Emerging Fall Color
This past week we transitioned from summer into fall. The sudden emergence of more significant autumn foliage at the higher elevations underlined the change. Before I provide the evidence from our Tuesday through Friday hikes, I have to note that Monday was largely a work day centered on turning out minutes for Tuesday night’s Hancock Trails Club board meeting, buying new smart phones, and chairing the Chassell Historical Organization board meeting that evening.
Before turning in for the night I happened to check my phone and noted reports that northern lights were present. I wandered down to the lake just before midnight and, sure enough, the aurora was pulsing in the northern and northeastern sky. I stayed to watch the show for about thirty minutes and tried out my new phone’s night photography capabilities.
Tuesday we headed down to the Canyon Falls roadside park to pick up the North Country Trail heading westward along the Sturgeon River to the falls and then on to the Plumbago Creek bridge.
The river was definitely as low as we have seen it for some time, but the falls still had a beautiful appearance!
Many visitors to Canyon Falls make the mistake of turning back after they see the falls. A visit here is not complete unless you continue westward on the trail along the rim of the canyon. Aside from being quite a geologic spectacle, there are several drops in the river with some over slides in the rock and this straighter drop below.
The steep narrow gorge continues until you reach the slide fall below where the river flattens out.
From this point, the trail follows along the river for a short distance before working its way up the side of the river valley into what becomes more of a hardwood forest. While not rivaling what we would see three days later, we did run into some pockets of brilliant color among the sugar maple.
We also came across this rather unusual shaped tree as we made our way through the forest above the river valley.
After another mile we reached Plumbago Creek bridge. You may recall from a couple of my issues in July that this is the bridge we were involved with replacing. This is where we made the turn to head back to the roadside park on US 41.
On our hike back we took a detour down to the Sturgeon River where a large island is located in the river. The water was shallow enough on the north side of the island that we stepped across on rocks. We peeked around to look at the river’s passage on the south side of the island where, much to our surprise, we saw a porcupine fording the river. Unfortunately, I did not have my phone ready for what would have been an outstanding photo opportunity!
You can see my GoPro video from this little greater than four-mile hike on the Remote Workforce Keweenaw YouTube channel at this link:
After completing the hike I would have just enough time to drop off Julie and swing by the Co-op in Hancock to grab a sandwich to scarf down in the parking lot at the chalet just ahead of the Hancock Trails Club board meeting.
Wednesday afternoon we were back on the North Country Trail, but this time we headed eastward along the Sturgeon River from a point out east of the Humpback Bridge. We hiked out to the point where the trail turns northward from the river and came back to where we started. The temperature was well above average for late September which made for yet another pleasurable hike in the woods!
The fall color was coming on, but still no where near the level we would see a couple days later.
There are so many cool small features on this hike that I could get carried away featuring only those. I will share just this one cool beaver-chewed stump that is right alongside the trail.
One of the cooler features on this hike is the four-pronged white cedar!
You can check out my GoPro video from this hike on the Remote Workforce Keweenaw YouTube channel at this link:
We got back home from our hike in time for me to drive to Houghton to run 3.9 miles on the MTU Trails with the Keweenaw Running Group.
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