Snowshoeing and Cabin Camping at Wilderness State Park, Winter 2017

Snow and cedars on the Old South Boundary Trail

Sarah and I are university teachers, which means that the middle of December is a busy time of year: the end of fall semester. For pretty much every day between Thanksgiving and the middle of December, our waking hours are taken up by writing exams; meeting with students; grading papers and exams; calculating and recording grades; and responding to emails about those grades.

Last year, I had a great idea: Once all of the exams were marked and the final grades recorded, I headed north to hide away from the world at Wilderness State Park, at the tip of Michigan's lower peninsula. Wilderness has rustic rental cabins that require snowshoeing 2 or more miles just to reach them -- an ideal way to escape from the world for a little while, decompress, and calm down my twitching grading hand.

In 2016, I was caught by surprise at how big the park is, and I ended up spending all of my time only in the west side of the park (you can read about it in my trip report). So for 2017, my choice was the Nebo cabin on the east side of the park -- and also the only cabin in the park not on the Lake Michigan shore.

Late in November, the lovely Sarah gave me a lovely surprise: She wanted to come with me this time! While Sarah is an excellent backpacking companion, I never thought that she'd want to snowshoe miles to stay in a cabin with no running water, no electricity, and only a wood stove for heat, all in the middle of winter. Nonetheless, she too was feeling the end-of-semester stress and looked forward to a few days of quiet reading and no email.

The last two weeks of school were a blur -- we didn't have any days off, even on the weekends. But at last all of the exams were graded, the last-minute homeworks checked, final grades entered, and -- at the very last minute, on Friday night -- the bags packed. So it began.

Saturday, December 16, 2017: After a hearty breakfast, we headed north for Wilderness. As we traveled north, temperatures dropped from the mid 20's down to the low teens. Lake effect snow kicked in around Gaylord, as it always does, but the roads weren't too bad.

We exited I-75 just before the Mackinac Bridge. 10 miles west on barely plowed roads brought us to the Wilderness State Park headquarters. Nobody was there, but the rangers had kindly left an envelope labeled "Clark - Nebo" clipped to a board outside the main door. The envelope contained the cabin key as well as a park map and informational pamphlet.

We backtracked to the Nebo trailhead, near the east edge of the park, and parked in the plowed parking area. After quickly packing up the last of our items, we strapped on snowshoes, hitched up backpacks, and headed out.

Getting into and out of the car in 15 degree weather is hard on the glasses.

The Nebo trail heads directly south, away from Lake Michigan. In summer, it is wide enough to be a 2-track that allowed campers to drive right up to the cabin. In winter, it is a wide and clear trail with a handful of ski and boot prints in 6 inches of fluffy snow.

Although the trail was mostly flat, we took our time -- 30 pounds of packs plus winter gear and snowshoes does not make for a fast hike. Plus, it was a wonderful day for a wander through the woods: The air was crisp and cool (20 at the highest), but the sun peeked out through puffy clouds while birds chirped in the trees. The Nebo trail took us through cedar swamps, red pine groves, and some occasional scrub and birch.

On the Nebo trail.

There are a lot of trails on the east side of the park, with a numbered post and map at every intersection. We made out way from post to post, ranging from 1 mile (the last stretch to the cabin) down to 0.08 miles (about 400 feet) between two closely spaced trail intersections. Along the way, we noticed other wood posts marking out distances along a 10k route that we were apparently following backwards. For a short stretch, we also followed the familiar blue blazes of the North Country Trail, which runs through the park.

Closing in on 2 miles, I spotted a building around a small bend. It slowly came into view. Its homely wooden lines became clearer. It was... an outhouse!

Nebo outhouse. Cabin is uphill to the left, not shown.

Up a short but steep hill behind the outhouse was the real Nebo cabin. But yes, the cabin's outhouse was directly trailside -- perhaps for easier access by hikers, without disturbing cabin renters? Every other cabin's outhouse is private, rather than shared with hikers.

The Nebo cabin is located in a very bumpy part of the park -- some sort of glacial feature. It's located at the top of a small hill, surrounded by tall pines and many other hills. As with the other cabins, it is log construction. A picnic table sat outside, reminding us of warmer summer months, with a hand pump in front of it. Out back was a large wood bin, which we would shortly be turning into heat via the cabin's wood stove.

Nebo cabin with wood bin in the back

Inside, the cabin was quite similar to Wilderness's Station Point cabin that I stayed in last year -- so similar, in fact, that I forgot to take any interior pictures! So instead, I bring you this photo from the archives -- just pretend the uppermost window isn't there.

Station Point cabin, but basically Nebo too

Our first goal was to start a fire in the wood stove. The stove was the "long metal box" type, with a solid metal door and no glass front -- meaning that the fire wouldn't shed light into the cabin at all. The stove sat on a cement pad, with a large stone wall behind it. I would guess that the cabin was built with a fireplace, which was filled in (hence the stones) and replaced with this stove. This part of the cabin had a significant difference from Station Point: Because of the filled in fireplace, there are no windows on the stove side of the cabin. This makes the Nebo cabin even darker yet.

We were successful in lighting the stove, although we had to hunt outside for larger kindling. We brought in a large supply of down and dead branches to start thawing.

While we got the fire burning hot and fast, it took a long time for the cabin to warm up even slightly. To warm myself up, I went back outside into the freezing weather and tramped around the forest surrounding the cabin. There were volunteer trails leading every which way, and I followed as many of them as I could through the tall pines and open understory. The sheer bumpiness of the terrain amazed me -- I couldn't go 100 yards without finding a steep uphill or downhill.

Downhill from the cabin and a little farther along the main trail, I found this interesting device:

Pen for bad children? Unfinished horse corral?

Reading in the cabin's log book later, I learned the solution to the mystery: The corral provides porcupine protection for your car. Apparently porcupines will sometimes gnaw on a car's brake lines, and this pen (with its closable, weighted doors) is designed to keep them out.

Night came on quickly in the forest. We were almost at the winter solstice, leaving us with only 9 hours of light per day. The temperature plunged down to 10 degrees, but the wood stove had started to make a difference in the cabin. We assisted it with hot tea and freeze-dried chicken and dumplings, eaten by the light of our headlamps.

When the sky was thoroughly dark, I stepped outside to look for stars. I had brought a new lightweight tripod to (hopefully) take some star photos, but it was not to be. A thin layer of clouds reflected light from Mackinaw City, letting only the brightest stars show through. Nonetheless, I enjoyed standing in the dark and silent woods, staring up past the tall trees and into the sky... at least, until my hands started to freeze and I hurried back to the pleasantly warm cabin.

The sky directly overhead, minus most stars.

We curled up on bunk beds with headlamps and read for several hours. I climbed down occasionally to tend the fire. The cabin was downright hot at this point -- well on its way to becoming a backwoods sauna. I had been hanging out on a top bunk, but the heat got to be too much for me. I moved my pad and sleeping bag down to the bottom. I also turned the stove's air control down to the minimum, but we had warmed things up too well. I sweatily fell asleep with my sleeping bag open, only to wake up three or four hours later, chilled from the burned-down fire. As one of my favorite guidebooks says,

"Avoid the rookie mistake of loading the stove up with wood before going to bed, thinking that it will simmer nicely until morning. What a loaded stove will do is produce a short-lived blast of heat that will clear the top bunks and sweat everyone out of their sleeping bags."

I guess I was that rookie.

Sunday, December 17, 2017: I woke up after sunrise, after 10 hours of sleep. I was amazed, but the deep darkness in the woods made it easy to sleep for so long.

Breakfast was our usual tea and oatmeal, which was goopy and unpleasant -- more than usual, at least. My plan for the day was an epic (or at least, pretty good) snowshoe hike around the east end of the park. Sarah came with me on a provisional basis, with the understanding that she would eventually head back for a day of snuggled up reading in the warm cabin rather than sharing the full epic hike.

We headed south on the Nebo trail and quickly came across the park's lone trailside warming shelter.

The beefiest trailside shelter I've ever seen.

The shelter, like almost everything in the park (including our cabin) was CCC construction from the 1930's. With its huge wooden beams, the shelter was like a severely overbuilt version of the shelters on Isle Royale (or are they underbuilt?). The biggest difference is a massive stone fireplace in front of it.

After a brief rest at the shelter, we came to a major intersection where most of the longer trails on the east side of the park meet. I briefly investigated the options. From my earlier research, I thought that two of these trails were open to snowmobiles, but there were no tracks visible anywhere (and no evidence of old ones). Moreover, one of the trails had an old "bridge out" sign near the intersection, making me doubt that snowmobiles use them any more. Sure enough, looking at maps now, it's clear that the Old East Boundary and O'Neal Lake trails are now hiking trails in an expanded part of the park. There's even a backcountry campsite on the O'Neal Lake trail. Perhaps I'll have to investigate those on another visit.

Sarah turned back for her day of cozy reading, and I was on my own on the "Old South Boundary Trail". It looked for all the world like an old railroad bed (which it very well might have been) -- wide, straight, gently graded, and making its way directly through every swamp and hill in its way.

The trail was often lined with cedars and other evergreens, although it also ran through a long frozen swamp. Occasionally there were clusters of fancy grasses growing along the trail -- native or not? I don't know.

In the swamps, The extremely cold temperatures overnight had formed beautiful frost patterns on the frozen water, and occasional hoar frost appeared on the low-growing grasses.

Is this a native grass we don't see much of anymore, or an escapee?

I kept meeting posts with distance markings for a 10k route, counting down towards some eventual starting point. Several kilometers (and several miles) down the Old South Boundary Trail, I came to another major intersection. I sat on a convenient bench and ate "lunch". After skimping on breakfast, I was ravenous. I scarfed down two rice cakes with peanut butter, a couple of meat sticks, and a decent amount of gorp.

For the entire trail so far, I'd been following the same boot prints (not snowshoes) that we'd seen on our way in yesterday. The previous visitors made life easier for me, but I longer for some fresh powder to break trail in. I poked my head briefly to the west on the Sturgeon Bay trail, which I had (over-ambitiously) planned to hike last year. It was completely untouched, except for a lone deer who must have wandered this way recently. I enjoyed the brief romp through the powder, but turned around to continue on my loop.

My way lay north, on the Swamp Line trail. This was also the North Country Trail, which came up from the south. Swamp Line was more of the same lovely evergreen-bordered trail, wide enough to be a 2-track. The boot prints continued this way, along with a variety of deer tracks, all winding their way around a surprisingly large number of blowdowns. The park's website claims that this route is groomed for skiers -- I highly doubt they'll be grooming it any time soon unless someone with a chainsaw and a snowmobile makes their way down the Swamp Line.

Snow on pine

True to its name, the Swamp Line trail ran along the edge of (and sometimes directly through) a large swamp. I was deep in the wilderness part of Wilderness State Park, but I soon started to see evidence of humanity again. Rotting wooden retaining walls in a swamp spoke of some former draining project, and nearby a series of posts ran into the woods, strung with fallen cable. I passed an odd opening in the trees, which turned out to be a heavily overgrown road. I tried bushwhacking my way in through the dense undergrowth to see why anyone had ever built a road here, but I couldn't make it more than a few dozen yards.

I finally passed the last (that is, first) marker in the 10k route that I'd been inadvertently following -- it was the "Wilderness 10k run". Shortly beyond that I found a sign telling me that I'd been in the "Big Stone Creek Wilderness Area". Beyond that sign, I found a North Country Trail trailhead kiosk with a log book. I was the first person to log a trip that month.

I followed the North Country Trail on a winding route though one of the more built-up areas of the park. It wound along the shore of "Canada Goose Pond". The huge swamp that supplied the pond with water was starkly beautiful under the gray sky that had been following me all day:

Swamp beyond Canada Goose Pond

The trail crossed the pond's inlets over three bridges, two of which were this funky log construction:

Funky log bridges

It looked like the log bridges could have been original CCC construction. The middle of the three bridges was brand new.

At the pond's dam, I pondered this complicated sign for a while (this was just the lower half):

I turned east (continuing to follow the North Country Trail) onto the Red Pine trail. This turned out to be the prettiest trail yet. Rather than the dense and monotonous cedars I'd seen so far, the Red Pine trail wound through a grove of... you guessed it... red pines! The pines left an open understory, showing me the surprisingly hilly and gnarly terrain in the northeast corner of the park. It looked like a glacier had gotten stuck and had trouble getting started again: razorback ridges covered in pines wove on curving paths, with random piles of sandy soil rising 20 or 30 feet out of swamps. The trail bucked up and down and around a surprising number of blowdowns.

I rested my (now rather tired) legs on a convenient bench at the top of one of the random mounds and snacked on gorp. Within a mile or so, the Red Pine trail ended at the Nebo trail -- at one of the intersection markers we'd followed in yesterday.

Club Moss on the Red Pine trail

By this point I was dragging. The bumpy Red Pine trail had done a number on my already tired legs. But rather than heading back to the cabin, I turned north for one last detour. On our way in, I had seen a sign for the Hemlock trail which wound up to "Mt. Nebo" and an old fire tower. You can bet I wasn't going to let that go by without checking it out!

The Hemlock trail was narrow and beautiful, surrounded by, well, pine trees (mostly not hemlocks, however). It ascended steadily until it suddenly popped me out at the top of a tall glacial hill -- Mt. Nebo. Cement footings were the only sign of the fire tower that once stood here, and the views were mostly blocked by trees. Nonetheless, it was a lovely spot, and a the foundations made for a good place to sit and rest.

Fire tower foundations

The Hemlock trail made a short loop, and rather than going back the way I'd come up, I decided to keep following the trail and see if I could find these elusive hemlocks. The far side of the trail was incredibly steep. I had trouble keeping upright! Mt. Nebo was the last outpost of the long line of hill, and its steep side rose straight up from the edge of a low swampy area. I quickly lost all of the elevation that I'd gradually gained. In the flats around the base of the hill, there were indeed scattered tall hemlocks which made me a bit wistful for the Porcupine Mountains.

I trudged through the flats and finally met up with the Nebo trail. Turning south, I slowly hauled myself down the final 1.5 miles back to the cabin, for a grand total of 8 miles of snowshoe adventure.

I took off my snowshoes and stumbled into the toasty cabin. Sarah had a great afternoon carting in firewood from the wood bin, reading, and relaxing. I took off my coat, gloves, and hat and collapsed on my bunk.

Once I had recovered, we had Fettuccine Alfredo for dinner, freeze-dried of course. It was delicious, made more so my by epic snowshoe hike. We topped it off with a luxury: A can of hard cider carted in from the outside world.

By this time it was dark again (which is to say, it was after 5 pm). The sky was thickly clouded, so there would be no night photos again. Instead, I stayed inside and read by the light of my Kindle. I also tended the stove more carefully, keeping us warm but not sweltering. I was no longer a rookie.

Old leaves

Monday, December 18, 2017: We woke up after sunrise -- another 10 hour night of sleep! I had let the fire burn down overnight, but the temperature had also risen up to near 30. I only had to build a small fire in the stove.

Breakfast was freeze-dried granola and blueberries with milk, an oddball freeze-dried meal from our back-stock. The blueberries were like little crunchy fruit-flavored cocoa-puffs, and they turned the milk a purple-blue color. The whole thing was sickeningly sweet. Oh well, you can't win them all.

We were both ready to go. The isolation and removal from the world had done its job: We were relaxed, well-rested, and ready to head home. We packed up, swept out the cabin, sealed up the stove, and locked the door.

We strapped on our snowshoes and headed up the trail... for about 20 steps. Without any snowfall and with warmer air moving in, the snow was densely packed and sticky. It was easier to move without snowshoes than with them!

We reached the car quickly on foot and headed south through a light fog. We celebrated our return to civilization with burgers at Spike's Keg o' Nails -- yes, really -- in Grayling.

Old fence (?) in the woods

My second visit to Wilderness was a lovely break from the world, which is exactly what I wanted it to be. Nebo cabin was a very pleasant place to stay, nestled in the trees on top of a glacial hill -- but it felt odd not to be camping on the shore of a great lake (which we almost always do at other parks). My long day hike showed me that the park is nothing if not consistent -- long, wide trails lined with cedars, running through swamps. I am still impressed at how big the park is, and there are yet more trails to explore. We will definitely be back.

Total distance: 12 miles (with a lot of duplicated trails)

Winter cabin camping at Wilderness State Park

In fall of 2016, I found myself with a few free days just after final exams -- the perfect time to relax after the busiest time of the semester. Sarah and some of her friends had planned a girls' weekend out, and I needed my own end-of-semester getaway: Getting away from everything, including running water, electricity, and people.

Shoreline of the Straits of Mackinac

So, I fired up the trusty old internet browser, headed to midnrreservations.com, and made my reservations for 3 nights in a rustic cabin at Wilderness State Park. When Friday December 16th came around, I threw my snowshoes and backpack in the car and headed north towards Mackinac City.

Wilderness is a large state park in the far, far northern reaches of Michigan's lower peninsula, just a few miles west of the Mackinac Bridge. At over 10,000 acres, it's nothing to sneeze at. Better yet, most of that space is undeveloped. Most of the park is wild Lake Michigan shoreline and woodlands. Best of all, Wilderness has my favorite amenity: rustic cabins, without any running water or electricity. They are available in winter, but only if you're willing to snowshoe or ski several miles on ungroomed trails. Why yes, yes I am willing to do that -- and I was willing to bet that almost nobody else would want to do such a thing.

Friday, December 16: Light snow followed me north until Gaylord -- a city that every Michigan Tech student traveling north dreads, as it inevitably marks the line where lake effect snow starts reaching inland far enough to affect the expressways. Sure enough, a dense band of lake effect was turning I-75 into a sheet of solid packed snow. I ended up in a caravan of cars going 35 mph with our blinkers on, occasionally looking up to see cars on the southbound lanes spin out and go off the road (but, strangely, nobody on the northbound lanes had this trouble). An hour later, I thankfully exited the expressway at Mackinac City and headed west for the park -- and the lake effect snow immediately stopped.

10 miles to the west, I pulled in to the park headquarters. The ranger handed me my keys and said "we started a fire in the wood stove for you this morning". This was the best thing I'd heard all day -- I wouldn't have to walk into a completely cold cabin and immediately have to start a fire from scratch.

One more mile down the road, I reached the small parking area where the plowed road ended and the adventure began. I parked, put on snowshoes, and strapped on my backpack. I am new to winter camping, so I probably overpacked a little -- the pack weighed 40 pounds, at least as much weight as I brought for 6 days on Isle Royale. My pack included an (empty) day pack strapped across the top, three different pairs of gloves (I used them all!), a full-sized Nalgene bottle (to act as a hot water bottle), and ski goggles.

Station Point cabin from the rear. In summer, cars could drive right up to the cabin and park in the corral.

My cabin for tonight was a little over 2 miles down a narrow and unplowed dirt road. The road was covered with a nice thick base of snow, and was surrounded by gorgeous northern Michigan beauty -- a solid wall of cedars, along with red pine, hemlock, and birch. I stopped frequently to take photos. OK, with a bit more honesty, I was also stopping to catch my breath -- snowshoeing with a 40 pound pack was kicking my butt! Luckily, a lone snowmobile (probably a park ranger) had followed the road earlier in the day, providing a somewhat packed trail to follow.

After 2 miles, I reached the metal gate blocking the quarter-mile long driveway to Station Point cabin. The driveway wound through an even closer, denser, and hillier forest of pines. The cabin itself soon swung into view, nestled among pines growing right along the Lake Michigan shoreline.

Station Point cabin was built by a CCC camp which worked in the park in the 1930's. It's a genuine log cabin, with a wood floor, a stone foundation, and no running water nor electricity. The furniture was exactly the same style of chunky rustic chairs and tables found in my favorite cabins in the Porcupine Mountains. Two double bunk beds were lined up against one wall. Strangely, the bunks together were longer than the wall of the cabin. To make room for them, the front wall of the cabin popped out slightly, making a small niche just large enough to hold the end of a bunk bed (and a lovely window above one lucky sleeper's head). The main feature of the cabin, however, was a surprisingly large wall of windows on the lake side. Those windows gave a gorgeous view of the snowy lake.

This is how close I stayed to the wood stove in order to stay warm.

The other main feature of the cabin was the essential wood stove, my only source of heat for the weekend. There was no fire left in the stove -- it had been burning much too long for that. But by poking around inside the firebox, I found enough embers left to start some kindling.  I quickly had a roaring fire going, thanks to instructions from the Porcupine Mountains Companion (and no thanks to the instructions left pinned to the cabin's door, which got some important details -- such as which way to adjust the oxygen control -- exactly backwards). There was a large pile of well-seasoned wood left inside the cabin and a truly enormous amount piled outside, so I felt confident of my ability to stay warm, even with single-digit lows predicted throughout the weekend.

I completed the one other important camp chore -- getting water from the nearby water pump -- just before sunset. That left me with just enough time to take some photos along the lakeshore. The wind had the lake whipped up into whitecaps which crashed against the pack ice near shore. There was a big storm moving in overnight.

Gray, stormy, and snowy Straits of Mackinac.

There was one oddity I noticed on the outside of the cabin: A bit of electrical conduit ran up a pole and directly into the cabin. I suspected that there used to be a weather station mounted on the pole, until I went back into the cabin and found this:

Huh?

Yep, a hotel safe, the only electrified item for miles in every direction. I couldn't figure out any way to open it, either.

After a quick freeze-dried dinner, I pulled a bunk bed closer to the wood stove and set up a sleeping pad beneath my sleeping bag for additional insulation. I made a lovely hot-water bottle from a Nalgene filled with boiling water and wrapped in spare clothes. It was still warm the next morning.

With those chores done, I settled in for the night. I read by headlamp-light for a while until I finally rolled over and went to sleep. As I slept, the fire slowly died out, and I woke up three hours later feeling a definite chill in the air. I stoked the fire, threw on a new log, and tried to sleep again. For the rest of the night, I tossed and turned, waking up every hour or two to add another log on to the fire.

Saturday, December 17: I woke up with the sun already well above the horizon. After a quick breakfast of oatmeal and hot tea, I dressed up, packed my daypack, made up a roaring good fire (in hopes that some coals would be left when I returned) and headed out for a day of adventuring in the snow.

Station Point cabin after a fresh snow. The small "pop out" for the bunk beds is on the right.

Nearly a foot of fluffy fresh snow had fallen overnight. It was a snowshoer's dream (and, I suppose, a cross-country skier's nightmare). The wind was extremely brisk and blowing from the east, but the air had warmed up into the high teens. My goal for the day was to explore the west end of the park. This consists mainly of Waugoshance Point, a long sandy point of land that sticks out into Lake Michigan. The point ends in a series of almost-connected islands. My hope was to find a short ice bridge across to those islands. Tomorrow, I would explore the east end, with more traditional trails winding through the woods.

I began my trek along the shore, admiring the puffy clouds, snow-covered pines, and giant piles of pack ice. The shore was usually a long, grassy, and somewhat sandy beach that was favored by endangered Piping Plovers. Now, it was a giant pile of fluffy snow.

I soon came to an unplowed parking area and found my way onto Waugoshance Road, the same road that I had followed in to the cabin yesterday. The road had been untouched by humans for days, and it was like walking into a true wonderland: Snow draped cedars and red pines above a sparkling and completely untouched layer of snow.

Undisturbed snow leading out to Waugoshance Point

The road quickly led out of the trees and onto Waugoshance Point proper, which was much more exposed to the cold wind. Only scattered clusters of cedars broke the vast stretches of beach grass and low scrub. I vaguely followed the ruts of a two-track trail, but, hoping to follow the shoreline, I quickly headed off-trail towards an interesting-looking cluster of trees which were growing on a slight rise in the sand.

As soon as I headed beyond the rise, my snowshoed foot broke through ice hiding beneath the snow, and plunged straight into icy cold water. I jumped back, thankful that the water hadn't overtopped my boot. With some careful probing, I discovered ice beneath much of the snow. It quickly became clear that the shoreline was almost fractally twisted, with ponds and pools hiding between grassy points of sand. You can see what I mean on an aerial:

My cabin was located a little to the right of this view.

I carefully picked my way back to the trail. Along the way, I found this interesting relic of the park's past: The steel skeleton of a glider, apparently left by the Army Air Corp. During World War II, the Corps used Waugoshance Point as a testing range, including aerial bombing runs. Some of the gnarly coastline was undoubtedly a result of that target practice.

Wreck of a glider.

The trail passed through more clusters of cedars before veering off towards the coast again. As I walked farther and farther, I began panting as I broke trail in the knee-deep snow. And then, suddenly, my feet broke through ice again -- the trail had water beneath it too! After a few more breaks, I finally decided to give up and turn around. There was no way to tell what was going on beneath the thick layer of snow, but the answer was clearly: ice, and none too thick. I looked wistfully towards the end of the point, which I couldn't even see: I had made it perhaps 1.5 miles out onto the point, nowhere near the end. Oh well, maybe in summer!

I was the only person to pass this way all day.

I backtracked through the beautiful tunnel of trees and paused when I reached the driveway to the Waugoshance Cabin, the westernmost of the line of rustic cabins at the state park. There were no tracks visible in the driveway, so I felt safe waltzing into the cabin's front yard to check it out. The cabin was much larger -- 8 bunks! -- but had a big sand dune blocking its view of the lake. I sat at a picnic table and ate a lunch of meat sticks, plus my favorite hiking food of all time: peanut butter on rice cakes. The rest felt good, and I was soon refreshed enough to push on to a longer hike.

My next goal was to follow the Sturgeon Bay trail south until it intersected the bay of the same name. This trail was completely undisturbed, except for the tracks of a fox and some occasional rabbits. The trail was fully surrounded by dense cedar swamps and overhung with tall trees, making for a gorgeous slog through the snow. It was my own personal fluffy trail through beautiful northern Michigan woods. This entire day had been a true snowshoer's dream.

Red Pine and Snow

After what seemed like a ridiculously long distance (but was really only a little over 1 mile), I reached the trailhead for the Sturgeon Bay Trail -- I'd only been hiking on the access road to the trail! Shortly beyond the trailhead was the Sturgeon Bay Cabin, also unoccupied. I spent nearly half an hour at this cabin, resting, exploring the area around it, and attempting to investigate the lake shore (which was just as gnarly and hard to reach as it was farther north).

My original plan for today had been to make a loop, using the Sturgeon Bay trail and continuing on the North Country Trail east into the heart of the park. Then I would turn north, find the access road past my cabin, and hike 2 miles west back to the cabin.

Sturgeon Bay Cabin wins the award for most picturesque (and coldest) walk to an outhouse.

As I sat at the Sturgeon Bay Cabin, I wasn't even sure that I would be able to drag myself directly back to my cabin. There was no way I could have continued on the 8+ remaining miles of the loop. Oh well, I could leave the east end of the park for tomorrow. I also had the idea of popping down to this area to watch the sun set over Sturgeon Bay. But with the coastline all but impossible to find, a long hike through powder to reach it, and my legs almost ready to fall off, that was another too-optimistic idea. I eventually hauled myself up, put the daypack back on, and headed back the way I'd come. At least I had my own tracks to follow this time.

After a very slow hike back, I arrived at Station Point cabin just a few minutes before sunset. I plopped down in front of the wood stove and stirred up the coals of the fire. A brisk north wind had started up, and I wanted to make sure the cabin was good and toasty before night fell.

The big, beautiful, and drafty front windows.

I soon began to feel a distinct draft. Some investigation revealed that almost none of the windows were locked, which left small cracks for cold air to enter in. Then I found the huge gaps in the frames of the big, beautiful windows on the north wall of the cabin -- and the north wind was taking advantage of every crack and crevice. One window in particular let a strong breeze in that blew directly on my chair in front of the fire. I found evidence of previous visitors' attempts to stop the breeze -- napkins stuffed into the biggest cracks, duct tape laid over them (and peeling away), and other jerry-rigged attempts at breeze-blocking. I eventually stretched my coat and a towel across the worst parts of the window, holding them up with tacks and a clothespin. I added two more logs to the roaring fire and pulled my chair closer.

Later that night, I stepped outside for a moment and looked up to see an unexpected sight: Stars peeking through the quickly moving clouds. The stars in the deep black sky were a breathtaking sight. Back inside the cabin, another beautiful and unexpected sight awaited me through the large front windows: Freighters, with lights blazing along their entire length, heading through the Straits of Mackinac. The Straits are so narrow that the freighters were at most 2 miles away from me. They looked like a parade as they slowly made their way under the Mackinaw Bridge.

I read for many hours (Naked in the Stream: Isle Royale Stories by Vic Foerster -- which I highly recommend). I finally turned over and curled up with another hot water bottle. I slept in 2 hour shifts, waking up like clockwork to put another log on the fire.

Sunday, December 18: I woke up groggy and stiff, with a huge headache threatening to split my skull open. Sleeping in 2 hour shifts hadn't helped. Snowshoeing 6 miles in powder had helped even less.

There had been a change in the weather, heralded by last night's strong winds: I could see bright blue sky out the window with puffy white clouds skittering across it. What a perfect day for a snowshoe hike!

Clearing skies heralding my departure.

My overly ambitious hiking plan for the day began with a 2 mile snowshoe back to the parking area, followed by a longer loop (6 or 8 miles, depending on what I felt like) in the east end of the park. That included investigating the Nebo cabin, the one cabin nestled deep in the woods at the east end of the park. Then, I would hike 2 more miles back. Sitting in my cabin, groaning as I bent over to put another log in the wood stove, even the 2 miles to the parking lot sounded nearly impossible. There was no way I could do a real hike today.

To avoid the reality of that situation, I laid back on the bed and pulled out my weather radio. The weather service reported good weather today, but more snow falling tomorrow. Darn. The more I thought about it, the clearer my course: I had to leave today.

The choice was made, but I could at least take my time packing up. I savored the solitude, the beautiful view, the smell of the wood fire. I wrote in the cabin's log book and read stories that others had left. I got limbered up enough to go outside and split some firewood, feeling badass and sore at the same time. I took a few photos and wandered around the lake shore, enjoying the beautiful sky.

Eventually, I couldn't put off my departure any longer. I strapped on my snowshoes, loaded the slightly-lighter-than-40-pound pack onto my back, and headed down the cabin's driveway. All trace of my tracks from the day before had been obliterated by snow and wind.

The snowshoe hike back out was long, slow, and painful. There was no way I could have hiked for more than those two miles that day. I stopped frequently to take photos of my gorgeous surroundings... and to catch my breath. The only signs I saw of fellow humans were some snowshoe tracks through the fresh snow -- both coming and going. Whoever it was must have been out for a nice hike and already returned.

When I finally made it to the end of the road, I was already bushed. Then I got to dig out the car.

As if snowshoeing wasn't enough...

The drive home was long but generally uneventful, except for a small lake-effect squall around (where else?) Gaylord. Once again, several people had managed to spin off the road heading southbound -- and the sensible people on the northbound side were having no problems at all.

Even though I cut the trip short, it was still worth every ache and pain. Just like the Porcupine Mountains, I've found another place that I want to keep coming back to over and over. Next year, I'll return -- and stay in a cabin closer to the east end of the park. Watch for it next year!

Map of Wilderness State Park: Notice all of the trails I didn't even get near.

Total miles snowshoed: 10