McCormick Track Adventure (west of Marquette)

On the way home from the Cuyuna Gem and Mineral Show, I stopped by Marquette to visit with friends, Helen and Jim.  Helen and I did a six mile, very rugged hike in the McCormick Track.  On the nine mile drive into the trailhead, Helen saw two Moose; I saw the second one. Previously I have only seen one other moose in the U.P. wild.  The hike was a huge challenge since there were many sections of the trail we had to post-hole through deep slushy snow.  Other sections of the trail were flooded, which caused us to have to scramble up, over, and down rock cliffs.  We may have been the first hikers on the trail this year since we didn't see any footprints.  It was awesome.

The "paved road" you drive from US41 to access the white deer lake trail is not in good condition.  But it is a necessary drive to get to the trailhead.

I tried to get a photo of the moose, but the camera (which was on automatic) focused on the raindrops.  In the blurred photo below the red arrow points to the moose.

We walked the McCormick track trail, not the North Country Trail that goes through the same parking lot.

Rock cliffs are everywhere....

Scary river crossing.  The current was quite fast.  With my bad ankles I was very tentative, Helen was like a mountain goat.

Beaver activity....

Although the McCormick track was saved from loggers, there are not a lot of big trees along the path due to the swampy ecosystem, but there are some.

After a tough three miles we finally reached the area where the McCormick family had their houses and other buildings.  Just the foundations remain....

One of the houses was on the island....

View from lunch view...

We hiked the trail shown on the bottom left of the map (yellow line).