A Northwoods Almanac for 10/24 – 11/6/25
Autumn Hikes – Trap Hills, Keweenaw Peninsula, Doering Woods SNA
Is there any better time for hiking than autumn? Mary and I have tried to squeeze in as many hikes as we can before the snow flies, and in the last several weeks, we’ve enjoyed some exceptional forests and topographies.
We managed to twice traverse a section of the North Country Trail within the Trap Hills in the U.P.’s Ottawa National Forest. The Trap Hills lie in the middle of the Gogebic Ridge of Michigan’s Western Upper Peninsula on either side of M-64, just north of Bergland and southeast of the Porcupine Mountains. Rugged trails clamber over steep rock outcroppings with “balds” that provide outstanding views for miles.
Trap is a term for basalt rock, which is a dark, dense, fine-grained igneous rock formed from solidified lava.
The forest varies in the Trap Hills, but may generally be described as mature northern hardwoods dominated by sugar and red maples, eastern hemlocks, red oaks, yellow birches, white pines, and basswoods.
In spring, the lush wildflower display of spring beauties, hepaticas, leeks, trout lilies, and Dutchman’s breeches wows those of us enamored of such beauty.
The North Country Trail winds for 34 miles through the Trap Hills from M-64 to Old Victoria, making this one of the best choices for backpacking in the Upper Midwest. If one combines the Trap Hills section with more North Country Trail on both ends, one can do a hike of 140 miles with only a mile of that hike on public roads.
The North Country Trail has a story of its own worth knowing. It was created in 1980 under the management of the National Park System and currently travels off and on for nearly 2,000 miles from Vermont to North Dakota. In Wisconsin, the NCT traverses only 215 miles across our far northern counties, but in Michigan, it wanders all over the place for over 1,100 miles.
The Trap Hills lie within the UP’s Copper Range, the world’s largest native copper district. By 1850, over a dozen mines were operating in the Trap Hills, the most notable of which were the Norwich Mine and the Forest Mine at Victoria. Over 140 mines were eventually constructed between 1845 and 1968 in the western U.P., hauling out 11 billion (yes, that’s a “B”) pounds of copper.
Native Americans mined copper from pits as early as 5000 BCE, and copper-working continued up until the years of Native American contact with seventeenth-century Europeans.
See the Peter Wolfe Chapter of the North Country Trail for more information on possible hikes in the Trap hills: https://northcountrytrail.org/trail/michigan/pwc/
Keweenaw Peninsula
A week later, we spent three days in the Keweenaw Peninsula north of Houghton-Hancock, an area we truly love for its Lake Superior shorelines and rocky hillscape. We did five hikes, three of which were in utterly different habitats – one along the deep gorge of the Keweenaw Land Trust’s Hungarian Falls Nature Area running down through hemlocks, white pines and hardwoods. A series of impressive waterfalls cascade down the gorge before draining into Torch Lake near the small town of Tamarack City.
The second trail was within an Audubon 405-acre Sanctuary near Lake Bailey. The trail initially travels for a half mile through a dense and quite old white cedar “swamp” that was pretty dry, thank God, and absolutely gorgeous. And then a steep uphill climb ensued over 500 feet up through hardwood forest to views out over the lake.
The third trail ran along old inland sand dunes at the Michigan Nature Association’s Redwyn Dunes Sanctuary located along the Keweenaw’s Great Sand Bay. The 36-acre sanctuary receives the full force of the strong prevailing westerly winds off Lake Superior, and the shoreline has sand dunes up to 100 feet in height above the shoreline. The formation of these stabilized dunes is the result of large deposits of sand which were laid down by strong winds, currents and wave action of Lake Superior. Particularly interesting were the wind-contorted older red pines along the trail.
We love finding new places to explore, and this trip didn’t disappoint.
Doering Woods State Natural Area
A few days later, I hiked with a good friend the 284-acre Doering Woods SNA which occurs within the 3,600-acre Round Lake Semi-Primitive Non-Motorized Area near Pike Lake, and contains the origin and upper reaches of the South Fork of the Flambeau River. This is a beautiful hemlock-hardwoods forest with an excellent component of large super-canopy white pines, many of which measure between 36 and 38 inches diameter breast height – the largest being 43 inches dbh.
The Doering Woods, the legacy of the Otto C. Doering family (Doering was once president of the Izaak Walton League), also features undeveloped shoreline along the South Fork of the Flambeau River. The site has a history of selective cutting, but still contains a surprising number of large super-canopy white pines. The hemlocks range from 16 to 30 inches dbh, not exceptionally large by any means, but very lovely, with a smattering of yellow birch interspersed. While the overall site is not a relict forest, it falls somewhere on the continuum between “mature” and “old”.
Very little hemlock or white pine reproduction is occurring within the stand, with heavily browsed sugar maple and red maple dominating the seedlings and saplings.
The site is managed by the Chequamegon Nicolet National Forest, and was established as a State Natural Area in 2007.
Round Lake Logging Dam
After hiking the Doering Woods SNA, we visited the nearby Round Lake Logging Dam, the only known surviving logging dam in the Upper Midwest. It was renovated from 1992 to 1995 by the Forest Service, Price County Historical Society, and the Friends of the Round Lake Logging Dam.
The dam had been added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1981, but the wooden parts of the dam were rotting. Over 4,000 volunteer hours went into the dismantling and rebuilding of the dam with 140,000 board feet of treated white pine nailed together according to the authorized specifications of 1878 with the original 1876 iron equipment in place.
In 1876, Black River Falls lumberman William T. Price, operating on the South Fork of the Flambeau, directed his crews to construct a flooding and driving dam at the outlet of the South Fork at Round Lake. They eventually constructed a 170-foot structure that ultimately raised the water 10 feet to ensure enough flow to keep the millions of feet of logs moving to mills along the Chippewa and Mississippi Rivers. The flows were extreme – two to four times greater than a 100-year flood!
For the next 30 years, the dam served several owners, including Frederick Weyerhaeuser who purchased the land from Cornell University, one of the original land grant universities, in 1885.
In 1906, the dam and property was sold to Menasha Woodenware Company, which ran the last log drive through the dam in 1909.
In 1911, former Sears, Roebuck & Co. vice-president Otto C. Doering, a dedicated conservationist, purchased the cutover lands, and over the ensuing decades, he brought the property back from the carnage of the cutover era along with attempting to save the dam.
The Doering’s private estate comprising 2,800 acres was sold to the U.S. Government in 1968, so the dam now sits on land owned by Forest Service and is designated as the Round Lake Recreation Area.
To get to the dam from Minocqua at the intersection of Highways 70 and 51, drive about 21 miles and turn right on Shady Knoll Road (FR 144). Go north 2.2 miles, then turn right onto FR 535, go 0.1 miles and turn left into a relatively large, signed parking area for the Round Lake Historic Logging Dam. A fee is required to park here.
Sightings – Grackles!
Really noisy large flocks of common grackles passed through our area in the second and third weeks of October. Their harsh and unmusical calls resounded through the woods on several hikes we did locally, and what they were all squawking about is anybody’s guess.
I’ve never been a fan of grackles, which is, of course, unfair – everything has its place. But common grackles are now among the most significant agricultural pest species in North America, causing millions of dollars in damage to sprouting corn. More important locally, and in our yard, they’ve earned a unhappy reputation for eating other birds' eggs and nestlings, and they occasionally kill and consume adult birds. They’re also bullies at our feeders, with only blue jays able to hold their own. So, they’re not a “good” guy at first glance.
They migrate during the day, usually in mixed-species flocks with red-winged blackbirds, European starlings, brown-headed cowbirds, rusty blackbirds, and less frequently, American robins, congregating at night in communal roosts with these same species.
They’re known to roost in congregations of over one million birds in the lower Mississippi Valley, and I suspect make a racket that can wake the dead.
Celestial Events
We’re getting colder by the day. The average high temperatures are now in the 40’s.
We’re also getting darker by the day. By 11/3, we’re down to 10 hours of sunlight.
For planet watching in November, look after dusk for Jupiter rising in the northeast, and for Saturn high in the southeast. Before dawn, look for Venus extremely low in the southeast and hard to see. Jupiter, however, will be high in the south and easily found.
November’s full moon occurs on 11/5. Called variously the “Ice is Forming Moon” or “Freezing Moon,” this is the closest full moon of the year at 221,817 miles from Earth, and thus the largest and brightest full moon of the year.
Thought for the Week
“Wildness reminds us what it means to be human, what we are connected to rather than what we are separate from.” – Terry Tempest Williams
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