The Skeleton Coast: Excerpts from a South Shore Paddling Expedition
Guest Writer Tim Gallaway, part 2/3
The Skeleton Coast - 11 years apart
Saxon Harbor, WI to Mackinaw City, MI (2021)
Grand Marais to Whitefish Bay
Days 20-21 of 30
Back in 2010, when I was a relatively new paddler and thought I was pretty hot shit, I decided to paddle from Grand Marais, MI to Sault Ste. Marie, MI in early May.
I had a solid week of paddling before the guiding season began and I would have to head to work.
It was cold and windy the whole time. Really, quite a miserable trip conditions wise that ended with me washing ashore in Whitefish Bay a few days later because I had better stamina than judgment. I ended that trip early after 3 days of paddling and sheepishly walked up to the first cabin that someone waved to me from and asked to use their phone.
That trip set off a bit of a mini-curse for me. For 2 years after that it seemed like every overnight solo trip I did ended in me having to call for a pickup before my set destination. In pretty much all of these cases it was for poor judgment, deciding to paddle on even as sea state deteriorated that would leave me stuck somewhere.
I broke the curse a few years later when I did my first multi-week expedition out to the edge of the sea in Quebec,and I did it by making good decisions and by paddling smart. I learned the weather and tides, and took care of my body as I traveled day in and day out. I became comfortable with sitting out a day on shore due to weather or bad conditions. I didn’t do it by being a stronger paddler, but by being a smarter one, one who relies more on good technique and mindful strokes than speed and raw power.
In 2021, it was now 11 years and a few months from that first big trip on Lake Superior. I like to think that I have grown as a paddler. I might not have the same strength and flexibility I once had but I know I have learned a lot of things in all the years between these two adventures.
I paddled out of Grand Marais before the town had woken up– I had barely woken up for that matter. I had paddled the entire length of Pictured Rocks, Miner’s Beach to Grand Marais, the day before and I was still a bit worn out.
The general fatigue of a few weeks of constant motion had set in. The morning was calm and cool with an offshore wind keeping the waves from building. It was a moody morning, threatening light sprinkles all day. It was like paddling on a pond, unlike my first trip where I had strong headwinds for 3 days. I let myself fall into a smooth cadence. Nothing fast, just cruising, in no real rush to make it anywhere.
The shoreline between Grand Marais and Whitefish Bay isn’t all that remarkable, making it feel like a bit of a fever dream paddling because the shore doesn’t change much, and you can pass an hour in a bit of a mindless stupor.
It’s all sand beaches with some cobblestone mixed in, the, entire, way. This stretch of coast’s defining feature is how remote it feels. There are some cabins scattered along the way, and a few rustic state forest campgrounds, and not much else. The main landmarks are the lighthouses.
The Whitefish point lighthouse, at the extreme east end of this section is the most famous and visited, mainly due to its accessibility and shipwreck museum. That, and the romantic/legendary status of the Edmund Fitzgerald shipwreck and its connection to the lighthouse.
This is due in no small part to Gordon Lightfoot’s classic song ‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’ which has essentially become the national anthem of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
The other two lighthouses are more difficult to access by road and often go unknown and unseen by the greater population. I came to the first one, Crisp Point Lighthouse, in the morning of my second day from Grand Marais.
Crisp Point was a ruin a few decades ago. It was going the way of many lighthouses in the Great Lakes, falling into disuse as shipping became less and less dependent on them. With erosion stripping the shoreline away, the lighthouse was in danger of collapsing into the lake.
But in 1991 a group of locals banded together and decided the lighthouse was worth saving and formed the Crisp Point Lighthouse Historical Society. In 1997 they obtained the lease to the light from the county, keeping it from private ownership and got to work . They added limestone blocks to stop erosion up the shore, added walkways over the dunes, and in the time between my first and second visits, established a small museum/gift shop and volunteer lighthouse keeper program.
The second lighthouse I came to was Vermillion Point. Vermillion Point is unlike Crisp Point in almost every way, excepting that it was left unused for years and is just now being refurbished. The lighthouse itself looks more like a house with a tower added to it for the light than the classic standalone tower. Where Crisp Point was sitting right at the water’s edge, Vermillion Point is situated off the water, back from the low lying dune at the edge of the forest.
From the water it would be pretty easy to go past it if you weren’t paying attention. Though it was never a total ruin like Crisp Point, nowadays it feels more isolated, remote. Like a locked up cabin you might stumble upon in the woods. Like someone might return at any moment, but they haven’t.
By the time I reached Whitefish Point later in the afternoon the winds had grown to be strong out of the east and conditions were deteriorating. I was hugging the shore trying to stay in the lee of the land as much as possible. The cabins became more dense, more people were out on the beaches. I was leaving the remote shoreline I had paddled the last day and a half.
Though it was warmer, the conditions felt eerily similar to when I approached the point 11 years ago. I felt the same urge to push on around the point into the open bay. I also felt the anxiety of knowing that pushing on would mean paddling a lee shore with strong winds with no opportunities for camping. I landed at the point on a crowded beach.
Being mid-July at a popular tourist destination it isn’t surprising. Switching from the remote quiet shore to suddenly being gawked at by throngs of tourists can be jarring. I did something I should have done 11 years ago instead of push on; I went for a walk. I walked to where I could get a view of Whitefish Bay.
I was confronted by an expanse of building whitecaps and dark storm clouds. There would be no second guessing this decision. I was staying put. And I was fine with that.
I had some friends nearby that I was planning on visiting. If the weather had been good I would have stealth camped out at the point and paddled to their place on the south end of Whitefish bay the next day, but I was going to be stuck for at least a day with the storms that were brewing. I stood on the top of a dune, looking for a place to camp where I wouldn’t be easily noticed. Standing there I was fighting the same feeling I had all those years ago. I wanted to push on, I wanted to move. Wind and waves and getting washed ashore be damned!
What was I doing? I knew better than this. The only thing driving me was my own ego.
Last time I let myself be pushed by expectations. I wasn’t going to let that get me into trouble again. Moving used to be my only goal but over the years I came to realize that the slow moments were the ones that really made an adventure special. Sure, big water and fast current is exciting and makes a good story but the times that are remembered are the quiet ones, the ones sitting on shore as the fog rolls in or sharing a drink with a stranger in a waterfront pub. I am still not good at sitting still for too long, but I have gotten better at being still when I do slow down. I was going to take a slow day and stay on shore, my body needed the rest and I needed the stillness more so than the building conditions on the other side of the point.
With a few minutes of sitting still and relaxing into the plan of staying put I sent a handful of text messages. Why would I decide to sit and stew in my tent for a rainy day when the advancements in cellular technology would let me communicate with people I knew just down the shore? These were my friends, they knew I was close and would be stopping by in a day or two. Why was I isolating myself? In making a good judgment call I was skipping over the part about enjoying an extra day with my friends.
Back on my first trip, I didn’t consider it until I had no other choice. I could get picked up here and enjoy a weather day amongst people that I liked and cared about instead of huddled in my tent reading and waiting. There were no rules that I couldn’t get picked up and dropped back off. This was my trip, I could make it whatever I wanted it to be. I think back on that first trip I had been reading too many reports of legends in the kayaking world doing trips in Alaska or Labrador or around Ireland and had it in my head that there was just a time to paddle rough water and you just dealt with it and kept going. That was the template that I had formed for how a kayak trip should go, and I was just wrong.
An hour later I was sitting on the porch of the museum gift shop waiting for my friend to pick me up. The rain had started after the museum had closed and I was the only person left out at the point. With the rain coming down and the wind picking up I didn’t have the dread of having to set up camp to handle a big rain storm. Instead I was excited. Good company and food and a warm bed were awaiting me. This was the best decision I had made in a long time.
Check out Skeleton Coast the video on Tim Gallaway’s YouTube, Kayak to the Sea. To catch the next installment from Tim’s South Shore kayak expedition, become a free or paid subscriber below.
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Skeleton Coast, the video
Guest Writer Tim Gallaway
Tim began his kayaking career as a guide and ACA instructor at Woods & Water Ecotours in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan when he was in college. He cut his rough water teeth on the rocky shores of Lake Superior and Lake Huron and quickly took to Greenland style paddling. In the summer of 2018 Tim traveled to Greenland to compete in the National Qajaq Championships and has a completed vlog series about his travels. In 2021 he completed a personal goal of a paddling expedition along the Michigan shoreline of Lake Superior and Lake Huron and has his sights on bigger expeditions in the next few years.
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