Planned Hike – High Country Pathway (HCP) in Michigan

As much as I’d like to get away from Michigan for a real hike, it’s not in the cards right now. However, I will have a week off and plan on hiking somewhere semi local. There is an 80 mile loop in the Pigeon River Country State Forest that is supposed to be the closest thing to wilderness in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula. It’s called the High Country Pathway. I’ve hiked a 5-6 mile section here before, but it ended up being more of a fishing trip after we found a nice spot along the Pigeon River where we pulled out several Rainbow and Brook Trout. The trail is not spectacular by any means, but it’s really close to home at only 3.5 hours. The Pigeon River Country State Forest may be best known for being home to the largest herd of free-roaming elk east of the Mississippi River. Hopefully I’m lucky enough to spot one myself.

It took a long time to find a gpx file online of the HCP. After loading the GPX into Basecamp, I saw that the total elevation gain was only 6200ft for the entire trail. Honestly, I thought it would be less. Still, that’s nothing.  I’m going to try and do this 80 mile loop in 4 days. I normally take a ton of pictures on my hikes, but that’s when there is beautiful scenery everywhere. I don’t think I will have much to photograph on this trip, so it will be interesting to see how many miles I can cover in a day.

I could only find about 3 trip reports from those who have hiked the entire HCP. Not many people hike it. I hear it’s supposed to be pretty wild, for the Lower Peninsula anyways. So, I’m gonna check it out, and I’ll get a trip report up soon enough.