Hiking at Pictured Rocks

Well, the picture above pretty much tells it all. We had a big weekend planned for backpacking the Pictured Rocks National Lake-shore. As you can see from this picture, we didn’t quite make the whole weekend outdoors. The picture above was taken in Marquette, MI at the Holiday Inn. In order for you to know why we took a picture here, you need to know the full story...

It began simply enough. We left White Lake at 5:10am on July 6, 2007. After a stop in Bridgeport at Cracker Barrel for breakfast, we were on our way to Munising.

We arrived in Munising at noon, made a quick stop at Glen’s Market before heading to the Pictured Rocks Visitor Center. That was where everything got more difficult.

In order to go backpacking/camping in the backcountry, you have to make a reservation and get a permit. We were at the visitor center to check in and give the attendants our itinerary. Billy and I had planned our trip right down to the parking lot we would leave the car at, but those plans got shot down when the lady taking our reservation said there was no parking lot where we wanted to park. Even though there was a parking lot marker on the map at the location we wanted, there was no arguing with the lady. We took her suggestion to park at Miner’s Castle and we were on our way. The hike would be a little longer than we had planned, but nothing we didn’t think we could handle.

With the little reservation glitch behind us, we drove out to Miner’s Castle and started hiking. It was about 1:45pm when we started walking with our 35 pound backpacks. The hike should have been 13 miles. Little did we know what we were in for.

When we started walking, we stopped just about every place we found even slightly interesting. Our pictures will show you that. We were just taking is all in, as would be the case on an adventure like this. There was no urgency in getting to our designated campground. There was enough daylight and surely we could average 2mph in order to get to our destination before dark.

We came to our first checkpoint fairly quickly and everyone was feeling good. The second checkpoint came fairly quickly too and we set off for our first 4 mile leg (the other 2 were about 1 or 1.5 miles in length).

It was about 4:45pm when we reached the next checkpoint, Mosquito. We had only hiked less than half of the total we planned to. This was the first time the thought crossed my mind that we may not get to our campsite before dark. We took a break because we all were a little tired and then headed off for the next checkpoint, Chapel Beach.

Chapel beach was another 4.5 miles from Mosquito, so we picked up our pace just a bit. We also decided to be a little more selective about the places we stopped to take pictures. Mat seemed to be getting tired a little more often than the rest of us, but he never complained.

At about 5:30pm, we passed a couple of girls and asked them where they came from. It was sort of a custom on the trail to ask passing hikers where they came from. Anyway, the girls said they had come from Coves, which was where we were heading. The reality of our situation set in really quickly when they told us they had left at 12:00pm from the camp at Coves. Could we really have 5 and 1/2 hours left? After pondering the situation for a second, we pressed on and still felt we could arrive before dark because those girls were hiking terribly slow and we were basically doubletiming our hike at this point.

Just before 6:30pm, we arrived at Grand Portal Point, which is the 1/2 way point between Mosquito and Chapel Beach. This place was too beautiful not to take a picture and we were all ready for a break. Mat said he was hungry and that his feet were hurting a little, but we didn’t think much about it because by this time, we were all talking about being hungry and how our feet hurt a little. After taking some pictures, finishing off all of our water supply, we headed off. Hopefully, Chapel Beach was close because there was no way to get more water as we were 200+ feet up on the cliffs. At this point, the water existed only to taunt us.

For some reason, the hike from Grand Portal Point to Chapel Beach seemed to go faster. By this time, we were not really talking. We were all just thinking about reaching the destination. At 7:30pm, we arrived at Chapel Beach. We had walked about 12 miles and we still had at least 4 left. Hunger had gotten the best of us and we decided for the first time since the incident at the visitor center to deviate from our plan and stop for dinner.

On the beach, Billy broke out the water filter and refilled the water containers with nice, cold, Lake Superior water. Mat broke out the camp stove while John and Brian broke out the food.

While Billy was cooking, we all took off our shoes for the first time since we laced up at 5:00am. For the most part, other than some normal foot pain you would expect to experience after hiking 12 miles, we were ok, or so we thought. Nothing could prepare us for the horror of seeing Mat’s feet when he took off his boots. Mat had huge blisters all over both feet.

After some thought and a little food, we decided that we couldn’t hike the last 4 miles to Coves with Mat’s feet like they were. What could we do? There was a campground at Chapel Beach, but our reservation was not for that location. In the visitor center, we saw that a number of the campgrounds were full, so there was no guarantee that if we setup camp, we would not get kicked out of the site by someone with reservations. Then we would have nowhere to sleep. This was not an option.

We saw some people that had just walked down to the beach to go swimming, so we thought we would offer them some money to take us back to our truck, then we would drive to Coves. The walk from the parking lot to Coves was only about a mile, so it was much more manageable.

When the people came back from swimming, we offered them some money and they accepted, but they only had 1 open spot in their car. One other thing, the hike back to the parking lot was 3.5 miles. Ugh! Mat would have to walk with his blisters and by this time none of us really wanted to walk. We decided that I would walk back with the people and bring the truck back to pick Billy, Brian and Mat up.

I left the rest of our group at about 8:15pm and started hiking back to the parking lot while Billy, Mat and Brian cleaned up the dinner on the beach. At 9:50pm, I arrived back at the truck at Miner’s Castle, said goodbye to my new friends and headed back to Chapel Beach in the truck. From Coves, Chapel Beach was about 25 miles by car.

It was now 10:25pm as I pulled in to the parking lot at Chapel Beach. Brian, Mat and Billy had just arrived at the parking lot about 10 minutes before. I asked them what our plan was and they said that they were not sleeping at a camp tonight! They wanted to sleep in a hotel. We decided to stay at a hotel and then just do some things around town. There would be no more hiking this weekend. We drove 45 minutes further to Marquette and got a room at the Holiday Inn. After a shower, we all went to sleep.

Saturday morning, we set out for Tourist Park to get a campsite. Luckily, everyone decided to camp for July 4th the weekend before, so there were tons of open sites. We setup camp and then took a trip to Togos to eat our first good meal in 2 days!

After Togo’s, we went out to Presque Isle and did something I have never done before, walk out to the lighthouse. Many times, I had started the trek, but decided to turn back after growing tired of climbing over the rocks. With a good meal in us, we all seemed to have a little spunk in our step. Mat, blisters and all, had no problems walking out to the lighthouse. In fact, Mat was often times leading the way. He would pay for that later.

Next, we visited the Cove and jumped off Black Rocks. Well, Brian, Mat and I did, Billy was the cameraman. Mat was not able to put his water shoes on with the blisters, so he decided to climb the rocks barefoot. After one jump and much pain, Mat was done. Brian and I took a couple jumps and then headed back to the campsite to take a rest.

At the campsite, we took a look at Mat’s feet. They had gotten even worse from out trip out to the lighthouse. Mat was now out of commission. Billy was complaining about his foot also, though we could see no blisters or anything. It looked a little swollen though. Brian and I left Mat and Billy back at the campsite to relax and went to walk the beach and lower harbor.

When we returned to camp, we cooked dinner. No more freeze dried camp food for us, we had stopped at Econo Foods and picked up some Kogels. After dinner, we ventured out to Jilbert’s to get an ice cream cone and then headed out to Presque Isle to watch the sun set. Before I move on, let me just take a moment to say Jilbert’s mint Mackinaw Island fudge ice cream is the best!

The sunset was pretty good, but there were some clouds rolling in, so it disappeared before it reached the horizon. After taking a couple more pictures, we drove back to Tourist Park and went to bed.

There is nothing like being woke up at 6:00am when you had planned on sleeping in, but that is just what happened as the wind picked up Sunday morning. I heard Brian outside his tent and asked him what the situation was. He said there was a heck of a storm rolling in, so we had better pack up. I don’t think anyone has ever picked up a campsite faster and it was not a moment too soon. As we all jumped in the car, it started pouring rain! When I turned on the car, the radio came on, but within 1 minute, the song was interrupted by the Emergency Broadcast System. This was not a test. The EBS was telling us to take cover because a severe thunderstorm was coming with sustained 60+ mile an hour winds, hail and lots of lightning. What a way to cap off a weekend of unplanned events!

It rained all the way to the bridge, but got sunny and hot about 30 miles south of the bridge. We did eat at Big Boy in St. Ignace on Sunday morning, but really, nothing much happened after that. If you took the time to read this all, you know what we went through. Sorry about the length, but once I got started, it all seemed to flow.