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BACKPACKING: Michigan Manistee River Trail & North Country Trail Loop

Byalewyfe
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    A man looks at his phone thoughtfully, and a large paper map spread out in the back of an suv. It is night and a streetlight shines in the back of the vehicle along with the overhead light.
    We’re not lost. Definitely. (We weren’t, but had to detour around some construction and change our route).
    inflating Big Agnes sleeping pads in the dark in the back of our Pathfinder, preparing to sleep in the car at the trailhead
    Home sweet Pathfinder… getting to the trailhead well after dark means sleeping in the back of the car. Very… cosy?
    A man drinks a cup of coffee while looking at a diner menu. His tee shirt says, "Public Land Owner".
    Sleeping in the car means you earned a diner breakfast before the trail? We had to stop for fishing licenses and this was on the way back, sorta. Worth it.
    a photo of two diner breakfasts, biscuits and gravy and corned beef hash and toast, framed with coffee cups and a ketchup bottle.
    Corned beef hash and biscuits and gravy. Not half bad (definitely hit the spot, especially before a weekend of Mountain House and jerky).
    Ghost Pipe plant (Monotropa uniflora) growing from the leaf litter in the forest
    Ghost Pipe plant (Monotropa uniflora) growing from the leaf litter in the forest. Yes it’s blurry. IT’S A SPOOKY GHOST OK
    two smiling hikers take a selfie in the Manistee forest, pointing at the trees behind them
    two backpackers sitting at the top of a hill. One looks at a map, the other checks their phone and has a wet buff bandana on their head to cool down
    Stopping to cool down and check the maps after a long climb with heavy packs
    A screenshot of a graph of googlefit data for Saturday's hike... 30,879 steps
    A trailer loaded with furs? Ya sure you betcha.

    Manistee County Tourism Guide to the River Trail

    K. has a trip report for us about our long weekend doing the full Manistee River loop trail, starting on the North Country Trail side. 

    “Just remember that going north from the Upper River Road trailhead it’s seven miles until the next water. That climb at the start is a real beast; at times it felt like I could lean forward and put my hand on the trail in front of me. Finding a camping spot on the Manistee side on a summer weekend can be real pain, a logjam even. I did the loop in 2019 and I hear it’s only gotten worse. We chose to do it in three days so we could camp more and do some fishing, and Sunday afternoon and Monday we had the Manistee trail almost completely to ourselves. If we ever go back it won’t be on a weekend at all.

    There are a couple good camping spots on the NCT side just before the suspension bridge and in retrospect we should have stopped there for our first night. Again, our plan was to do it in three days, so ~9 miles a day out of the ~27 total that make up the loop. The Manistee side was so full we ended up hiking 13 or 14 miles on day 1 before we found a spot to camp, fully half the trail. Made day 3 underwhelming, but felt awful because we were low on bug spray and the mosquitoes are quite bad between Red Bridge and the Upper River Road trailhead parking lot (which is where we started). That’ll be the start for you, the trail in that section goes through what is essentially a bog before the climb up I mentioned.

    Keep your dogs close on the NCT side – there are long very narrow portions with almost no shoulder and what at times fees like a sheer drop. That was the trail that taught me my boots were totally shot, and the first time I ever wished I had trekking poles.” -K.

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