Michigan BLUE, September/October 2006

It’s amazing what a few fallen leaves can do. They turn a hill into a mountain, a climb where you have to prod your kids during July into an adventurous summit in October.

All this because the foliage changes color, then begins to drop, and suddenly there’s a view at the top. Autumn is the season to climb Michigan’s little mountains, any highpoint that gives children a sense of accomplishment, a place to enjoy a well-deserved snack and a glimpse at the horizon.

A highpoint like Mount Nebo.

The little mountain is the half-way point of a four-mile loop that combines four short trails in Wilderness State Park, a 8,286-acre park west of Mackinaw City at the tip of the mitt. The first two trails, Red Pine and Hemlock, are interpretive paths with 30 numbered posts that correspond to a brochure available from the park office. You pick up the loop at a trailhead sign just south of the Pines Campground and begin by following Red Pine Trail past Big Stone Pond and then through a cedar swamp. The wettest sections of the trail have been planked, and this is fall, so you don’t have to worry about deer flies chasing you through the woods. Within a half mile, the soggy trail becomes a sandy path, the terrain changes from flat to rolling ridges, the habitat from wetlands to a red pine forest. At post No. 12 you reach the crest of the ridge and can look down into the woods on one side and at a small pond on the other.

After 1.25 miles Red Pine Trail ends, and you continue the loop along Hemlock Trail. Time to climb. Hemlock is a steady ascent, just steep enough so in a half mile young hikers know they’ve reached their lofty destination: Mount Nebo. The top is marked by a set of large stone blocks, the remains of a firetower that Civilian Conservation Corps built in the mid 1930s and used until 1949.

During the summer, the 720-foot Mount Nebo is not much of a peak; leaves obscure the views in every direction. But in the fall you can stand on the stone foundation and look out at the surrounding parkland or gaze north at the Straits of Mackinac. Hemlock Trail continues with a steep descent off the backside of Mount Nebo and then bottoms out in a stand of hemlock. Some of the pines are more than 200 years old. From Hemlock Trail you continue north on Nebo Trail for a quarter mile and head west on the park road for a mile to pick up Big Stone Trail. This short trail will lead you into the woods and back to the trailhead along Big Stone Creek, active with beavers.

Little mountains, big pines, intriguing beavers. Without a doubt, Michigan’s hiking season peaks in the fall.