Waterloo-Pinckney Trail

Hike Name: Waterloo-Pinckney Trail Location: southeast MI Length: 36 Submitted by: Cary Date Submitted: 8/31/09 Rating:	more Michigan trail reviews Michigan national parks Michigan state parks
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Description
The Waterloo end of this trail is HORRIBLY marked. There are numerous forks in the trail where the marker is hard to find, or missing entirely. There are a lot of horse-riding and biking trails in the area, so it would be very easy to wind up hiking the wrong trail. Several places where the trail crosses the road, the trail doesn't continue directly across the street, and you have to hike down the road for a good while before the trail picks up again, and that isn't clearly marked either. Lots of fallen trees across the trail, some of which have clearly been there for a long time, since there are paths cut going around the trees. A lot of the trail is loose sand, cut up by horses on the same trail, which is very hard to hike over. We met lots of horse riders on the trail. You have to move of the trail for them to walk by, and the horses get nervous, so you have to talk to them. BUT, when you're not getting lost or trying to coax nervous horses, the trail is very pretty. Lots of wildflowers, we saw some snakes and frogs, you could probably see some birds.

We actually didn't finish the whole hike. We stopped at the Sugarloaf campground. The map says there's a rustic campground right on the trail, but as far as we could tell, that's a lie. You have to go a half mile off the trail to the Horseman's Camp, but you're not supposed to camp there, since it's only for people with horses (unless there's a part of it for hikers, but we couldn't find it). It's another half mile to the entrance of the Sugarloaf on the road. That's a modern campground, but they actually have one campsite specifically for backpackers. It's in a little clearing, and separated from the rest of the campground by trees, which is nice.

You can visit Hell, MI while you're there. It's only a few miles from the Pinckney park headquarters. Dam Site Inn - burger ok, water yucky, get a beer or soda.

Directions to Hike
To do the whole 36-miles, you start at Big Portage Lake day use area, which is off Seymour Rd. Google doesn't have an address for it.

Contact Information
Pinckney: 734-426-4913

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