Matt and I were getting the itch today to blow off our responsibilities and go for a hike. The choice between doing work and having fun is always pretty easy, so we left our responsibilities behind and took off on a short 3 mile hike with our dog, Rainy, at Bare Bluff. We headed out toward Lake Superior around 1:30 pm. The bluff is located on the eastern side of the Keweenaw Peninsula about half a mile off of Lake Superior. To get to the trailhead you have to drive about 4 miles down a seasonal road that is posted private at the beginnnig (but isn’t). The road was recently widened, ditched, and graded making the trailhead accessible in pretty much any type of car as long as there’s no snow on the ground and you’re willing to drive slow. We started our hike from the parking lot for the Bare Bluff-Grinell memorial trail just out of sight of the Lake. For as long as we’ve lived up here and as often as we’ve explored the Keweenaw, neither Matt nor I had ever hiked this trail. We were happy to find a very nice bit of single track that wove in and out of fallen trees, along the bottom side of cliffs, and up a narrow, steep ravine that housed a small stream. On our way up we met 3 other hikers who were coming down from the top of the bluff and had also never been there and were quite impressed by the view from the top. The trail wound up and up and up and came out at the top of the cliff that we walked past the base of earlier. The view from atop Bare Bluff was very nice and may have even been classified as stunning if the sun had been shining and there were a few more leaves on the trees; it was a classic Lake Superior view that makes you wonder how you could ever leave a place like this.. At the top we took a few minutes to appreciate the view, take some pictures, and climb a tree before heading back down the other side of the loop.
The hike back to the car was pleasant and fairly easy, sloping gradually downwards without the steep sections and rock scrambles that were present on the ascent. At the end of the hike all of us were feeling pretty good about our time outside. The dog was all tuckered out after sprinting back and forth along the trail and spent the entire car ride home asleep on my lap. Matt and I were both happy to have gotten out for a hike, no matter how short, and to have had a chance to stretch our legs and shake the daily stresses of work, school, and home-ownership.
If you want to see more photos from our hike you can check them out at our picasa site.
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A Superior Adventure » Winter Kayaking On Lake Superior Says:
[...] one point, rising hundreds of feet above the Lake. It was cool to see it from the water line after hiking it so recently. Montreal Falls marked the turn around point as it poured down into the lake. We sat for a while [...]
