my radar for several years. Most of my hikes tend to be circular - I dislike backtracking and usually have access to a single vehicle. This adventure was a bit too linear to make a good circle. Starting at Gleason Creek, we were going to follow the the edge of a south-facing bluff over hilly terrain to Norwich Road. If there was a single vehicle, I'd have to either walk along Victoria Road for three miles or retrace my hike over the rough terrain. Thanks to Emily and her truck parked on Norwich, we could cut out several extra miles of ...

• Tags:
• cliffs
• north country trail
• ottawa national forest
• trap hills
• waterfalls

Northwest of the Silver Lake Basin

Finding my way back to the small campsite on the Dead River, where it enters the Silver Lake Basin, was more difficult than I had planned. A maze of logging roads, mostly impassable in my small car, wound their way from the Peshekee Grade (north of Champion, MI) past Wolf Lake Road and over to Wildcat Canyon. While this area is within Kennecott's planned 'Wilderness Road', a proposed route from Republic up to their mine on the Yellow Dog Plains, it currently has few good roads and is all but impossible to navigate. After an hour of logging roads, I finally reached the campsite and parked near the firepit, more than ready for my hike.

Firepit at campsite along the upper Dead River

Earlier in the year I had embarked on an overly ambitious route around the entire Silver Lake Basin. There are several really interesting locations along the northwest shoreline that I skipped during that hike out of sheer exhaustion. Today I was going to revist these spots. While I only had a few hours of daylight left, my planned hike included ...

• Tags:
• north country trail
• old growth
• silver lake basin
• waterfalls

Cascade Falls

The parking lot for Cascade Falls was surrounded by a warm green mugginess after the morning's rain. It was easy enough to find, just off a well-maintained forest service road, mere minutes from Norwich Road. I stepped out and quickly put on a jean jacket and baseball cap in anticipation for the black flies that love this area and weather. A well defined and blazed footpath led away from my car into the deep green woods.

Early fork on the Trail to Cascade Falls

I didn't do much research on this hike beforehand and was surprised to find a fork in the path after a few minutes of walking. A sign for 'Bluff Trail' pointed to the left. Unable to turn around from a promising name like that I headed left. The climb was short and steep and I soon found myself on top of a rocky outcropping with views to the south and west.

Trap Hills to the West

Green Ottawa Forest stretching to the South

The views of the Trap Hills to the west were pretty amazing. I've heard good things about this rocky area of the ...

• Tags:
• north country trail
• ottawa national forest
• trap hills
• waterfalls

McCormick Tract

Located north of Champion, the McCormick Tract is a 16,850 acre wilderness in the Peshekee Grade. Originally owned by Cyrus McCormick, inventor of the reaping machine, the land was donated to the USDA Forest Service in 1967 and is now available for the public to enjoy. In July of 2009 I visited the south west corner of the tract along a historic route to the old camp on White Deer Lake.

Starting from the Peshekee Grade, which follows the old Iron Range & Huron Bay railroad grade from Champion up to Mount Arvon, I parked at the access area with some fellow hikers. The small parking spot had a restroom as well as some informational signs and maps. There is no trail markers allowed on the McCormick Tract, so it was nice to get a short refresher from these maps. After crossing the bridge over the Peshekee River, we followed a well-worn path northeast towards White Deer Lake.

Trailhead sign for the trail

While the trail was easy to follow, the rain-covered, thick undergrowth soon had us soaked. For the first mile or two, ...

• Tags:
• faith
• logan
• north country trail
• old growth
• ottawa national forest
• peshekee highlands
• ruins

Lake Superior Idea

One of my favorite parts of the waterfall project of summer 2008 was the planning process. Not only did I enjoy scouring topographic maps and satellite photos to find the quickest, safest, or most scenic route, but I also enjoyed achieving different goals; visiting every waterfall along Silver River or within the Keweenaw. Once the project was complete, I started looking for a new set of hiking adventures that would rival my experience.

Bryant Weathers, a student web developer at Michigan Tech, blogged about a friend of his who planned to spend a summer hiking around Lake Michigan (blog link). Unfortunately, he stopped a few hundred miles in, but this idea inspired a new project for myself - hike around Lake Superior.

This is not an adventure that I plan on tackling soon. With an estimated distinct of eighteen hundred miles, it will take me at least three months to walk around the lake. It'd be nice to have it done within the next six years, or before I'm thirty. Also, there are ...

• Tags:
• adventure
• north country trail
• superior hike