Porkies

No, I'm not talking about the movie Porkies... I'm talking about the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park.

Some facts about the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park:

• The state park was established in 1945. The Porkies qualified for national park status, but the state park title was acquired faster, therefore protecting the land sooner.
• The Ojibwa call the area kaugabissing, meaning "the place of the porcupines."
• 59,020 acres
• It is popular to backpack a few miles into the wilderness and spend a few days in one of the 19 cabins (reservations required).

Our original plan was to spend 4 days, 3 nights in the Porkies... starting just outside the Presque Isle campground and hike the Lake Superior Trail (17.10 miles northeast) and loop around on the Big Carp River Trail (9.6 miles east to west), then connect back with Lake Superior Trail (about 8 miles) to our starting point for a total of 35 miles.

We arrived a day early to the Porkies to get backpacking permits, familiarize ourselves with the area (bears and bugs), gather last-minute goods, and pack. We felt a little restless during our night at the Presque Isle Rustic Campground (in the Porkies) - and the guy running his generator half the night for his RV didn't help much.

A map of the Porkies
(Our original plan included the blue line.)

Due to some road trip hick-ups, our backpacking trip went from 4 days, down to 3 - forcing us to adapt our original route. Our new plan took us only 8 miles up to the intersection of the Lake Superior and Big Carp River Trails, where we camped on the shore of Lake Superior. It was a peaceful night with waves drifting back and forth on the gravel about 100 feet from our tent. And I didn't even think about the numerous black bears scrounging the area for food.


Those who have hiked with us before are familiar with my tree counting. This trip was no exception...

Tree #1

Tree #2

Tree#3

There were many more downed trees, by the way. Richie was just tired of posing.

The Porcupine Mountains have numerous waterfalls from a tiny brook to a thunderous overflow. Here are a few large ones we were able to capture in the Presque Isle area.

Manabezho Falls
(The largest falls in the Porcupine Mountains, named for the powerful spirit-god Manabezho)

The Presque Isle River is the largest in the Porcupine Mountains, draining over 300 square miles of forest land.

Manido Falls
(Manido means "spirit" or "ghost" in native Ojibwa)

There is also a 4,600-mile trail in progress stretching from North Dakota to New York, part of it passing through the Porkies. To learn more about the North Country Trail, click here.


The next day we hiked about a mile from our starting point and spent the afternoon swimming at the mouth of the Presque Isle River. The river was warm, but being at the mouth of the river resulted in frequent back flows of water from Lake Superior, which were really cold.

There were people swimming everywhere and a few brave souls jumping off the natural cliffs. A teenage boy playfully yelled "Leach! Leach!," and we didn't think much of it. Well, it turns out there were leaches in the water.

I was fortunate not to get leached, but Richie had one riding on his ankle on the walk back to our campsite. We didn't realize it for a while, so the leach was pretty full by the time we spotted him. Eeek!


Luckily, leaches are harmless - releasing themselves once they've had enough of your blood. Muah-ha-ha! Richie's ankle did bleed a lot because leaches, remember, have a serum that makes the blood not clot. And he never noticed the leach because they release a natural antiseptic when attaching to the skin, so you wouldn't feel it anyway.


The one thing we remember most about our experience in the Porkies are the biting flies... yes, biting flies. Also, this backpacking trip, while short in distance, was a blast! It forced us to change our outlook on the reason for backpacking. Remember that we spent almost a year training not only our bodies, but our brains to climb 10,000+ foot mountains. Every outing we took to the woods was for training purposes. So this was a good trip to reacquaint ourselves with the wilderness... to look at bugs (and leaches) and explore the trail rather than bypass it all in the name of training.

The Porcupine Mountains are very popular with the locals. We'd like to return for another backpacking trip - next time for some elevation gain.

We spotted this VW van with some beautiful drawings on the doors. Just thought I'd share the beauty.


Note: All photos were taken with a Kodak Easyshare M893 IS Digital Camera.