Wilderness Diary



Spring & Summer 1998

April 1998

The Lost Trapper's Shack


Late in the winter of 1983, Jerry Yaklyvich brought me to an old trapper's dwelling dug into the bank of Ash Creek, just west of Silver City. We walked westward from a point on the "Gaines Logging Road" until we came to a stovepipe protruding from the snow. The entrance to the building was over the edge of the bank, facing a grand view of the Ash Creek gorge. Crawling through a small door, we explored the cramped interior of the shack. The interior walls were reinforced with split cedar logs. The size of the whole place was probably four by eight feet, without even enough headroom to stand up, yet it had a kitchen area, a tiny woodstove and a cot for a bed.


I wondered who lived there. Was he really a trapper? What was his life's story? I appreciated his choice of a homesite: remote, quiet, and with a great view. While visiting, I photographed the exterior, interior and the expanse of the gorge view. This was a place I thought I'd always remember, and would visit again and again. Well, I didn't. I hardly thought about it until the winter of 1995-96, when a curiosity about Ash Creek in general made me remember the trapper's shack.

What follows is a lesson learned about exploration. After trying for nearly three years to relocate the trapper's shack, it still eludes me. The quest has become a frustration, an obsession. But in calmer moments I realize that in the process of trying to find the shack, I have seen a lot of the wonders of an little-visited stream: the logging railroad crossings, the huge beaver ponds, the dense spruce forests, and the splendrous gorges of it's upstream waters. I've gotten some great exercise skiing it's course.

This April I recruited the help of my exploring buddies Sara and Jim. We walked the Ash up and down for miles; one person walking the top of the bank, one half way down, one on the floodplain looking for the trappers shack. Still, no luck, but we found logging artifacts along the way. Below is a photo of Sara comparing my 1983 photograph with the view from one of the promontories we visited.

May 1998

Rockland "Bat Cave"


The Meade Mine in the Porcupine Mountains is winter home to more than 10,000 hibernating bats. Park Interpreter Bob Sprague and I have been there and have seen them. Last year we found a much larger mine shaft near Rockland, and figured the same would also be true there. We spent a quiet early spring evening waiting and watching for swarms of bats. Swarms were never seen: a dozen bats were the most we saw at once. One night's observation is inconclusive as to whether this shaft is a bat hibernacula, though. But it sure is one big hole in the ground, shown below:



Victoria Gorge

Beneath U.P. Power's Victoria Dam is a splendid gorge cut into the Jacobsville Sandstone. Huge cliffs with spectacular overhangs rim the Gorge. Beautiful but dangerous. Visit only in times of low water.

May & July 1998

The Hole In The Wall


From Norwich Bluff (see Fall & Winter 1997/1998), I spied a "hole in the wall" on Whisky Hollow Bluff, an excavation into the cliff face, a mine shaft from many days gone by. Jim Gallie and I spent a day this spring trying to locate it, but we were unsuccessful in seeing it from the cliff top, and we gave up trying to find it from below when we found ourselves mired in a sea of poison ivy. We helped Cosmo the dog up the cliff and left it for another trip.

When we examined more closely the photos I took from Norwich Bluff, we were ready for another attempt to locate "The Hole In The Wall", and we brought the whole Silver City gang along to witness the expected triumph. Well, it's a long story, but here are some tidbits: John Coggins the Pirate saw it first from the bottom of the cliff, expecting to find treasure inside. It was a treacherous climb until the last few feet, then it got lots harder. The three others with me said, "It's your Hole In The Wall, Dan, you go first". I finally did, then we all enjoyed the view of Norwich Bluff from the entrance, pictured above. The rest of the gang were treated to a spactacular sunset while enduring the buzz of the "Hole" explorers.

Adventures up here don't get better than this.

Photos of the climb and the sunset...



To Be Continued...

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