A Cold Introduction to Estivant Pines

Editor’s Note: The newest map from MichiganTrailMaps.com is Estivant Pines Nature Sanctuary, a popular place with hikers in the summer and fall and quite the adventure in the winter, writes Jim DuFresne. Click on the new map below to view a larger version or to downloaded it for a future outing, winter or summer! This one is on us.

By Jim DuFresne

We entered the Estivant Pines Nature Sanctuary on snowshoes but ended up skiing instead of stepping down the slope on the back side of Cathedral Grove Loop.

The slope was so steep we slid uncontrollably through the trees despite the stretched neoprene and crampons attached to our feet. We grabbed at the passing saplings in an effort to break our downhill momentum, but it was to no avail.

We didn’t stop sliding through the deep snow or hooting and hollering until we bottomed out. Then we looked up and immediately forgot about the wild descent.

Towering over us was a giant white pine, a tree that was more than 150 feet tall, probably 400 years old and so thick two of us couldn’t link our arms around it.

It’s hard to imagine a tree stealing your breath like a mountain-top view or a black bear rambling through the woods. But this one did.

We stood and stared.

A Rugged Country of Tall Pines

“It’s rugged country where the pines are; it rises and falls like the back of a big bear,” the late Jim Rooks once told me. “Most people who come to Estivant Pines have never seen trees like that before.”

Rooks hadn’t either until he stumbled onto the pines in 1967. As a naturalist for Fort Wilkins State Park, he was scouring the backcountry for copper mines near the Montreal River when he began encountering one grove of old-growth pines after another.

Three years later he was among the locals protesting the Universal Oil’s decision to log the remaining Estivant Pines. The group contacted the Michigan Nature Association (MNA) and Rooks guided Bertha Daubendiek, the executive director, into the area. They bushwhacked into what is now Memorial Grove, and in one spot, Daubendiek slowly turned in a circle and counted 125 old-growth pines.

 MNA took on the battle to save the forest, organizing locals and others into a “Save The Pines” fundraising campaign, and in 1973 purchased the sanctuary’s original 200. When a logger illegally cut 24 pines from the sanctuary in 1987, MNA staged another fundraising campaign to purchase the remaining groves and add a protective buffer zone around the ancient trees.

Additional acquisitions occurred, and today, Estivant Pines is a 570.5-acre sanctuary that preserves more than 30 groves of old-growth Eastern White Pines. The average age of the towering trees is 240 years but experts say some are probably more than 500 years old, predating the arrival of Christopher Columbus.

Half the Adventure is Getting There

In the summer you can drive to the edge of the sanctuary and then hike a well-marked trail system to view  “pine islands”, scattered groves that range in size from 20 to more than 100 trees.

 In the winter, the outing is not nearly as simple. What is an easy two-mile hike in August becomes a half-day adventure in February that, for many, involves snowshoeing through snow that can be three to four feet deep.

The most common route, and easiest other than hopping on a snowmobile, is to park near the Fanny Hooe Resort on Manganese Road in Copper Harbor and begin by following groomed snowmobile trails.  As the road heads south out of town, it turns into a snowmobile Trail 134 and, within a mile, climbs to the top of a hill where you’ll turn left onto posted Clark Mine Road. 

Follow the signs and stay off to the side of the snowmobile trails as much as possible, and eventually, you’ll reach Burma Road and Trail 135. Turn right to continue on the ungroomed Burma Road past small Estivant Pines signs to the trailhead.  From the resort, It’s roughly 2.5 miles to the trailhead. And 2.5 miles back. 

At the sanctuary, the trail begins as an old logging road that extends south to almost the Montreal River. But branching off to each side are the Cathedral Grove Loop and the Memorial Grove Loop, narrow, winding paths that steeply climb and descend the surrounding ridges and cliffs. Even if we did pack in cross-country skis, I can’t imagine skiing either loop.

With snowshoes, we steadily threaded our way through the forest, keeping one eye out for the next blue trail marker and the other for towering white pines. We were like birders, only tree-watching.

In the winter, it was easy to see into the forest around us and catch a glimpse of dark trunks between the smaller birch, maples, and oaks. We would then leave the trail to discover another cluster of giant pines, with roots embedded in the deep snow and boroughs reaching for the sky.

Inevitably, we would stand in the middle of this “cathedral” and stare at the heavens, thanking all who made it possible for these giants to keep growing. When our necks began to ache, we would march on, looking for another grove of towering trees.