Backpacking 2019: Pictured Rocks 42 miles
The past two seasons I spent a week on Isle Royale backpacking solo. This year I decided to hike Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore and hike from one end to the other. And suprise, Joni decided to try her hand at backpacking for the first tiue and go with me!
From the start, it's clear that there are likely differences between national parks or national whatever. I found out on the start of our trip we did not need the National Park Pass (at $80 each) for Pictured Rocks though I needed it for Isle Royale. Oh well, supporting the system.
Camping:
Pictured Rocks was also unique with regards to campsite reservations. When setting up our trip we had to reserve a site at specific campgrounds. You go to Recreation.gov for the park and click on the campground at which you plan to stay. If there are any sites available you then can reserve one. For example if Coves has 6 sites and only two are left by the time you register and you claim one, then the next person to register will only see one left for that night.
Most campgrounds will have 4-7 sites and a communal fire pit, as well as a bear box in which to store your food. Also, each campground has a group site of the same name for larger groups. This can be seen from the map. However, there are virtually no rangers patrolling. We were at one campground using the fire pit when a young couple came in and all six sites were taken. The young man said he had a permit for this campground, so clearly someone was poaching on his reserved site. About another hour later, another couple came in and found the same predicament. Both couples ended up camping in the group site area. Camping is $5/person.
Our Itinerary:
Day 1-Munising Falls to Cliffs: 5.1 miles
Day 2-Cliffs to Coves: 15.6 miles
Day 3-Coves to Seven Mile: 7.3 miles
Day 4-Seven Mile to Au Sable East: 7.3 miles
Day 5-Au Sable East to Grand Sable Visitor Center: 7.1 miles
Gear:
REI Half Dome three season two person tent
Osprey AETHER AG 70 backpack (Dennis)
Deuter FUTURA VARIO 50 + 10 backpack (Joni)
Backpack rain covers each
Merrell Moab shoes (Dennis)
Keen shoes (Joni)
Cameras- Nikon AW100 (Dennis) and AW130 (Joni).
I have a solo backpack tent which weighs about 2lbs, but with two of us I utilized the greater-than-six pound 3-season two-person tent.
The Deuter backpack worked very well for Joni. When she decided to make the trip, we went to REI to get her a backpack and looked at the Osprey first, but the Deuter actually fit her better. I highly recommend women look at Deuter if purchasing a pack- they seem oriented toward a good fit for a woman's frame. I think I was carrying about 38-40lbs and Joni had 23-27lbs in her pack for the trip.
This is my third hike with the Katadyn water filter and I am not sure how long filters last so I may need a new filter for any subsequent trip.
I really like my Whisperlite stove, but I really screwed up Tuesday evening cooking dinner. Anyone familiar with Whisperlite knows when you first light it you get a large plume of flame which dies down at which point you turn the toggle to get the blue cooking flame adjusted. The stove comes with a heavy tin foil curtain or skirt to contain the plume which I failed to get around the stove fast enough and a bit of flame licked out and caught my stove's plunger.... and melted it! The plunger is used to create the pressure for the fuel in the can. With no plunger, the stove was useless. I was able to complete dinner, but the rest of the trip for breakfast and dinner I had to start a fire in the fire pit to boil water.
Food:
Good to Go brand dehydrated single servings.
I used Harmony House foods the last two seasons and, sorry Harmony House, I did NOT find Harmony House food appealing at all! On Isle Royale last year while eating my flavorless dinner, a fellow hiker came to camp near me and cooked a pouch food- and it smelled so good! So I decided to use this method for Pictured Rocks. Since I am a vegetarian and Joni is not, we opted to go with single serving foods. A staff member at REI said "just use the two serving, you will be hungry enough." We did not find that the case however! The store mostly stocked two-servings so we had to order our food online from REI. There were meals with the single serving packs I almost could not finish! We packed all food pouches when empty into a zip lock bag and stored with the unused food at each campground.
Transportation:
If you go to Pictured Rocks with two vehicles, you can leave one where you decide to end your hike and the other to take you to your start. We had only the one vehicle however so we needed to avail ourselves of the shuttle service. Alger County Transit (Altran) makes stops at several points along the entire route of the park. We met a group of young people who parked at one of the interior parking lots and hiked for couple days then took the shuttle back to their car. However, the method of parking, then hiking, then getting the shuttle has one big drawback. IF you miss making it to the parking lot on time to pick up the shuttle which is to take you back to your car you are stuck! So I decided to park at the END of our hike and take the shuttle to the beginning, thus the car would be waiting for us when we finished. The shuttle is $25/person.
The Hike:
Day 1-Munising Falls to Cliffs: 5.1 miles
Day 2-Cliffs to Coves: 15.6 miles
Day 3-Coves to Seven Mile: 7.3 miles
Day 4-Seven Mile to Au Sable East: 7.3 miles
Day 5-Au Sable East to Grand Sable Visitor Center: 7.1 miles
The total hike took an estimated 22 hours which included stops for water, photos and such. Day two was the toughest and longest but more on that later.
Day 1:
Day 1-Munising Falls to Cliffs: 5.1 miles
We stayed in Grand Marais at the Dunes Motel- trust me, the room was much nicer than you would think from the outside and very reasonable rate for a one night stay before hiking. We had dinner at the Dunes Saloon, also known as the Lake Superior Brewing Company. The food was decent. They only have a small selection of beers so I had the pale ale which was very good and reminded me somewhat of the old Founders Pale Ale.
But we had a small emergency- we failed to print the backpack camping permits. I did have all the information on my phone, but didn’t want to have a hassle with rangers so just in case I asked the Dunes Motel proprietor if I could print them off her computer. She would have but due to a music festival in town and lots of printing, she was out of ink. She called the Bayshore Market and sent me to them and they were kind enough to allow me to print the four camping permits from their laptop & printer. As such, I felt I needed to pay back and ended up buying a bottle of wine, a pinot nero, of which I had never heard of before. Interesting addition to the wine collection at home. Ultimately it probably would not have mattered given the lack of rangers out on the trail.
We then drove to the Grand Marais Visitor Center and parked the car and boarded the shuttle for the ride to Munising Falls. We were actually ahead of time. We were the only pickup at the visitor center and at an intermediate stop, the group of young people who were suppose to meet for an1130am pick up were also about a half hour early.
We dropped our packs at the Munising Falls visitor center and looked around a bit there before heading out on the trail for our short Day 1 hike of slightly over five miles. We found out very quickly that the map was more pictographic than accurate! If you look at the Cliffs sites (Cliffs regular campground and the group site noted, they seem quite close. But during our five days, we found that there could be quite the distance and hiking time from one of these to the other.
Cliffs was quite a bit off the main trail south into the woods. We were the only ones there at first though an older lady and young woman came in about 630pm. They were ending the reverse of our upcoming Tuesday 15 mile hike.
Day 2:
Day 2-Cliffs to Coves: 15.6 miles
Day Two was a LONG day and the absolutely most difficult hiking of the entire week, rivaling in some places the harder spots on Isle Royale!
I didn’t want such a long day for Joni but as noted above, you must reserve campsites at the various campgrounds and there were none to be had when I registered at the more intermediate sites. I literally reserved at the very next nearest one I could. It turns out that Chapel Beach is overwhelmingly popular with a fantastic beach access and from the map it is one can see the nearby parking lot. People will park there and hike in about three miles with families and huge tents and camp for days, thus Chapel Beach is almost always sold out!
The actual pictured rocks extends from about Munising Falls area to Chapel Beach. Once past Chapel Beach a shot way you would then be hiking on high bluffs but no more Pictured Rocks.
Coming out of Cliffs through Miners Castle area was extremely rugged descents. I would drop down a few feet (steps or roots at times) then assist Joni with a step or two down. As we approached the end within five miles of of Coves the ascents were again so tough that I would repeat the assist going up. The last three miles were a grind and mostly flat but even so we were happy to reach the campground.
We set up camp and then cooked dinner (where I damaged my stove). It was here, chatting with a foursome camping, that during discussion one guy really suggested Joni usiethe trekking poles we had. I bought them two years before but did not like using them myself and it did not occur to me to have her use them, not that I would have known how to show her to use them. But with advice from the fellow camper, she used them the next three days to good benefit.
Day 3:
Day 3-Coves to Seven Mile: 7.3 miles
Day three began what was some of the nicest hiking of the trip. There were still some ups and downs to the trail but long stretches of pine-covered trail or sandy trail along the lake shore afforded great views of Lake Superior. There was a good descent to Beaver Creek (just before our halfway point of the day, approximately) which runs from inland into Lake Superior and Joni took the time to play in the water here. Then climbing back up the elevation to the bluff we continued on to Seven Mile campground.
Day 4:
Day 4-Seven Mile to Au Sable East: 7.3 miles
Our trip from Seven Mile to Au Sable East was a mix of wood covered trail and beach sand trail at the top of the bluff. We did take a slight deviation on this day and went down to the beach and hiked there instead of the trail above. Hiking a few miles down the lakeshore we then went back up into the trail at the next beach access point.
We did have a nice diversion at the Au Sable light house. For $3 each we got a tour of the lodging for light house keepers and got to go up the 98 steps in the lighthouse tower. Had nice chats with the National Park rangers as well as a couple of volunteers. Our campground was at that point only a half mile away.
Day 5:
Day 5-Au Sable East to Grand Sable Visitor Center: 7.1 miles
Our last day! With only seven miles to go and an early start we opted to forgo cooking food for breakfast. We found that departing about 800am or 830am we’d get seven miles on these less difficult sections in just a few hours.
We made it to the end, took a photo, got a new backpacking map and drove into Grand Marias. Joni was craving a Cherry Coke, so we got a couple sodas from the Bayshore Market and went to the nearby beach. We changed into attire to swim and dunked ourselves into the lake to clean up a bit after which we went back to the pub for pizza and drinks. They were out of the pale ale, unfortunately, so I had their red- which was NOT as good as the pale ale, unfortunately.
We then began the drive south. Once in Mackinac City we stopped to walk around a bit. I got a Starbucks coffee. (I used Starbucks Via instant on the backpack trip). It helped to keep from getting too stiff from sitting after 42 miles of hiking.
Summary:
Some thoughts, though. Pictured Rocks signage is really sub-par for the volume of visitors they get. Signs might indicate campgrounds two campgrounds away but completely ignore the nearer two. I looked in vain for a really good map like I had from National Geographic for Isle Royale but never found one.
All in all, a great trip. Joni did really well on her first backpack excursion given the difficulty of day two. I am already planning for our next adventure in 2020!
Links:
https://www.altranbus.com/backpacker/
https://www.harmonyhousefoods.com/
https://www.rei.com/product/116363/katadyn-hiker-pro-clear-microfilter
https://www.msrgear.com/whisperlite
https://www.osprey.com/us/en/product/aether-ag-70-AETHER70.html
https://www.deuter.com/DE/en/hiking/futura-vario-50-plus-10-3402118-blue.html
https://www.nps.gov/piro/index.htm
http://npmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/pictured-rocks-backcountry-map.jpg
https://www.rei.com/product/116363/katadyn-hiker-pro-clear-microfilter
https://bayshoremarket.weebly.com/
https://www.facebook.com/dunesmotel/
https://m.facebook.com/Lake-Superior-Brewing-Company-72923808780/
https://winegeeks.com/grapes/309.html Pinot Nero
https://www.rei.com/product/128692/rei-co-op-half-dome-2-plus-tent
