Backpacking in Pictured Rocks along Lake Superior delivers views of some of the Midwest's best scenery

Munising, Michigan — Thunder echoed in the distance as I lay in my hammock at the Beaver Creek campground in Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. 

Great, I thought. Nothing like a nasty Lake Superior storm to ruin my mom’s second-ever backpacking trip and my sister’s first time seeing Lake Superior. So much for gales of November. The gales had come in mid-September, before the leaves had even changed. 

As the wind whipped through the trees around me and rain pitter-pattered against the tarp above, I realized it wasn’t thunder but waves bashing against the shore and echoing off the sandstone cliffs below our campsite.

It was a small comfort, since we still had another two days and 15 miles to go on our backpacking trip through the lakeshore. Backpacking is a hard-enough endeavor, and a thunderstorm would have made it even more difficult for us all. 

But that’s how backpacking and Lake Superior go. You must take the good — unmatched natural beauty and solitude — with the bad — discomfort and disagreeable weather, which in this case helped create that beauty in the first place. 

Best stretch of Pictured Rocks 

I had been planning this backpacking trip for a while. My mom got hooked on backpacking after I took her to the Porcupine Mountains last year, and I promised we’d do another trip this year, with my younger sister as well.  

Pictured Rocks seemed like the perfect spot for our trip, with some of the best scenery in the Midwest, plenty of backcountry campsites and moderate terrain that's challenging enough for experienced hikers but doable by a beginner. I chose mid-September hoping the weather would be cool but not cold, the bugs would mostly be gone and the leaves would be starting to change.

Lake Superior's other national lakeshore, the Apostle Islands off the Bayfield peninsula, might get more attention in Wisconsin for its red sandstone cliffs and sea caves, but Pictured Rocks' mineral-stained 200-foot cliffs, tropical-like turquoise waters and white-sand beaches deserve just as much admiration. Plus, it’s much better suited to backpacking than the Apostles, with more than 100 miles of trails and a regular shuttle service that makes it easier to do a one-way trek.

Visitors have taken notice: More than 815,000 people visited Pictured Rocks in 2018, compared to the Apostles Islands' 252,920 visitors that year.

The North Country Trail winds 42 miles through the length of Pictured Rocks, with backcountry campsites every few miles and incredible views of Lake Superior every few feet in some sections. The trail has long, flat stretches plus some challenging climbs and descents. Surfaces range from hard-packed dirt to mud to soft sand.

I picked a section that I thought would offer the best scenery and that we could cover in a long weekend, from Twelvemile Beach to Miners Castle.

“That’s the best stretch,” another backpacker on our shuttle confirmed as we drove east from Miners Castle early Friday morning. She also confirmed our first campsite, at Beaver Creek, was a good one. She was right — it was a great campsite, with big, flat, pine-sheltered sites and easy access to water in Beaver Creek, even with angry Lake Superior bashing the shore nearby.

We set off for that campsite from Twelvemile in good spirits, despite a light rain that had us covering our packs and donning rain jackets.  

The trail wound through a dense forest, still a vibrant green despite the fall chill in the air. We’d travel through a variety of forests on our three-day trek, from dense forest with American beech, maple, yellow birch, eastern hemlock and white pine to more open northern coniferous boreal forest of spruce, northern white cedar and tamarack.  

About a quarter mile in, we got our first view of mighty Lake Superior. But better views were to come and day one was mostly about the woods, as the trail veered back inland and into the Beaver Basin Wilderness, a 12,000-acre area of woods and wetlands that stretches along 13 miles of Lake Superior.

But it’s not all wild. Halfway through the wilderness, we passed an abandoned car that looked like a turquoise 1940s Plymouth, with initials scrawled on its frame dating to the '80s. The area was logged in the late 19th century before it became a national lakeshore — the country's first — in 1966.

The abandoned car was a gem we wouldn’t have found if we had only day-hiked to the park's hot spots, like Chapel Rock or Miners Castle, or kayaked along the shore below.  

We saw another backcountry gem the next day as we neared the western end of the wilderness and caught a glimpse of Spray Falls.  

Later, at Chapel Rock, a day hiker saw our backpacking gear and asked where we had come from and if we’d seen the waterfall.  

“That’s one of my favorite spots,” he said. “You can’t get to it very easily, which is what makes it special.” 

The waterfall, which spits off a cliff and drops 70 feet directly into Lake Superior, was especially robust thanks to the rain we had endured the night before.

Chapel Rock to Miners Castle 

Thankfully, that rain and wind never developed into a full thunderstorm, and some sun and blue sky appeared as we set out from Beaver Creek on our second day, just in time for us to take in our first views of the park’s famous cliffs.  

The first sighting was a reminder of how dangerous those cliffs can be. A huge chunk of yellow sandstone lay at the sandy-beach base of the cliff it had fallen from. In August, a photographer captured video of another large section of cliff that fell into Lake Superior near a group of kayakers. Thankfully, nobody was injured.

In 2018, however, a hiker died after she fell from a 200-foot cliff while taking photos. The North Country Trail often travels within yards of the cliff's edge, and lookouts and social trails veer even closer. The soft sandstone erodes easily, so it's best to stay on the trail and keep a safe distance from the edge. 

We maintained our distance as we followed the trail along the cliff's edge and got to the beginning of the main stretch of the park’s signature colorful cliffs, just east of Spray Falls. 

The hike became more challenging as we climbed up and down the cliffs, but the views would only get better from there to Chapel Rock, one of the park’s most famous formations. 

The pedestal-like formation of layered sandstone, which is separated from the mainland, gets its name from early European explorers who called it La Chapelle, for its resemblance to a chapel. 

An interpretive sign at the rock includes a journal entry by Charles Penny, a member of an 1840 expedition led by Douglass Houghton that explored Lake Superior’s southern shore: 

“We breakfasted at La Chapelle (Chapel Rock) this morning of Pictured Rocks. La Chapelle is a portion of these rocks; the softer parts of which have been worn away, leaving it in the shape of a costly temple. … This roof is about six feet thick and not at all leaky. There is some earth on the roof, and out of the centre grows a large straight pine for a spire. But I believe there is no bell growing there as yet.” 

The white pine is still on the top of the "chapel." The park service estimates the tree is about 250 years old, and its roots are the only thing connecting the rock and tree to the mainland. There used to be an archway, but that collapsed in the 1940s. 

The rock and its hardy pine are a popular day-hiking spot, about three miles from a parking lot. The area west of the rock features a beautiful, white sand beach.

The area was buzzing with visitors when we arrived around 3 p.m. on Saturday afternoon, but most visitors were gone by the time we had finished setting up camp at a site set back from the trail among pines.  

All of the backcountry campgrounds in Pictured Rocks have a handful of campsites, including at Chapel Beach. We arrived early enough to have our pick, and site six afforded some privacy, set away from the other sites with its own bear box, plus easy access to vault toilets and the beach for water. 

The only drawback to camping at Chapel Beach was that left a long final day — 9.4 miles back to our car at Miners Castle.  

But that final day also brought the best views of the park’s cliffs, and because we were hiking west early in the day, the sun rising behind us bathed the colorful rocks in gorgeous golden light.  

The rocks get their name from the minerals that stain the sandstone in shades of red (iron), blue and green (copper), brown and black (manganese) and white (limonite). As groundwater seeps out of the porous sandstone, it leaves behind the minerals.  

Lake Superior waves bash at the soft stone from below, creating formations like the arch on Grand Portal Point, which we inched closer to as we hiked west. Part of the arch collapsed about 10 years ago, filling in some of the arch with rock.  

Grand Portal Point is a large open slab of sandstone, and since we were there early, we had it all to ourselves for photos.  

The views of the park's rocks continued, including a look at the Indian Head formation, a point shaped like the profile of a Native American, and Lover’s Leap, a small archway. 

Before Miners Beach, the trail veered back into forest before descending a wooded bluff alongside exposed sandstone and an unnamed waterfall. Another hiker told us it was unofficially called Potato Patch Falls (for the campground above it) and that it’s usually not running this time of year. But we saw and heard portions of the cascade as it tumbled down the rocky slope on our own way down to Miners Beach.  

The beach is a popular spot for launching kayaks, which we had spotted throughout the day alongside tour boats from Munising, on the park’s western end. Boats are a terrific way to see the lakeshore’s cliffs, but they are even more at the mercy of Lake Superior than we were, and we had not seen any watercraft on our first two days, when the lake was churning up big waves.  

But by Sunday the lake had calmed, and kayakers dotted Miners Beach as we hoofed through the sand above it. Of all the beaches we passed, Miners was the best and biggest.

We trudged through the soft sand and reached our final challenge: a climb back up a wooded bluff to Miners Castle. There, paved trails lead to overlooks of the formation that got its name from two columns that resemble turrets (one collapsed in 2006).

It was a tough final quarter-mile, but that was the cost for the beauty we experienced over the past few days — the kind of beauty you appreciate more if you’ve worked for it and immersed yourself in it. 

At Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, beauty comes at a cost, but the payoff is worth it. 

If you visit Pictured Rocks 

The park’s famous sandstone cliffs stretch for 15 miles from Sand Point, near Munising, to just east of Spray Falls.  

You can see the cliffs from the lake on a narrated tour with Pictured Rocks Cruises. The 2.5-hour tours are offered mid-May to mid-October and start at $38 for adults (age 13 and older). Cruises depart from 100 City Park Drive, Munising. They often sell out; buy your tickets online in advance. For more, call (906) 387-2379 or see picturedrocks.com. 

To see the cliffs from land, you can hike along the North Country Trail (formerly the Lakeshore Trail). One of the best stretches is between Chapel Beach and Mosquito Beach. That’s accessible on a 10-mile loop from the Chapel parking lot that includes a look at Chapel Falls, Chapel Rock and Mosquito Falls. The loop is popular in the summer and the parking lot fills up quickly. 

Miners Castle is the only cliff area accessible by car, with a short paved, accessible trail that leads to overlooks of the area’s namesake rock formation. 

Pets are not permitted on the North Country Trail. They are allowed on the paved trails around Miners Castle, Miners Beach and a few other areas in the park.  

Bugs, including mosquitoes, ticks and biting flies (that are not deterred by repellent), can be bad from late May to September. 

The park has three rustic drive-in campgrounds (no water or sewer hook-ups; vault toilets and well water) that cost $20 per night. 

There are 14 backcountry campgrounds every few miles along the North Country Trail, each with multiple sites and bear boxes or poles. Most of the campgrounds have wilderness latrines and shared campfire rings. You must have a permit for a specific campground; at the campground, you can choose any site, marked by a numbered post. One to six people and two tents are permitted at each site; if you have a bigger group, you’ll need to reserve multiple sites or a group site. Permits are $15 plus $5 per person per night. Dispersed camping is not permitted. 

Altran (Algers County Transit) runs a shuttle for backpackers and hikers. It makes daily stops at the Sand Point Ranger Station, Munising Falls Visitor Center, Miners Castle, the Melstrand Store south of Chapel Beach, Little Beaver Lake, Twelvemile Campground, Hurricane River, Log Slide Scenic Overlook and Grand Sable Visitors Center. It’s best to park your car at your end point and ride the shuttle to the beginning of your hike. Advance reservations are required and should be made at least a week in advance. The shuttle costs $25 per person. For more, call (906) 387-4845 or see altranbus.com/backpacker. 

Note that the park is in the eastern time zone, so plan accordingly for shuttles and boat tours. Also note that there is almost no cellphone service in the park. 

The Munising Falls Visitor Center is at 1505 Sand Point Road, Munising. It’s open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily mid-May through the end of September and with more limited hours in the off-season. The national lakeshore is free to visit. 

For more, call (906) 387-3700 or see nps.gov/piro. 

Contact Chelsey Lewis at clewis@journalsentinel.com. Follow her on Twitter at @chelseylew and @TravelMJS and Facebook at Journal Sentinel Travel.