Trail Talk

Editor’s Note: Jim DuFresne has long since departed the Manitou Islands of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore  but he filed one more blog entry for MichiganTrailMaps.com since his return to the mainland.

Mark your calendar for a pair of Jim DuFresne presentations in November. DuFresne will be in Traverse City to give his new presentation Alaska Marine Highway: High Adventure and Easy Travel on Nov. 8 at 7 p.m. at the Backcountry North store, 2820 N. US-31. See the Backcountry North web site for more information. On Nov. 20 DuFresne will be at the Matthaei Botanical Gardens in Ann Arbor to present Wondrous Wilderness: Tramping in New Zealand at 7:30 pm. For more information see the Huron Valley Chapter of the Sierra Club web site.

By Jim DuFresne

Thoughts from the trail at the end of the hiking season:

Jim DuFresne

On my fifth day on North Manitou Island I departed the meadow they called Crescent City on the west side of the island and headed south. My eventual destination was the sweeping beaches in the southeast corner of this wilderness island where I plan to camp for the night.

But at lunch time I decided to take an extended break at Fredrickson Place. The old farm is now a grassy clearing where from the edge of the shoreline bluff you can view South Manitou Island and Manitou Passage that separates the two islands.

On this particular day, Manitou Passage was wicked. I didn’t need the Weather Station to know that there were small craft warnings. I could look down and see four- and five-foot waves sweeping across the passage and crashing into the beach just below me. At times you could hear the wind roar between the two islands.

Powerful stuff.

If I was in a kayak or even in the Manitou Island Transit ferry I probably would have been clinging to the gunwales. But I was on solid ground, high above the stormy sea, practically alone on a 15,000-acre island, out of reach of cell phones and the Internet and editors and those endless campaign messages from robocallers. I was as content as I had been all summer.

I unfolded my small camp chair and plopped down to see what was left in my food bag. I found a can of sardines in mustard sauce, a piece of pita bread, a good chocolate bar that my German friend gave me just before I departed on this trip, enough water so I didn’t have to trudge down the bluff to filter another quart in four-foot waves.

Life was good.

A backpacker pauses along a beach on North Manitou Island.

I ate the sardines, nibbled on some of the chocolate and read a few pages from a novel, my sole entertainment. But mostly I just sat there and took in the scene that surrounded me. I was in the lull just before Labor Day when the ferry will deliver boat loads of backpackers to the island for the extended weekend.

Right now, however, I was alone and had been since breaking camp two days ago. But I hardy felt isolated in the middle of Lake Michigan, rather invigorated by the seclusion.

Backpacking is a tonic for me. It allows me to get-away and slow-down … uninterrupted. It provides me opportunities to think and ponder. To sort out my life and get back on track with what’s important to me.

Even a couple of days in the woods is beneficial but spend an extended amount of time on the trail, like eight days on North Manitou Island, and soon you fall into that rhythm where the watch becomes irreverent because the only deadline you have is to pitch your tent before dark.

It’s the simplified life on the trail that I find so appealing. Everything I need is strapped to my back. This is when you discover what’s really important in life; clean water, food, a dry fleece pullover for when the temperature plunges at night.

And you discover what is a true luxury; a seat with a back on it, a warm shower, a flush toilet.

Eventually I return to what they call The Village on the island where the ferry dock, ranger station and the only spigot for drinking water is located. The next day I was on that dock waiting for the ferry to take me back to the mainland.

At first I’m like everybody else. I’m looking forward to a cold beer, a soft bed, even some sinful junk food like a Taco Bell burrito.

But by the end of my first night off the island I’m thinking, even planning, my next wilderness adventure. It’s how I survive the winter, trying to figure out where I am going to pitch my tent the next summer. By the time I nod off to sleep that night I’ve already made an important decision.

The next time I hit the trail I have to pack more of that German chocolate.

Editor’s Note: This is Jim DuFresne’s third Trail Talk blog in a series from the Manitou Islands in Lake Michigan, where he was working recently on a mapping project for MichiganTrailMaps.com.

By Jim DuFresne

Chipmunks I have no fear of. These small, striped rodents are so numerous on South and Manitou Islands that they have become an overly aggressive pest to anybody setting up camp. Turn your back on them and they have been known to chew through duffel bags and packs when they get a whiff of anything that might be edible.

Jim DuFresne

We were told to hang our food as if we were in bear country.

What had me truly scared heading over to North Manitou was much smaller; deer ticks. Officially known as the Black-Legged tick (Ixodes scapularis), this is the species that spreads Lyme disease. I have a friend who has suffered from Lyme disease for years and it is something I absolutely want to avoid.

I was told by a maintenance worker on South Manitou to be careful, North Manitou was having a bad tick summer. Researchers were finding large numbers of deer ticks on birds with a high percentage of them carrying the disease. On the National Park Service web site for Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore was a red flagged “Park Alert” that stated “ticks are common throughout the Lakeshore with a high population located on North Manitou Island.”

All this had me in a panic mode when I stepped off the ferry for a week of backpacking on the 15,000-acre island. This tiny insect had managed to instill more fear in me than the 900-pound brown bears I have encountered in the Alaska wilderness.

An adult deer tick is the size of an apple seed.

Despite being sunny every day and in the low 80s I wore a long-sleeve shirt and pants that were tucked into wool socks. As instructed I chose light colors for my clothing, stayed in the center of the trail while hiking and even packed along a small collapsible chair so I could avoid sitting on the ground or logs.

I began each morning spraying my pants and shirt with insect repellent that contained concentrations of DEET ranging from 25% to almost 100%. That was part I hated the most, dousing myself with chemicals to ward off a tiny insect.

In the evening I’d climb into my solo tent and attempted to search my body for a tick climbing up my leg or trying to burrow into my skin. I am anything but petite and in the small tent I struggled with my head lamp to search my “underarms, belly button, and back of knees” as the NPS web site advised.

It wasn’t easy and more times than not I just gave up and crawled into my sleeping bag.

Worse of all I wasn’t even sure what I was looking for. Ticks are blood-feeding parasites that are often found in tall grass and shrubs where they will wait to attach to a passing host. Physical contact is the only method of transportation for ticks as they do not jump or fly but often simply drop from their perch onto a host.

The nymph form of the deer tick is most often responsible for transmitting Lyme disease and at this stage the insect is the size of a poppy seed. Good luck finding that at night while sitting in a cramped tent with dying batteries in your flashlight.

Backpackers on North Manitou Island.

It was a researcher that I met on the trail one day that finally eased some my fears. True, the nymph is often responsible for the disease but exposure to them usually occurs in the summer. I was there in early September. The adult form also transmits the disease but they don’t appear until October and are the size of an apple seed.

“You can clearly see them on your skin,” he said.

In the end, I realized I needed to be vigilant about deer ticks but not so overwhelmed by the fear of Lyme disease that I stop hiking and backpacking.

I needed to be outdoors, as often I can, and I realized if it meant hanging my food up at night and then checking my belly button … that’s a small price to pay to spend a night on a wilderness island.

Editor’s Note: Here is the second blog in a series based  on Jim DuFresne’s recent research trip on South and North Manitou Islands, part of  Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.

By Jim DuFresne

There are two former U.S. Lifesaving Service boathouses on South Manitou Island. The largest is at the head of the wharf and is where newly arrived campers gather with the park ranger for backcountry orientation.

Jim DuFresne

Next to it is a smaller boathouse.

“Welcome to the South Manitou Island Fitness Club,” said ranger Sean Campillo as he lead me inside. I was still trying to adjust to the darkness when Campillo flung open the surfboat doors at the end of it.

In the flood of sudden sunlight I realized he was right, this was a fitness club hiding in a historic boathouse. There were weight racks and benches and jump ropes and mats and a bicycle machine.

All of it, but particularly the speed bag and bench press rack, were strategically positioned in front of the large doors at the end. When opened, the gray, weathered doors framed an incredible scene; Crescent Bay harboring a few anchored boats, the golden dunes and beaches that surround it, North Manitou Island just three miles to the north and all around a blue sky that on the horizon is absorbed by an even bluer Lake Michigan.

This is where you’ll find Campillo before he puts on his park ranger uniform every day. Early in the morning he squeezes in a workout, often while watching the sunrise over Crescent Bay. An hour of lifting that strengthens the muscles and sooths the soul.

Sean Campillo , park ranger on South Manitou Island.

Let the day begin.

“I’ve been in a lot of weight rooms,” said Campillo, who played rugby for Indiana University. “But this is the best one I’ve ever worked out in.”

The job that goes with it isn’t bad either.

From April to November, Campillo lives and works on a South Manitou, a 5,000-acre island in the middle of Lake Michigan that has no cars, no convenient stores, no cable TV and only mediocre cell phone service from the back side of the island.

He lives in the restored U.S. Lifesaving Service Station from the turn of the century and works a schedule that calls for 10 days on South Manitou and four days off on the mainland.

On the island Campillo is everything. As South Manitou’s only ranger, he is law enforcement, the emergency medical person, the search and rescue guy, and occasionally the historian who gives lighthouse tours.

“Take a good look at this face because if you have a problem out here this is who you need to find,” Campillo tells the new campers.

South Manitou may be a remote, isolated island but at times it’s surprisingly busy. On the day I arrived the ferry was full, 150 passengers including a group of 60 senior citizens on a day trip from Grayling.

Others were day hikers and families, who arrive with the ferry at 11 a.m. and leave when it returns to Leland at 4 p.m. There were also campers outfitted with everything they need to spend a few nights, kayakers arriving with their own boats and backpackers planning an extended walk around South Manitou.

The South Manitou Island Fitness Club

Already on the island was a small maintenance staff  for National Park Service (NPS), researchers conducting a water quality study of Lake Michigan and my favorite group; park volunteers.

More than 20 volunteers, most of them retirees ranging in age from mid to late 60s, were there for up to two weeks, restoring the historic barns and homes leftover from South Manitou’s heyday as an agricultural center a century ago.

In return for their labor, the NPS gives them transportation to the island and room-and-board once they are there. “How long do you work?” I asked one volunteer. “Six hours,” he said without hesitation, “and they pretty much hold you to it.”

Still we were sitting on the shady front porch of the ranger station, watching the ferry depart for the day, drinking a cold beer from the private stash he brought with him. Then we headed over for the dinner volunteers stage nightly at one of the historic cottages. This was Tuesday so it was Fajitas Night and somebody was mixing Margaritas in the kitchen.

Not a bad way to spend a week or two.

This is Campillo’s world, an island with up to 300 people on it during the day, maybe less than 100 at night. A place where the most common medical mishap is a blister on the back heel and most emergencies are hikers who just missed the ferry.

For the suddenly marooned day visitor, Campillo lends them a tent and a sleeping bag – there’s no turning the ferry around – and shows them a chest in the large boathouse filled with Ramen Noodles and instant oatmeal that departing backpackers have left behind.

Then he calls it a day on a remote island in the middle of Lake Michigan.

Backpacking in Michigan

Editor’s Note: Jim DuFresne is on the Manitou Islands of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore for two weeks working on a MichiganTrailMaps.com mapping project. Here is his first Trail Talk blog entry. For more on the islands, check out Backpacking In Michigan available from our e-shop.

By Jim DuFresne

One of the most anticipated port-of-calls occurs almost daily during the summer when the Mishe-Mokwa pulls up to the wharf on South Manitou Island. The 5,000-acre island, part of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, lies 17 miles west of Leland on the mainland and is the site of three campgrounds, numerous shipwrecks, a restored lighthouse and a wonderful trail system.

Jim DuFresne

But no cars, motels, outlet malls or even a Starbucks.

For most visitors the only way to reach this island is onboard the Mishe-Mokwa, the Manitou Island Transit ferry that cruises across the Manitou Passage, an historic shipping lane scattered with 19^th century shipwrecks. The trip takes 90 minutes and the vessel is often packed with backpackers, day hikers, families ready for an afternoon on an exotic beach. Everybody on the boat is eager to set foot on what they perceive as a paradise isolated from the madness at home.

On the island’s wharf there is another large group also anxiously waiting for the Mishe-Mokwa. These were the campers who had stayed overnight on the island, some as long as a week, and, while a get-away paradise is nice, they are now longing for a hot shower, a cold beer, food that doesn’t require two cups of boiling water and, heavens forbid, a peak at their Facebook page to see what they have been missing.

I was part of the influx of new campers. We waited for our packs and duffle bags to be unloaded and then headed up to the Boathouse at the head of the dock. This building was built to store the rescue boats as part of the U.S. Lifesaving Station stationed here in the late 1800s. Today it’s where park rangers give their camper orientation.

It’s takes about 15 minutes to go over the dos and don’ts and when it is over the ranger hands you your backcountry permit and you’re free to hike out to a campground and stake a site. You can tell who’s there for the first time. They take their time gathering up their gear, they study campgrounds maps to decide where they might want to go, they’re in no hurry.

The rest of us grab our packs and run as if this was the Oklahoma Land Rush.

Backpackers heading off to Bay Campground on South Manitou Island.

Sites are handed out on a first-one-to-reach-it-first-one-to-get-it basis. The two closest campgrounds, Weather Station and Bay, are also the most desirable because each has strip of seven or eight sites that are primo, some of the best places to pitch a tent in Michigan, possibly in the Midwest. Maybe the country. Who knows? All I know is these are sites worth hustling for.

I was slated to be on the island for a while and really wanted to stay at one of those beach-front sites at Bay Campground the entire time so I picked up my gear, a backpack and duffle bag, and the race was on.

Bay Campground is the closest campground to the Boathouse but it’s still a good  half mile trek. It was obvious there were five groups who had been here before and were intent of securing a primo site. I easily passed the first two groups on the trail without breaking a sweat and caught the third one, a husband and wife, when they stopped to fill their water bottles.

That left only the leaders, a husband, whose cap said he was a veteran of Desert Storm, and his wife who had no problem maintaining his military pace. They were shouldering monster packs and carrying two kayaks between them, the end of one in each hand.

And I still had a hard time closing the gap between us. Then I noticed their Achilles heel; two young sons, one six and the other four, and when the four-year-old announced he had to go to the bathroom I caught up and zipped around them on the outside corner of the trail.

I entered the campground ready to stake out the best site available. But when I went down the side trail to site No. 10, standing in the middle it, grinning from ear to ear and not even breathing hard, was Military Mom.

I was stunned. “How did you get here so fast?”

“We dropped the kayaks and while my husband watched the boys I took to the beach.”

I tipped my hat to her gold medal performance and headed over to site No. 12.

It wasn’t a bad consolation prize. Like site No. 10, it sits in the fringe of pines that line the Crescent Bay shoreline. I pitched my tent in the shade but from a pair of benches in my site had a view of the beach, Lake Michigan and the mainland to the east. Every morning I woke up and watched a stunning sunrise take place over the bay without ever leaving my sleeping bag.

This was my home for almost a week and when it was time to go – while I longed for that cold beer, hot shower and soft mattress – I knew I was leaving a place worth racing to.

I’m not sure what was more amazing; the look on my friend’s face the first time he saw the sweeping view of Lake Michigan from Empire Bluff or the fact that this lifelong resident of Michigan, somebody who has traveled widely around the country and the world, had never been to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.

Jim DuFresne

When John and his wife visited our family cottage in Elk Rapids, I decided it was time to show him his backyard. The day was perfect for a Sleeping Bear tour; clear and crisp with wisps of clouds sailing across a deep blue sky. A light breeze painted the Great Lake with white caps and sent its surf breaking across wide beaches with a bit of thunder. The mid-60s temperature was ideal for hiking.

A ghost forest at Sleeping Bear Point.

In three steps or less, John went from a pleasant forest at the west end of the Empire Bluff Trail to a panorama that clearly caught him off guard. Standing on the edge of a perched dune, he looked down at the waves 400 feet below him, then to the west at a freighter sailing past the Manitou Islands and north at a shoreline of towering dunes. Finally he stared straight ahead at the endless blue horizon where Lake Michigan merged seamlessly into the sky. This is Michigan?

This is quintessential Michigan.

If you know somebody who has never been to this great national park, shame on them. If you’ve never offered to take them there, shame on you.
It’s your duty as a Michigander to spend a day showing them not only one of the most stunning places in our state or even the Midwest … but one of the most beautiful places in the country. Here’s the perfect one-day itinerary for Sleeping Bear Dunes:

First Stop: Most likely you’ll have to pass through Traverse City on the way to the national lakeshore so pick up supplies for a gourmet picnic lunch. Clustered around the west end of Front Street are a handful of markets where delicious sandwiches, baked goods and even smoked whitefish pate can be found. They include Burritt’s Fresh Markets (509 W. Front; 231-946-3300), Mary’s Kitchen Port (539 W. Front St.; 231-941-0525), Folgarelli Import Market (424 W. Front St.; 231-941-7651) and the Grand Traverse Pie Co. (525 W. Front St.; 231-922-7437).

Second Stop: At the corner of M-22 and M-72 in Empire is the Philip A. Hart Visitor Center (231-326-5134; www.nps.gov/slbe) that doubles as the park’s headquarters. Here you can purchase a vehicle pass, get driving directions check out displays and exhibits and fill the water bottles.

Third Stop: A five-minute drive from the visitor’s center is the trailhead for Empire Bluff Trail, the perfect warm-up to the day. The round-trip hike is only 1.5 miles and ends in a spectacular view that serves as an appetizer to what follows the rest of the day. For a trail map and directions see www.MichiganTrailMaps.com.

Fourth Stop: Head north on M-22 and M-109 to Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive. The highlight of this 7.4-mile, self-guided auto tour are four overlooks of the Glen Lakes, the Sleeping Bear Dunes, the towering perched dunes along Lake Michigan and North Bar Lake. At the Dune Overlook you can hike the 1.5-mile Cottonwood Trail and then enjoy that gourmet lunch at nearby Picnic Mountain.
Fifth Stop: Even if you don’t climb it, the Dune Climb is a sight to be hold. Park officials estimate that more than 300,000 people climb it annually…or try to. This is no easy climb. It’s 130 feet to the top of the first hill at the Dune Climb and another 130 feet to the top of the second hill, or a total ascent of 260 feet. The view of Glen Lake to the east is stunning at the top while the run back down makes everybody, no matter what their age, feel like a kid again.

The view at an overlook from Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive.

Sixth Stop: Continue north along M-109 and then swing west on M-209 where the road ends at the trailhead for the Dunes Trail – Sleeping Bear Point. If you have the time and any energy left, this is one of the most unusual trails in Michigan. The views of the Manitou islands, Sleeping Bear Point and Lake Michigan are outstanding along this 2.8-mile loop and the ghost forest you pass through intriguing. Most of the hike is through open dune country that at the end of an autumn day are painted in shades of bronze and gold by a sun heading towards the horizon. Again for a map and directions see www.MichiganTrailMaps.com.

Final Stop: It’s been a full day and the scenery has been spectacular. Time to kick back with a cold one and re-experience the adventure. Art’s Tavern (231-334-3754; corner of Lake Street and M-22) in Glen Arbor is the perfect place to order a locally brewed beer and discuss why it takes so long for some Michiganders to discover the scenic magic of Sleeping Bear Dunes.

I was up north, researching trails in Antrim County for www.michigantrailmaps.com, when the press release arrived in my inbox. The tag line was intriguing:

Wolf Pup Captured and Released in the Northern Lower Peninsula

The release was fascinating:

“A USDA Wildlife Services employee was recently successful in capturing and releasing a wolf pup in Cheboygan County. This occurred during an effort to trap and place a radio-collar on a wolf following the verification of a wolf pack in the northern Lower Peninsula earlier this year.”

And the attached photo seemed to take forever to download. The wifi spot I was using was crawling and the photo came in one bar at a time at an agonizingly slow pace. But finally there it was, on the screen of my laptop, the first documented wolf pup to be born in the Lower Peninsula in almost a century.

“This is the first evidence of wolf breeding in the Lower Peninsula since the population was extirpated in the early 1900s,” said Jennifer Kleitch, wildlife biologist for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment,. “It indicates that we have at least one breeding pair in the region and the potential for a growing population.”

Wolves in the Lower Peninsula, not even that far from where I was hiking. A pack of wolves that is growing and, no doubt, expanding its territory.

The wild has returned to the Lower Peninsula.

I have never seen a wolf in Michigan despite my extensive time spent at Isle Royale. As author of Isle Royale National Park: Foot Trails & Water Routes, I have spent months in the backcountry of the Lake Superior island and yet the closest I ever came to wolves was listening to them howl one night while camping at Feldtmann Lake.

But that’s all it takes – spotting their tracks in a swamp, seeing the bleached bone remains of a winter kill or listening to a pair call out to each other – to make you realize that you’re not alone. You’re simply a visitor in somebody else’s home.

I don’t even need to see evidence of their arrival in the Lower Peninsula, much less the wolves themselves. Knowing they are out there, somewhere in the woods, is enough to instill a sense of wilderness in the places I hike for a day or longer with a backpack. Just seeing the signs at many of the trailheads in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore that announce “You Are A Visitor In Cougar Habitat” adds a quality to an area you can’t find in Peoria, Iowa or Southeast Michigan for that matter.

Michigan's newest wolf pup

In the end, that’s all I need. If I encounter a wolf in the wild, and I have twice in Alaska, or a black bear which I have several times in Michigan, it’s always an unexpected occurrence and one of those moments that leaves you both nervous and excited. A moment you rarely forget.

But what’s really important to me is the notion that they’re there, that the land is rugged and wild enough for bears, cougars and wolves to survive, even prosper. That the places where I go to escape the trappings of civilization are as primitive and pure today as they were a century ago when wolves freely roamed across Michigan. Across all of it.

“The 23-pound male pup was in good health. An identification tag was placed in the ear and the pup was released on-site unharmed.”