Estivant Pines
The roads south of Copper Harbor were eerily familiar in the early morning light. There was a time, some years past, when I had drove the Mandan Loop in a failed attempt on High Rock Point. When I pulled off the Burma Road into the parking lot for Estivant Pines I wondered if I had passed by this spot before, too frustrated by the tough roads to stop for a quick hike. At least I was here now.
Sign for the sanctuary
Estivant Pines is a sanctuary for untouched old growth white pines. Thanks partly to the inaccessibility of this area and mostly to some weird legality issues, this patch of forest is an ancient reminder of what the Upper Peninsula once looked like. Somewhat. Not all of the forests up here were white pines and not all of it is as scraggly and nasty as Keweenaw undergrowth. I like to pretend that the nurtured land of the Huron Mountain Club are closer to past stands, clear needle-soft ground under legions of homogenous giant pines. The truth is probably somewhere in between.
There is one thing that Estivant has over the trees of the Huron Mountains - these white pines are old. A sign near the parking lot reminded me of this. Some of the stands are over six hundred years old, dating far beyond the more recent pillage of the UP's natural resources. After reading the rest of the informational stand I trotted quickly down the trail, looking forward to seeing these ancient giants.
The start of the trail through the pines
Long, easy boardwalks over wet sections
The trails were wide with long plank boardwalks reaching across muddy spots. The ground wasn't too rugged near the path, a few rock outcroppings here and there. I was expecting a tougher area so close to the center of the Keweenaw Ridge. After maybe ten minutes of easy walking I bumped into the first giant pine, leaning awkardly off a weird slope of land. And then more showed up.
Huge leaning pine
Looking up at the massive trees
Pine towering against the sky
They were quite big, wide around and reaching tall to the sky, though not redwood-scale by any stretch. I have bumped into a few huge trees in the south, up on the Peshekee and in the Hurons, that approached this size seen here. But not this many. First a few, than a dozen and more popped up within sight around the trail. Giant white pines were scattered all through the forest.
It wasn't all white pine. The majority of the forest was young deciduous. Old growth was merely the sprinkling on top. This was a huge change compared to the nurtured forests of the Club, where anything that wasn't a pine or cedar would be cut down like weeds in a garden. I wondered if this land was actually logged in the past, if only the best trees were cut down and the ones that remained were undesired, and that this past clearing had allowed younger trees to show up.
Rugged footpath against the hill
The trail split and I did too, heading southwest along the Cathedral Grove loop. It changed quickly, shrinking from a wide gravel way to a narrow footpath that wound along steep slopes. Now this was getting fun. It was still easy to keep on, just a bit more rugged with random rocks and trunks poking out from the forest.
There are two main loops that form a rough 'eight' in the sanctuary. The small western one is Cathedral Grove and the larger eastern Memorial Grove. The eastern one is newer, I think, a recent addition through some impressive stands. Each loop is roughly a mile. My planned route included both loops and would give me a nice route along through much of the park.
Gently winding footpath ahead
Scattering of seeds
Hollowed out trunk
Twin trees
After dropping a bit in elevation a few more white pines showed up, including an interesting hollowed-out trunk sitting right in the center of the trail. What really caught my eye, though, was a sign for the Fallen Giant Trail. The sign warned of tough hiking. This sounded cool. I had no idea how far the Fallen Giant was, though, and I was trying to keep to a tight schedule today. I sadly passed it by.
A slightly tempting side trail
Later, armed with the power of the internet, I did some more research into this side trek. The white pine known as the Fallen Giant fell in the 1980s and sits just south of the Montreal River. As the bird flies it sits about a third of a mile away from the Estivant trails, but it's hard to say how windy the trail could get through the swamp and over the river. There is a wide swamp in the way that could lead to either wet slogging or a long bypass. Honestly, it looks like it'd be much easier to visit the site by coming in from the Mandan Loop.
The cathedral showed up just past the side trail, a half-dozen giant trees springing up on the trail's edge. They were impressive, standing next to these huge trunks. I spent a little time peering up at the scattered branches far overhead, twisted by wind and time.
Grove of giant pines
Crazy branches aganst the blue sky
It felt like much more than a single mile had passed by the time the start of the Memorial Loop showed up. With a brief check to make sure I was still on time I headed east up a slowly climbing grade. Between climbing out of the little dip from the last trail and heading into the rising sun it felt like a good ten degree difference on this leg.
The path climbed and then dipped without passing that many new trees. In fact, it was hard to make out any white pines through the thick foliage that now surrounded me. Lush green undergrowth crowded around, dew-wet and clingy.
Sun filtering down over the memorial trail
Two-loop sign
Without any large trees to distract me I walked quickly, making it to the halfway point of the loop in short order. I was beginning to lose hope on seeing anything when a small clearing opened up in front of me. A short distance beyond was a huge tree with thick roots reaching out across the trail. The size and proximity of this guy was impressive after so many younger, leafy things.
Gnarly roots spilling out over the trail
The loop soon closed and I was back on the center path, on my way back to the parking lot. Along the way I passed a tiny little cairn, a small rock-man that I had totally missed on the way in. I wished the little rock-man farewell as I trotted back to my car, eager to head out towards Lac la Belle and a much more rugged adventure.
Farewell cairn
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dcclark
Sep 5, '14
Nice hike. Some parts of Estivant were logged in the past -- Estivant as a whole isn't "untouched", but certain stands were untouched. The central trail is actually an old road to some of the mining sites nearby. There's the remains of an old diamond drill camp down the Fallen Giant trail a little way.For a good read, check out "Sawmill to Sanctuary: The Estivant Pines story" by Charlie Eshbach. He was one of the people central to preserving Estivant in the 1970's. It also has some good hints about off-trail things to see. One of my favorite days, ever, was spent hiking and climbing off-trail near Estivant. The view from some of those cliffs over the interior of the Keweenaw was absolutely stunning.
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Jacob Emerick
Sep 7, '14
s - thanks for the reminder. That was one of the more surprising things in Fred's books so far, the discussion on just how marginal the life was up here before settlers and miners showed up. Only a few tribes living off of fish and berries, mostly skipping along the shoreline. There was that other thing going on, the ancient miners, but we have no idea how they managed to live up here. So yeah, I guess without the loggers and the miners there would be no towns or roads or anything - who knows, maybe the UP would have been given back to Canada by now!
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Jacob Emerick
Sep 7, '14
Dave - dang, I really wish I would have read that book before hiking! Only stuck to the trails, making a cursory loop of the place. If I had known there were views out there would have spent a lot more time. There was one spot, on the Memorial, that I think I caught a glimpse of a ridge to the south (either Bare Bluff or the one mound by Smiths Fisheries), but couldn't make it out through the greenery.So there's an old drill down that trail? Interesting. Have you tried going the full thing, hiking all the way down to the Fallen Giant? I haven't been able to find anything solid on past visits.
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dcclark
Sep 8, '14
Well... "views" by my standards, you understand. :) But I really enjoyed them. One of the things I value most in a good hike is a feeling of being completely disconnected from civilization. Estivant off-trail delivers that 100%.There isn't an old drill, but there are the remains of a diamond drill camp. A very collapsed shack, some barrels, a few bolts and such in a tiny clearing. There are two old mine sites on the property: The Montreal Exploration is along the Memorial Grove trail with some barbed wire and depressions. The Hanover area is off trail to the west of the Chapel loop, with very extensive trenching and some diamond drill holes. There are also a lot of ancient copper pits up in the cliffs west of the Chapel Loop.I never made it all the way to the Fallen Giant. The swamp looks absolutely awful. Most of the visits I've heard of took place in the winter, when you can ski or snowshoe to it.
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Jacob Emerick
Sep 23, '14
Thanks for the extra info, Dave. If (when) I make it back up this far north I'll have to play around a little more here. Between the extra views, Fallen Giant, and Lost Lake to the east there's more than enough to fill up a good day of exploring.
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Jacob Emerick
Sep 23, '14
Shane, that's not a bad idea! Even if you had to comb the area between Mandan and Montreal a bit, several hundred yards difference beats the (almost a mile) walk from Estivants parking, swamp, and river crossing. Especially if you got the coordinates of the Giant (which I don't have) you could turn that tough hike into a quick forty minute bushwhack.
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