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Forbidden land stretched out in front of me. I was within a mile of the Huron Mountain Club property, standing on an unnamed outcropping southeast of Burnt Mountain, looking north along the eastern guardians of Mountain Lake. For years I had been trying to see this huge lake within the Club's…
It was late afternoon as I walked away from my parked car on the Northwestern Road. The air was cool and damp from the morning's rains, keeping the normally pervasive black flies and mosquitoes to a background detail. Several logging roads branch north from the Northwestern Road here before it…
A bent blue gate marked the beginning of my afternoon hike. I had just drove down the confusing Holyoke Trail, northwest of Marquette, and was itching to get started. Stepping around the game I set off north along the two-track, wondering what this hike would have in store for me. I knew there were…
Sometimes I miss the good spots on a hike. I often head into an area with little more than a topographic map and a rudimentary understanding of the area. Depending on how the hike goes my rough plans can change rapidly to avoid rough sections or check out an interesting side destination, but many…
I was only a few months into my waterfall adventures in the summer of 2008 when I learned some distressing news. A dear friend of mine was leaving Houghton for the summer, someone I had hoped to spend a lot of time with and who meant a lot to me. At that time I was searching for some waterfalls in…
It was so, so early in the morning. I watched sunrise try to seep over Ives Hill in the east but got impatient and headed downhill before the rays touched my chilly outcropping. There was a long hike in front of me and I didn't want to waste time, especially on a lazy sun. Most of this hike would be…
As the Panorama Hills head east to the lake, away from the lofty Yellow Dog Plains, they lose much of their commanding height. The tallest of the eastern peaks is just a bit above 1100, fairly low in comparison to the surrounding area. After visiting the taller central and western hills I was still…
A year had passed since I first found the Panorama Hills, located off of County Road 510 just north of the Yellow Dog Falls. My initial visit was a brief excursion, mostly exploratory in nature. I was more ambitious this time around with plans to hit up the far western peaks.
Parking once again…
Finding good hikes in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is not always easy. I prefer to stick to remote areas that, by their very nature, don't get a lot of traffic. Reading history articles or essays can sometimes uncover mentions of interesting features worth exploring, and it was while researching…
Several years had gone by since I last drove through Dodge City on the Northwestern Road up past the Yellow Dog Plains. Back then I had been hunting for Hogsback Falls, the only named drop on the Salmon Trout River that is not on Huron Mountain Club property. There is a logging road that extends…