Rock Harbor Trail

Hike Name: Rock Harbor Trail Location: north MI Length: 12.9 Submitted by: Douglas W. Way Date Submitted: 0/0/00 Rating:	more Michigan trail reviews Michigan national parks Michigan state parks
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Description
This is one of two trails from Rock Harbor, the docking point for incoming ships from both Copper Harbor and Houghton Michigan. The first campsite is Three mile which is 2.9 miles from the trail head at Rock Harbor. Along the way there is signage for an interesting detour to Suzy's cave (the island was heavily mined in its early days). Three Mile campground is an excellent place to bed down for the night but quickly fills up as arriving passengers make this their first nights stay. We found this to be more of a problem on our journey back to the harbor then on our start, forcing us to go the additional 2.9 miles to Rock Harbor.
Daisy Farm Campground is another 4.4 miles and a much larger campground. Both legs of the trail are easy to moderate hiking. The third leg of the trip to Moskey Basin is more difficult with constant ascending and decending of rock outcroppings. Difficulty increased during our venture as the rock shed the rain that fell during the night creating mud bogs where there wasn't rock. I fell more then once when stepping from mud onto the rock.
The highlight of the trip was Moskey Basin which is 3.9 miles from Daisy Farm. We arrived at Moskey Basin to see a Moose swimming across the bay in front of our campsite for the evening.
Most of the entire 12.9 miles was clearly marked although vandals had destroyed some of the rock trail markers on the rock outcrop areas. Each campsite had three sided screened shelters available on a first come basis. Water is readily available as about 50% of the trail followed the Lake Superior lakeshore however all water must be filtered !

Directions to Hike
Rock Harbor Trail starts at Rock Harbor which is the Isle Royale National Park dock for the Eastern portion of the isle. Isle Royale is accessable by private boat or via both private concession or National Park operated ships.

Contact Information
Isle Royale National Park, 87 N. Ripley St., Houghton, MI. 49931, (906) 482-0984 or FAX (906) 482-8753

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