Cliffs and Ruins: Porcupine Mountains Solo April 2022, Day 2: Presque Isle and Black River Waterfalls

Last time: Union Mine waterfalls - All backpacking posts

You can find links to all of my hiking and backpacking trips in the adventure index.

One of the Presque Isle waterfalls, although heaven knows which one

Saturday April 23, 2022: I slept well, snuggled into my incredibly cozy camping quilt. The night was colder than predicted, and my brain kept waking me up to tend the wood stove fire. Occasional rainstorms sped through, pitter-pattering on my yurt's roof. Lake Superior absolutely roared all night long, with white caps crashing against the shore. As one log book entry put it, "some people pay hundreds of dollars for a white noise generator as good as Lake Superior."

I finally awoke to this view -- not one that most campers would be excited about. I have no idea why these curtains are in the yurt:

Aaaaaah, a bear! (Actually an ad for "Yukon Thunder" soap in curtain form.)

The woodstove was cold and the morning was chilly. I restarted the fire from embers (zero matches!) and got the yurt warmed up in no time. On-and-off rain continued as the wind gusted and Lake Superior attacked the shore. I took my time enjoying breakfast (mush, I mean, oatmeal), reading, and generally having a lazy morning.

When things looked dry enough, I headed out on the day's adventure: more waterfalls! This time my target was the many waterfalls on the Presque Isle River, at the opposite end of the park. Because the park's roads were still locked in with ice and snow, I took the long way around (compare to the usual South Boundary Road route in red):

The long way to the west side of the park

As I drove, the sun unexpectedly came out. Wisps of fog and mist streamed across the road as the rain and sun encountered frozen ground and snow.

An hour later, I arrived at the gated and locked entrance to the Presque Isle campground. I was far from the only person to have the idea to visit the Presque Isle waterfalls today -- I parked behind a line of 4 or 5 other cars. The road to the campground itself was still covered in several inches of ice and snow.

I wore rain pants and a rain coat along with my day pack. The most recent weather forecast called for a gray but warm day with occasional rain, clearing up in the afternoon. It was already getting sunny, but I decided not to chance it.

Presque Isle River Rapids

I've seen the Presque Isle waterfalls before, but the West River trail is always a pleasant walk. The river was roaring with spring melt, as thousands upon thousands of gallons of water roared over every rapid and waterfall. I spent lots of time taking photos, but like yesterday, the unexpectedly sunny sky gave me trouble. It also warmed me up, until I eventually had to take off all of my rain gear.

Part of yet another waterfall on the Presque Isle river

I eventually reached the suspension bridge to the "almost" island that gives Presque Isle its name. Here I did something new: I walked the island down toward the river mouth, which was surprisingly quiet and calm. Not a soul was around, and I could scarcely believe that the lazy river that emptied into the lake was the same as the roaring torrent just a few hundred yards upstream.

The "dry" side of the river

I sat down on a convenient patch of grass and ate my usual camping lunch -- rice cakes with peanut butter -- while I watched the river flow past. It was immensely enjoyable: quiet, solitary, and beautiful. In retrospect, it was the best part of the day.

The "island" in the middle of the Presque Isle river's mouth divides the river in two. Most times of the year, the east branch of the river is totally dry, and you can walk across the riverbed in peace. Today, this "dry" side of the river was running high, a sure sign of just how much melt water was pouring down from the highlands. I eventually got up from my quiet patch of grass and hiked upstream, until I came to a waterfall I had never seen before. In most times of the year, this is bare and dry rock:

Not dry this time!

I climbed carefully down to a ledge near the waterfall and tried to take photos of the rushing water. Today, the waterfall was running so hard that I couldn't keep the camera lens dry -- which is why you get the blurry photo! As I sat down here, a family I'd been playing leapfrog with all day appeared, featuring a 2-ish year old who proceeded to throw a stick directly at me. The parents, staring at the waterfall, didn't seem to notice nor care.

Normally, hikers cross over to the east side of the river by walking across the dry riverbed. That wasn't possible this time, so I backtracked along the west bank, enjoying the waterfalls a second time.

View from the Presque Isle suspension bridge

By the time I got back to the car, there were still many hours of daylight left -- so many that it felt silly to drive back and sit in my yurt. So, I decided to check out one of my "stretch" goals for the trip: the waterfalls along the Black River, which I had never before seen. The Black River runs roughly parallel to the Presque Isle river, just a few miles west of the park.

A few miles as the crow flies, that is. No drivable roads head directly west to the Black River and the Black River Scenic Byway that runs along it (although the North Country Trail makes a nice beeline that way). Once again I ended up taking the loooooong way around:

Crow-flying distance from start to finish: About 5 miles.

The whole route took nearly an hour on the road, but the trip took much longer than that in total. That's because waterfall after waterfall pours down the Black River, and I stopped at (almost) every one. The National Forest Service has done a nice job of building up each of the waterfall areas with a parking area, a quarter-mile of trail, and an enormous flight of steps down to the river.

I ooh'd and aah'd at almost every waterfalls (I accidentally blasted right past Great Conglomerate falls). However, each waterfall's parking area was closed for the winter, so cars had to find their own ways to park wherever was clear. Sometimes I had to walk an extra mile, other times I just had to try not to fall down an icy flight of stairs.

Sandstone Falls on the Black River

I was perfectly nice. Well, mostly. Certainly the scenery was beautiful, the woods deep, the rocks dramatic, the rivers roaring. Nothing to complain about, right?

The problem was... well, there were two problems. First, much like everything else in the western UP, the Black River was absolutely filled with the meltwater from a long, hard, and snowy winter. This sounds like a good thing: Water is what makes waterfalls waterfalls, right? More falling water = more waterfall. That's true, but often the best part of waterfalls is not about the amount of water, but what the water looks like.

There was so much water running down the waterfalls that they had almost no definition or shape. The rocks that give the waterfalls form, the eddies and rapids that give them interest--they were all hidden under thousands upon thousands of gallons of rushing whitewater, spray, and foam. The sheer volume was impressive (and loud!), of course, but there's really only so many ways for a few zillion gallons of water to rush over a ledge.

Rainbow Falls on the Black River

When I got home several days later, I looked up photos of the waterfalls in other times of years, and they were much more interesting than what I saw. More than once I said "oh, that's what the waterfall is supposed to look like!" Fall would be a perfect season to view the Black River waterfalls; early spring is not.

The second problem was more about the format of the trip. In the end, the day's waterfall visits got more than a little repetitive: Drive a couple of miles, find the next access road, figure out how to park without getting stuck in the snow, hike in to the real parking lot, hike down 100 steep steps to a viewing platform, spend a few minutes seeing yet another roaring waterfall, and then reverse all of the steps.

I was getting tired at this point, but I also just didn't enjoy the repetition. Unlike yesterday's wonderful hike to the Union River, today's hike was broken up into many short segments, punctuated by short drives. I should have realized this long ago, but I really prefer one long hike to many small ones. Spend some time on my feet, get to really see a place from the ground, get into "nature" mode. It's just not fun to stop and start constantly, switching my mind between the details of driving and the joy of hiking. That's what the Black River waterfalls had me doing, and it did not do the trick for me.

There's quite a large drop-off between foreground and distance

I finally made it all the way to the end of the road -- Black River Harbor, once the site of a struggling fishing village, now the site of a nicely maintained park. A wedding party clung to each other in the increasing windy day. I briefly walked around the park, checked out a suspension bridge across the river (to me it looked just like the one at Presque Isle), and then I got back in the car to undo the entire trip.

I did do one very un-camping thing: I stopped at the Burger King in Ironwood for a good old fashioned greasy dinner. After just one day of camping, it was still amazing.

As I started the long drive home (of course, it was the looooooong way), the sprinkles and wind turned into downpours and blasts. Thunder, lightening, wind gusts, and even more fog and mist! The weather only added to my discontented mood. I drove slowly along M-28 until I finally outran the nasty weather.

Waterfall detail

I stopped by Headquarters to top up my water supply, which is when the torrential rain caught up with me again. At least I had a rain coat with me. It must have been a narrow line of storms, because shortly after the torrential rain caught up with me -- in fact, just after I'd finally filled up my water pack -- the storm blew past and left just a light mist.

I parked back at Union Bay and walked across the campground, pondering how I enjoyed Friday's waterfall hike so much more than today's. As I did, I noticed two things:

First, most of the shelf ice and icebergs that were present yesterday were gone. Blown out to sea or melted away (or both)? Either way, the spring melt continued unabated.

Second, a group of birds feeding on the ground flew up in front of me, leaving this strange birdie to forage on its own:

Mystery bird

Any clue what it is? It was almost like a white version of a Goldfinch, but larger. My best bet is some sort of albino or mutant.

The evening continued windy with occasional rain showers blowing through. I had expected today to be gray but dry, so once again the forecast was... imprecise. I spent most of the evening indoors, except for a brief burst of hauling and splitting more firewood between showers.

The night was warm enough that I didn't light a fire. I fell asleep to the howling wind and roaring waves crashing against the shore. Even a less-than-stellar day that ended in a cozy yurt next to Lake Superior was still pretty good by any standards.