Soooo, let’s see if it’s possible to break this sucker down… we’ll start with the map. (the points are mile markers.)
The hike follows the beach or close to it from Manistee to Ludington. Emily and I began at the Magoon Creek Natural Area and ended at the entrance to the Ludington State Park. All in all, it was 14.4 miles according to the Google pedometer, but it felt like about twice that with all the sand we had to trudge through!
My pack was HEAVY. We took Em’s tent because mine just barely fits one person, and hers isn’t designed for backpacking, neither in size or weight. It’s bulky and heavy as hell. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a complaint, I was actually glad to have such a boulder of a pack because that’s how it’s gonna be on I.R., so it was good training.
My pack contents were:
– 3-person tent
– 2 sleeping bags
– 1 bedroll
– 1 jetboil stove
– change of clothes, minus pants, lots of socks
– rain gear
– food (1 breakfast, 2 lunches, lots of snacks)
– a bottle of wine (hey, we’re campers, not cavemen…)
– 2 liters of water
– water filter
– first aid kit
– assorted small supplies (headlamp, knife, multi-tool, rope, sandals, etc.)
Em’s pack was smaller, for one because it was all she had, and also because I wanted to carry as much as I could for training purposes. To be fair though, hers doesn’t have a waist-strap, so she was carrying this all on her shoulders, which is pretty heavy. But she had:
– food (1 dinner)
– clothing
– 1.5 liters water
– sandals
– assorted small supplies
Of course we both had our cameras and the clothes on our backs to carry as well. So we were loaded up. Ok, now that that’s out of the way…
We took off from Magoon Creek, which started high up on bluffs over Lake Michigan. So high that they had a fence up to keep you from getting too close to the edge. It cold, about 44-48 degrees, and windy as hell. My uncle Charlie said the weather service had the gale advisory up for the big lake Saturday, if that tells you anything. Big waves!
The walk leads you gradually down to the beach through a sandy trail in the woods. We got down there and quickly learned how the day was gonna go: either on the hard, wet sand where the waves were crashing, or on the dry sand where it was killer on the legs to walk. Where we had a choice, we split it up, ending up walking through the difficult sand and soaking our boots on the hard sand about 50/50.
Here’s a shot from sometime at the beginning… doesn’t really capture the crashing waves at all. The red dot is roughly where we eventually camp:
After a short time, it became less of an option, with remnants of old wooden breakwalls to climb up and over, and mini-bluffs at 4-10 feet with waves crashing against them, so it was either climb up into the reeds and dry sand and trudge, or go down to where the walk was easy but if you got stuck in front of an oncoming wave, there was really nowhere to go… we gambled a lot in both terrains, and woulda been pretty miserable if it wasn’t so damned fun.
We were soaked, tired and cold and laughing our asses off by the time we sat down for lunch. Here’s Em after her first thorough soaking by an inescapable wave… you can’t see the water here, but I promise you it crashed a few feet higher than where she’s standing seconds before this photo was taken:
We ate lunch on an old breakwall and headed back out continuing the cycle of trudging and getting soaked. There were some really cool houses to look at and a lot of cool staircases leading to the water. We learned from one of my books that 100 feet of space from the water line is open to hikers, the rest is private property in a lot of the area. Some people had pretty cool setups, like this bar that made me squeal a little…
Now if you look back at the map above, this was all in about the first 5 miles or so. It took a good few hours, and we started at about noon. Once we got past the houses, we were in a national forest area. The book I had told us to look out for a boardwalk leading off the shore. I spotted it while desperately searching for a way to get off the sand.
We paused there for a bit and took off the packs and just rested and watched the water for a while. Then we headed up the boardwalk that led to a rustic campground that had pit toilets and drinking water. I wanted to test my water filter (not to see if it filtered, duhhh, but just to see how long it took to run water through and what-not), so we pumped a good deal of water into the bag and hung it up and refilled all of our water bottles… re-adding unwelcome weight but very welcome refreshment to our packs.
From there, we would begin on the off-beach trails. But first we had to cross a creek… no problem, right? Haaaa… I should’ve mentioned, this would be the third creek-crossing, and we had very VERY squishy boots at this point. We didn’t feel like getting them even squishier.
We got to the creek, Cooper Creek, I believe, and saw that it was small, but it was in the bottom of a small but very steep valley. And of course the valley was lined with moss on the north side, so it was nice and slippery. I fell. Yup. I mean, I didn’t go tumbling, but it was the only time the whole trip where my feet came out from under me and I went down hard. Didn’t end up in the creek though, which was good.
Fording that creek was a bear… it was wider and deeper than it looked from the top, and the only place to cross we could find was a tangle of branches that Emily fit through with some challenge, but I really had a hard time with the giant pack on. This is where having the walking stick comes in handy… I jammed that sucker first into the creekbed to have a leaning point to go around the branches at about a 45 degree angle over the water, then into the bank to lift myself up out of the creek. All while staying dry as a bone. Or at least without getting any wetter, I should say.
We got on an AMAZING trail after that. Lots of up and down climbs, but it was high up on a ridge above the beach and we were looking over the tops of tall trees out over the lake. Here’s me and Em with the lake behind us while up on this trail:
This was between miles 6 and 7 on the map. The book suggested that we go to the dunes area between 8-9 to camp, but I spotted this great campsite at the bottom of the steep ridge around mile 7… here it was free to camp anywhere you saw fit, as long as you were 400 feet from the water… you can kinda see the sweet bench somebody had set up from this photo. It was a lot steeper and farther down than this makes it look:
Now, at this point there’s a gap in the photos… not accustomed to having a camera, I set it down and forgot about it til morning. I was busy making fire with damp wood and Em and I made a dinner of marinated and roasted portabellos, fire-roasted red pepper, goat cheese all stuffed into hollowed-out italian bread buns. Emily has those pictures and they are fuckin phenomenal. When she posts a gallery on facebook, I’ll put a link in here.
I burned my wrist at dinner of course. We had put the mushrooms in a foil pocket and set them on the coals, so I picked up the foil with a towel on my hands and was carrying it to the bench when the foil ruptured and hot olive oil/balsamic ran down my wrist. I was thinking “oh no, I’m going to need to use the first aid kit Aunt Marie got me after all!” but luckily it turned out to be a first-degree burn with no blistering. I still have a big red mark on my wrist though! Lesson learned… I hollered and cussed and dropped the mushrooms on the ground and ripped my fleece off to get the hot oil away from my arm though, it was quite an event. I was sure I was gonna have a real fucked up arm. Whew!
My photos pick up at coffee, which if you haven’t seen is down below here a couple posts.
Aaannnd we begin Day 2…
Here’s me trying to filter more water for the day’s hike… notice I rolled up my pants to keep them dry, but soaked them anyway. It was about 40 degrees out at this point, I was a little cold. A little frustrated at the pants situation too.
Aaaaaand you know now that I have a camera I’m gonna figure out all sorts of cool shit to do with it… here’s my first illustration — Em climbing out of our campsite and back up to the ridge:
Day 2 was the most beautiful part. We got back on that ridge and it got into this area from miles 7-8 and a little beyond where it was VERY challenging, good to have at the beginning of the day. Lots of steep up and downs, and there were tons and tons of fallen trees on the trail. So we’re climbing and jumping and pulling and stretching all over the place, and it reminded me of being a kid with my cousin Patrick, heading out into the woods and making adventure out of nothing. Only now I’m 25 with a 50+ pound pack on and still loving it just as much. We were workin hard, but we were hootin and hollerin the whole way.
I didn’t get a lot of pictures because it was a pretty climb-intensive stretch, but here’s one that doesn’t do it justice at all:
That’s like where we stopped to break because there was more than a square foot of flat ground… After that we popped out on the dunes that you can see begin around mile 9 on the map:
And finding MUCH better sand on Day 2 was a welcome thing. The tide allowed for a really firm walk without any wetness. It was glorious all the way to the Big Sable Point Lighthouse:
Which we ate the Gusterd Stew at the base of before we climbed up into:
And from there we walked the dirt road into the Ludington State Park campground, where we found FLUSH toilets (which I OWNED, by the way) and called Uncle Charlie for a ride back up to Manistee.
We stopped at an Applebee’s for a much craved burger and TALL beer, then hit the road for Detroit, which we made by about 1:30 a.m…
It was a great hike for the first actually tough one. The book calls it “moderate/challenging” where as the Minong is rated a straight “challenging.”
Good practice! I would definitely reccommend this trail to anyone looking for a little challenge in their weekend. We were snapping photos the whole time and there will be a full gallery somewhere soon, I’ll keep you posted. This is just a snack.
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Hecklin' bastids