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Monroe Backpacking Club
Welcome to the Monroe Backpacking Club. This club is for anyone who enjoys hiking and backpacking and lives in Monroe County.
Address:
1429 N. Telegraph Rd.
Monroe, MI 48162
Phone: 734-242-4539
Membership:
Please apply to join the club. Members can post their backpacking photos, share trail reports and stories, offer advice, and ask questions of other members.
Membership Style:
Apply to join. Sign up or log in to join.
Members: 5
Join Date: 09/20/2006
Profile Views: 469
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| Image Gallery: Backpacking the High Country Pathway |
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| Shoepac Lake: this is where we began our hike. |
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| A view of the High Country Pathway |
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| Elk droppings. Justin's foot is there for scale. We saw lots of droppings and lots of tracks, but no elk. |
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| Image Gallery: Rob Dahm & Justin Matley in Algonquin Aug. '06 |
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| Guskewau Lake |
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| Justin at Guskewau Lake |
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| Rob picking mountain berries |
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| Justin Matley, Ravin Massingill and Mark Montri at Maggie Lake in Algonquin Provincial park of Ontario, Canada |
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| High Country Pathway- Trail Report |
--by Mark Montri
Over the weekend of Sept. 15-17, Justin Matley and I hiked a 27-mile section of the High Country Pathway. The Pathway is a 70 mile loop in the northern part of Michigan's lower peninsula. We hiked the section between Shoepac Lake Campground and Pine Grove Campground. We selected this portion because it's the longest section of trail without a prepared campground or potable water, and we wanted a more rustic camping experience.
We got a late start on our first day, and didn't get on the trail until 1pm. We hiked north and then west for a few hours, covering about 5 miles total, before coming to Canada Creek, where we found a camping shelter with a fire pit. With such a convenient camp site in such a scenic area, we decided to stop for the day. We pumped water, took a quick dip in the creek (it was very cold) and made dinner. After dinner, a group of kayakers paddled up the creek, and we talked to them for a few minutes. Then we spend an hour or so gathering firewood, then read until it got dark.
The shelter proved to be a nice alternative to a tent, but being open on the side that faced the creek, it got a little chilly overnight. When we woke up at 7 the next morning, the thermometer in the shelter registered 45 degrees. I assume it was even colder before the sun came up.
We spent almost two hours walking around the woods and meadows surround the creek looking for wildlife to photograph. We found only a chipmunk and some spiderwebs. After eating breakfast, we packed up and were on the trail around 10:30.
We set a pretty quick pace, since we knew we had a lot of miles to make up after such a short day previously. We hiked west through a wide variety of terrain, including open fields, rolling hills, thick woods, and swampy marshlands. We saw squirrels, chipmunks, a white-tailed deer, and lots of grouse and partridges, as well as some cool thick mosses and enormous colorful wild mushrooms.
We came to the Black River around 12:30, where we stopped to eat lunch. After eating and crossing the river, we hiked for a few more hours before coming to the point where the trail split and went off to Duby and McLavey lakes.
We had been told by someone on a hiking message board to camp at McLavey Lake, so we hiked the half mile to the lake, only to find that there was no decent camp site within several hundred feet of the lake, and thick woods obscured any view of the lake. There was a single narrow area where the trail went down to the water, and we pumped water there. We then decided to hike back over to Duby Lake in the hopes it would provide a better camp site.
It did, in the form of a strip of high ground that wrapped around the northern edge of the lake and ended in a nice flat open area overlooking the lake. The view was great, so we decided to set up camp. By this time it was about 4:30, and we had hiked approximately 14 miles that day. After setting up camp, we went down to pump some water, and quickly learned why McLavey Lake had been recommended.
At Duby Lake, accessing the water required walking through about 100 feet of thick, wet marsh that circles the entire lake. The marshes stop and the lake begins at the point where the mud finally becomes too wet and soft to walk on. We were eventually able to pump water by climbing out onto a clump of scrub bushes at the inner edge of the marsh and tossing the pump hose out into the lake water. Even after filtering, the water tasted like mud.
We then gathered firewood, made and ate dinner, then built a fire. We were pretty tired, and only sat around the fire for a little while before putting it out and going to sleep. The temperatures felt much warmer that night, and I was able to sleep quite comfortably.
We got up the next morning and started making breakfast, but we ran out of fuel while heating water for oatmeal. It was not a big deal, since we had cold food for lunch and expected to be back to our car well before dinner time. We packed up our campsite and hiked over to McLavey Lake so we could fill up our bottles with better tasting water before tackling the last 8 miles of trail.
We stopped for an early lunch along the northern edge of Dog Lake Flooding, which is the swampy area to the north of Dog Lake. We then made our turn south and hiked the final 6 miles through some of the nicest terrain we had seen on the trip, rolling hills through alternating meadows and wooded areas and finally dense pine forest as we approached our end point, Pine Grove Campground.
We arrived at the campground around 2:30, where we cleaned up, got some fresh water from the pump, and ate the remainder of our food. Then we walked down to the Pigeon River for a little while, before relaxing at the campground until our ride showed up at 4:30.
The High Country Pathway was a great hike, and I look forward to returning and hiking the southern half. The southern half of the trail is supposed to be far hillier and drier than the more flat, marshy northern portion we hiked, and is supposed to be a better place to see some of large elk herd that lives in the area. I definitely recommend this trail, but strongly recommend that if you plan to camp at Duby Lake, you get your water from McLavey Lake beforehand.
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