Bushwhack Tag | Jacob Emerick's Blog

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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• 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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• mulligan plains
• bushwhack
• cliffs

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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• mulligan plains
• waterfalls
• bushwhack

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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• mulligan plains
• bushwhack

Superior Mountain Hike

Superior Mountain is a lumpy set of peaks located west of the Mouth of Huron river. Rising from the edge of Lake Superior and sandwiched between Little Huron River and Mount Benison, the mountain has many rocky outcroppings with excellent views of the surrounding area, some over 1400 feet of elevation. This rugged peak offers some of the best climbing and hiking options of the western Huron Mountain range outside of Huron Mountain Club boundaries.

Starting on the western end of Little Huron River, a number of rocky outcroppings rise before the large, forested Mount Benison. These peaks do not have official names, but the majority of them are grouped together as Superior Mountain (or Clause Mountain) with the two southern ones as Tick Mountain. While I had visited two tough rocky mounds of Superior Mountain during my Tick Mountain climb, I never attempted climbing the bulk of the peaks. The sheer, south-facing cliffs blocked my usual route from Little Huron Road, and I thought I would have to devote a good portion of...

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• logan
• huron mountains
• bushwhack

Tick Mountain Hike

Called Tick Mountain by Geocachers, there was a rocky peak on the outskirts of the Huron Mountains that had steadily become a thorn in my side. I first tried to climb the peak with a friend during the winter and was forced to turn around within site of the final climb because of time constraints. My second attempt ended abruptly when both I and my hiking partner fell through the ice of Little Huron River in the early spring. This was my third attempt, in the midst of summer, and I was determined to make the climb.

Tick Mountain rises from the banks of Little Huron River like a long spine of rocky peaks. There are four separate rocky outcroppings, with the eastern one being the tallest at 1342'. This point is separated from the rest of the spine by a 300' dip, which is the challenge I turned away from during my first climb. The first two outcroppings have limited western views of Bald Mountain and an unnamed peak nearby, but the second two have expansive views in all directions. This makes the mountain an ideal...

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• logan
• huron mountains
• bushwhack

A Keweenaw Hike

On several waterfall hikes in the Keweenaw during the summer of 2008 attempting to find Copper Falls, I became confused by different directions and descriptions of the drops along the creek. Owl Creek starts from a swampy lake on the top of Brockway ridge, heading downhill to the north past an old mine shaft (now covered) and mill before meandering through a swamp on the edge of Lake Superior. With a drop of six hundred feet, there are many unnamed drops along this creek, and it is difficult to differentiate the real waterfall.

In hopes to find this creek with actual water flowing down it, as it is usually close to bone dry during the summer, I headed north to the Keweenaw in the spring after a few very warm days. Also, I decided to add a few miles onto the trip by making Jacob's Creek to my route. Logan and I parked at Jacob's Falls, near the Jam Pot along M-26, and headed up a nice trail on the east side of the creek. The trail was very defined and used for the first half mile, where the lower set of waterfalls are, but as we gained elevation along the steadily...

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• logan
• waterfalls
• keweenaw
• bushwhack
• brockway
• ruins