Derrick Ray Henagan, missing since August 4, 2008
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By

Michael A. Neiger

with thanks to Gail Staisil

Page Contents:


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Introduction

 
  Snowy pines in Chris' country. Click on photo for high-resolution imagery. (Photo courtesy of Chris Hallaxs' digital archives)

This forensic behavioral profile of Christopher Charles Hallaxs' wilderness trekking habits represents a months-long compilation of information gleaned from:

  • interviews with Hallaxs family members and friends;
  • interviews with Christopher Hallaxs' friends and acquaintances;
  • interviews with Lake Superior State Forest managers and private property owners;
  • interviews with Tahquamenon Falls State Park personnel;
  • a review of Christopher Hallaxs' personal effects;
  • a detailed examination of print and digitally-archived photographs from Hallaxs family members;
  • a detailed examination of Christopher Hallaxs' digitally-archived photographs
  • a review of Michigan State Police reports
  • a review of Chippewa County Sheriff's Office search-and-rescue operation's logs;
  • an exhaustive search of Internet message boards, Web sites, and other digital archives;
  • SAR operations in bush Christopher Hallaxs was known to frequent;
  • and CSI operations at remote wilderness bivouac sites—both temporary and semi-permanent ones, some complete with equipment and provision caches—attributable to Christopher Hallaxs.

If you have information you would like to contribute to Chris' wilderness profile,
or have a correction, comment, or suggestion,
please e-mail it to
mneiger@hotmail.com
or mail it to
Michael Neiger
Michigan Backcountry Search and Rescue (MiBSAR)
313 Jonathan Carver Road
Marquette, Michigan, 49855.

 

A Chris Hallaxs poem:

Everything that I ever thought there was,
turned to nothing when I reached for it.
--no, rather that things that once existed
came to never have been,
apparently because I touched them.

...so maybe I was only mistaken.
Start simply and anew

So I thought I stood on Earth,
           but
I noticed my footfalls leave flat black holes
in endless eternal nothing wherever I tread.
           and
at some point I unthinkingly wandered in a circle.
           now
there is nothing to do but go around
in ever smaller spirals within this closed loop
as my feet use up the ground beneath me.
           soon
there will be nothing left to stand on or see.

Nothing but me

but then I fear and KNOW that I will not be able
   to help myself
I will at last have only myself to look at,
   and I shall get around
to wondering if I am real, so I shall look.
..then there will be nothing.
—Chris Hallaxs, FortuneCity.Com Web site, undated

 

 


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Trekking habits

Solitude/Oblivion

 
  Moon snow scape. Click on photo for high-resolution imagery. (Photo courtesy of Chris Hallaxs' digital archives)

Wander white wide-open space
  this beautiful empty barren place
  to be alone with wind that moans
  and ice that cracks like brittle bones
  or sometimes pops in shattered shots
   underfoot, where nothing rots
  or grows or moves nor may decay
  before the frost has passed away.

Wraith-while serpents of air and snow
  flit fleeting fast and slithering slow
winding 'tween and writhing 'round
  ice and stones on lifeless ground
maybe fleeing or merely following
  wind: howling, freezing, hollowing?

Tarnished light, sun pale with blight
  obscured by ragged clouds in flight
throughout thin daylight know no peace
  from wail of wind, nor at night surcease
from a cold as deep as timeless sleep
  that does but frailly hold life and keep
the single comfort that's here to know
  lie unknown, alone under silent snow.
—Christopher Hallaxs (Source: found among Chris Hallaxs' personal effects)

A skilled land navigator who was proficient with map and compass, Chris' wilderness treks typically lasted two to three days. On occasion, his wilderness sojourns would exceed a week or two in length.

Tough and durable, both physically and mentally, he was known to go without sleep for up to two days at a stretch in the bush.

Roads, trails, paths, game tracks, & bushwhacking

I'm in the habit of doing about equal amounts of road, trail, path, game track, and bushwhacking on land I know well.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, April 17, 2003

Avoiding pavement

That's why I tend to avoid it [walking on pavement]. I can walk way farther, more comfortably if I stay off the pavement. Sometimes if the trail I'm on is deep loose dry sand, it is tempting to take the pavement an 1/8th of a mile away instead, but it only feels better for a very short time.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, June 21, 2003

Advantage of day hiking

"I almost even feel sociable..."

When I come back from a couple days out by myself, I almost even feel sociable for a short time.

The effect wears off faster than it accumulates, and is fleeting, but I assume that's due to my personal orneriness.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, July 27, 2003

That's one advantage to dayhiking, is that you don't have to worry about becoming soaking wet and just generally bedraggled,

because you can just go back home or to your car and change clothes. Of course, this is possible out of a backpack too, but takes more hassle and preparation.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, July 4, 2003

Spur-of-the-moment trips

I do way too much of this stuff on whim. Historically, it kind of happens like this: a work schedule gets juggled last minute, I find myself with two unexpected days off, maybe, and in the next 40 minutes I assemble some stuff and walk off somewhere with a very vague plan in mind. A lot of my hikes get their rough destinations decided somewhere during the first mile or two of walking, even. A lot of times I head off with enough gear for overnight and come back in a day anyway, for example.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, July 27, 2003

For a detailed look at Chris' wilderness habits, read part 2 and part 3 of his Forensic Behavioral Profile:

 

 

 


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Trekking partners

Like many of us hard-core, wilderness trippers, Chris had difficulty finding similarly-minded partners to explore the bush with.

"Zero luck in finding anyone with the interest"

"Don't feel the least bit alone"

About the only time I don't feel the least bit alone is when I *AM* totally alone.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, July 27, 2003

I have had next to zero luck in finding anyone with the interest [in hiking], and I simply don't let it stop me. Worse come to worst, I'd would most sincerely sooner end up coyote food than sit around collecting dust safely, to put it extremely and bluntly. Even if I did know enough people to never have to go solo, I still would at least some times, anyway.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, January 6, 2003

"Maybe some day I'll immigrate to Fantasy Land"

Women in
the Woods

I wondered too [what is the DNR's Women in the Woods program], but decided not to worry about it: I'm sure it's just a hallucination common to lonely hikers.

I've been all OVER the woods around here, and I haven't seen _anyone_ out there, let alone women.

The woods has like, (ew) bugs and (yuck) dirt and (ick) spiders and stuff, and no hot showers, so it just doesn't stand to reason. *GRIN*
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, July 9, 2003

I keep seeing things about "hike with no less than three". I can't argue that this is a good idea, but...well...here in the real world, there's just me. Maybe some day I'll immigrate to Fantasy Land :-)

Seriously, being on your own isn't by any means a death sentence. Paranoia is a good thing. Expect the worst. Kind of even think of the surroundings as having an opportunistic malevolent intent, if it helps. Indeed, when I was reading about the guy kicking a whole in the ice, even before reading on, I immediately, automatically mentally cringed at that, even though I didn't even know that this was where the story was leading.

Trees want to fall on you, or dump snow down your neck. Ice wants to dump you in the water. The weather wants to turn bad and get colder than you prepared for, or warm up and turn all the snow into sticky wet soggy mush.. The snow is going to get deeper than you are able to handle the planned mileage in. The woods is going to rearrange the trees Huorn-like so as to make the route you were looking for impossible to find and leave you wandering after dark. Deal with it.

I don't think a real optimist would survive long. A realist would do better, but being realistic with a practiced bent at applied pessimism is even better yet. Note that pessimism itself is probably even worse, as Any noted in talking about the teenager with the bad attitude.

Note: Huorns were a form of tree in Tolkien's books which were either trees becoming more alive, or Ents(a sort of walking animated tree) becoming more tree-like...or both. They had the ability to somehow first be in one place and then another next time you looked. Anyone who has walked in the dark knows that these are real, as they sometimes reach down and snatch the hat off your head, or lift a root to trip you.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, January 21, 2004

"The one time I was out back country with someone"

Introversion v extroversion

Seems everyone has slightly different definitions of introversion and extroversion.

I kind of tend to think of it in some instances, perhaps incorrectly, as whether or not people have their own identity or not.

I realize this, if accurate, is only partially so.

Some extremely extroverted people seem to need other people around them to reflect off of so they can even exist as an identity, or something like that.

When alone, they kind of cease to exist, and when around others, they are only what they need to be in order to be part of the group.

People like that give me the willies. It's like there's nothing inside them. Hollow.

I seem to gravitate most toward people are are solidly something in and of themselves, often even to the point of being outright oddballs or weirdoes.

To tie in another aspect, I don't think introversion has anything to do with talkativeness.

I'm about as heavily introverted as one can get, I suppose (consistently INTP on the Meiers-Briggs thing-if that test is useful or not) but I admit that at times I will tend to be one that will "talk your ear off" :-)

I love dealing with people individually. People only come as individuals anyway, after all.

Other people have ideas and information that I don't, which makes them interesting.

The bigger a group you form though, the less anyone tends to be an individual, or show it.

...kinda like that old truism about how the intelligence of a committee is the IQ of the least intelligent member, divided by the number of members :-)

Get a whole roomful of people and as a collection, it ceases to even be human, almost.

Small groups of people with overlapping interests work, though, as it doesn't have so much of the effect of all the different people canceling each other's differences out, making a dull gray featureless mass of impersonality.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, February 27, 2003

The one time I was out back country with someone, it was mostly a canoe trip with almost no hiking. He has used a canoe.

—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, July 31, 2003

I think I could really do some serious cross country distance with a partner or two, because you could rotate trailbreaking. There have been some days after new snows before when I've been knee deep in fluff even on shoes, and putting in a half 8 or so miles takes me half the day, and about does me in as far as anything strenuous for the day.

—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, December 14, 2002

"Even posted notices on bulletin boards"

I have made some attempts to strike up chance conversations around the local trails near campgrounds and stuff, and a few times even posted notices on bulletin boards or other likely spots in the actual campground that I was going to go from Point A to Point B at this time on this date, in case anyone was interested, but no dice.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, July 27, 2003

"A lot of stuff *tends* overall to work against any kind of hiking groups"

I think a lot of stuff *tends* overall to work against any kind of hiking groups. Ardent hikers, or people that are comfortable being alone or, even more, have a need to be alone at times, are possibly more commonly than average incidentally a bit antisocial. I know this is a lot of what drives me off into the woods. About the only time I don't feel the least bit alone is when I *AM* totally alone.

In my case, it's not so much that as I have absurdly narrow views of what I consider to comprise a tolerable human being. :-) Start yakking at me about pop culture and my eyes glaze over. Everything has to be some sort of attempt to understand the universe, or a route to it, with me, perhaps. That and people tire of me quickly, for the most part. Pretty much universally, eventually, I get exasperatedly told something that amounts more or less to "Shut the #@*! up! You think too much! you're driving me crazy!!" (Not unusually stated in so many words, no less :-)

I don't know about anyone else's obstacles to gaining anything like a social life, but I highly suspect that most people that casually know me assume that if they hiked with me, I'd kill and eat them and I'd be the only one to return...or something like that. Heh. At least, being able to walk off in a random direction for a couple days with just a backpack and return alive and even in decent health other than being maybe tired, seems to be regarded with some kind of suspicion as far as I can tell.

One of my huge personal obstacles is that I do way too much of this stuff on whim. Historically, it kind of happens like this: a work schedule gets juggled last minute, I find myself with two unexpected days off, maybe, and in the next 40 minutes I assemble some stuff and walk off somewhere with a very vague plan in mind. A lot of my hikes get their rough destinations decided somewhere during the first mile or two of walking, even. A lot of times I head off with enough gear for overnight and come back in a day anyway, for example.

Another thing is that on top of it all, there are really just so FEW people that aren't about literally scared shitless of being away from anything more remote than a paved path. Or maybe it's not fear, but laziness? I don't know. I just note that for the tens of thousands or whatever of people that come through the local parks and camp in the campgrounds, the amounts of traffic evident on the trails even a mile from the actual campgrounds is very near zero. I'm pretty confident that if I look hard, and go through a mile of trail and see no evidence of a human having passed in the last 3 weeks, I know what I'm talking about. Yes, it IS possible to walk along without making prints or or knocking over a fern here or there, but first, how many people could, and what's more, since it's a lot of work, who would bother to do so? Thus the application of Occam's Razor leads me to the conclusion that the trails are indeed barely used. The deer actually use them heavier than the hikers.

Despite that, I have made some attempts to strike up chance conversations around the local trails near campgrounds and stuff, and a few times even posted notices on bulletin boards or other likely spots in the actual campground that I was going to go from Point A to Point B at this time on this date, in case anyone was interested, but no dice. I did add small notes at the bottoms of these things to the effect of "park staff: This is not abandoned/litter. It WILL be removed immediately after it is no longer in effect" I followed up on this, as well.

On a less 'conspiracist' :-) note, in my own case, if you want to go hiking, it's easy and desirable enough to just do so. It's not like basketball or something where you need other people. In short, people with the ability and desire to take up the activity just mostly I suppose tend to simply do so.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, July 27, 2003

 

 


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Trek journaling

Chris enjoyed reading and writing. An avid reader, he regularly visited the Paradise Public Library to peruse their literature or pick up a book he'd requested from another library via the interlibrary loan process.

A prolific writer, he enjoyed blogging—particularly on GreatLakesHikes, a Yahoo.com group.

Occasionally, he'd craft a journal from one of his more memorable wilderness sojourns.

"I don't really always find much to talk about either"

TV, radio, MP3s, & sports

This is mostly my fault, I suppose. I hate almost all the crap that's on TV.

I once went for nearly 2 years where I just sorta forgot about the TV, and did not realize it until after the fact.

Now, after that period where I wasn't exposed to it, maybe I'm making this up, but I swear it's just depressingly and disgustingly transparent how much TV is trying to shape your thoughts.

What's more, the news is the worst example of this. I also dislike most of what's on the radio.

This seems to have grown from getting tired of songs getting played to death on the contemporary stations, and then getting tired of hearing the same songs for the last 10 years on the album rock or other 'classic' stations.

Then, it was exacerbated in that I found mp3s early on in like 1998 or so and have since developed music tastes that no radio station anywhere comes close to catering to.

I am not much interested in the big huge popular things like televised sports. Sports are something you do, if you so choose. Not watch someone else do.

I have made a tedious point of these examples to point out that I've kind of lost interest in the things that keep most people attached to all that which is "culture" I guess.

I didn't do it on purpose, and now that it has happened, I wouldn't go back, but I often wonder if I knew ahead of time what was going to happen, if I'd be better off having prevented it.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, March 29, 2003

I don't really always find much to talk about either, so most trips don't get one.

Of course I found reason to go, but...well, Dick mentioned sunsets for instance.

How do you put that into a trip report? "Uh...it was, like, orange and stuff and then like pink and had glowing orange bits.

Totally kickass and whatever. I, um... suppose you had to be there." heh.

That and I'm always analyzing the crap out of everything. To me, that is FUN; figuring out things.

However, talking about crawling on your hands and knees in the brush looking at what the bugs are doing in the leaves, or being diverted offtrail for five minutes to look at a clump of maples that seem to have some affliction affecting their leaves isn't real exciting either.

Or, for he sake of argument, say it *is* exciting and worth writing about.

In this case, it's still a problem because a 3 hour hike is a constant chain of such things, and would take a half a book to cover.

My personal rule of thumb on whether or not to bother with a report is 1) is it somehow somewhat markedly different than others I have posted? and 2) if not, did something unusual and of note(bragging material :-) happen?
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, September 5, 2003

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


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Some of Chris' wilderness treks

A Chris Hallaxs trip journal: Exploring Lake Superior's ice formations

On living in the Upper Peninsula

Yep. I've only lived in the UP for 11 years now

I lived here for about 6 years straight without ever finding any inclination or reason to go back below the bridge, though. :-)

I now have a sister and brother in law who live 20 minutes south of the bridge, so that has recently changed somewhat.

My whole family, extended and all, somehow ended up here over the course of a couple years. It wasn't planned, it just kinda happened.

I don't miss anything I'm missing out on. I've always been rather self-entertaining, maybe out of necessity, perhaps.

In any case, about the only moderately annoying things are no broadband internet, and not being able to get a Pepsi (or whatever) at 3am.

Both are not really that huge a deal, all things considered.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, September 5, 2003

The '92/'93 winter pushed up some amazing pressure ridges in front of Paradise. East wind may have also been a factor.

I assume that wind blowing across miles of ice can exert tons of lateral force from the airflow drag.

There are always pressure/expansion-contraction cracks just past the last shallow, 3-foot depth or so, sandbars.

The ice inshore from that is literally sitting on the bottom for most of the winter. The ice on each side of the crack lifted up into a lean-to "A" shape with the crack at the top.

These actually became from 4 to even as much as ten feet high.

Standing shoreward, they obscured your view out into the lake. In most places they eventually pushed together enough that the two leaning sheets of ice met vertically, and from this precarious position then flopped over on top of one another in a giant sandwich to lay on top of the lake ice until spring.

I walked out and stood on the sandbar piles at one point, looking down into one of these "A"-shaped tunnels from the end.

It was way more than big enough to have walked down, only there was open water underneath, of course.

It would have been entirely possible, (if stupid :-) to launch a canoe in one end and paddle through this blue-green cathedral the 70 feet or so to the other end. A day later or so it too sandwiched up and fell over.

It's also fun to bundle up and go for a 3am walk on known-stable ice on nights when it is well below zero, because of the mentioned loud pops, shots, and even bangs it makes.

In fact, your footfalls or weight moving over the ice will trigger these.

You can have some fun jumping up and down and hearing a wave of sound effects ripple out from you, or hearing a series of loud crackings in the distance, get louder, seem to pass right between your feet under you and move off into the distance again as it keeps going.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, July 20, 2003

A Chris Hallaxs trip journal: The North Country Trail (NCT)

"A good storyteller is"

A good storyteller is someone who has a poor memory, but hopes that everyone else's is worse
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, January 24, 2004

The only parts I'm on much at all are the ones right around the Tahquamenon area, and even then, most times I only use short bits en route to a heavy deer trail or abandoned logging road or such.

I occasionally see parts of it in the Hiawatha National Forest off south of Whitefish bay, west of M-123 and north of M-28, but am not really familiar with them, and haven't been on the actual official trail there in over a year, I think now.

This summer I've twice been out to the falls from Paradise, using first the snowmobile trail, and then cutting over to and picking up the NCT about halfway there, somewhere around the "Timberlost" or "Old Stove Road" part. The part I was on seemed decent enough.

It only wants for foot traffic, though it is also nice to be by yourself. Once this was on foot. Another time was via mountain bike, which maybe is not kosher, but I didn't even see anyone, much less run them over.

Well, I might break rules, but aside from that technicality, I do above all attempt to generally behave and act (sorta) respectable!

I have a special fondness for the river trail part of the NCT that runs between the upper and lower tahquamenon falls. See, it gets so much foot traffic that the trail is pounded hard, and quite a few times I've walked it in the pitch black dark totally by feel.

This is somewhat tedious, but easy because a single step off the trail is instantly obvious by the feel underfoot, even through shoes.

If I'm intending on wading across or around in the river or something like that, or just want to feel the ground underfoot, I'll go without shoes though, which makes it even easier.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, December 15, 2002

A Chris Hallaxs trip journal: The Fiborn Quarry & Caves

Currently jobless, but content

Oh well. Could be worse. I could have a fabulously well-paying job somewhere in a city, have lots of expensive toys sitting around, and never have any time to use them because I was busy paying for them.

It seems you can either afford to have an interesting life, or have the time for it, but not both. If someone knows of a way around this, let me know :-)
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, January 11, 2003

The nearest caves I know of around here, and these are true caves with running water, would be the ones southwest of Trout Lake.

I visited the area last spring at the end of April, I think it was. There was still snow in places, anyway.

The Michigan Karst Conservancy owns the area, and I saw signs there to the effect that one needed permission to explores the caves.

According to local sources, there is still enough of a cave system there that you can do a bell crawl into an area almost big enough to stand in, and large enough for a fair number of people, where there is a short waterfall.

I've also heard that you need to crawl along in a pushup position for a bit, with your face inches from water. Since it was 40 degrees or so on the day I was there, I was not extremely interested in going underground in mud and running snowmelt water anyway.

This abandoned quarry almost qualifies as a ghost town as well, if you are into that sort of thing. Index of some more information about the area, though it concentrates more on history than the actual caves.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, March 20, 2003

The Fiborn Quarry near Trout Lake, Michigan, in the Spring of 2002. Click on photo for high-resolution imagery. (Photo courtesy of Chris Hallaxs' digital archives on FortuneCity.com)

[Descriptive narrative for photo at right.] Ruins of the engine house and loading bins in Fiborn quarry, near Trout Lake, Spring of 2002.

There was still snow to be found in the corners of the woods. This picture was taken from the rim, looking down into the quarry.

If I remember right from pacing it off, the building to the right, the engine house (so called because it was built and used to house and repair steam locomotives) was something like 35 feet wide and 85 feet long.

It is tall enough to make a two story building. I add this for some idea of scale; it is open inside. All but a two or three sheets of the sheet metal roof were still intact as of this picture.

There are two structures to the left. Prominently shadowed and up against the edge of the pit to the left is something that was apparently just a combination berm and structure to hold up the bridge that ran out to the loading bins. You can see the remains of the lower structure of the bins immediately to the right, though they show paler here, and are also behind some brush.

Apparently, rail cars and/or dump trucks hauled the limestone from the quarry bed up around to the top, then out across to the top of the loading bins. Rail cars entered the quarry bowl and stone was dumped from the bins down into the cars. Most of the stone then was taken to Sault Sainte Marie in either Michigan over the years when the quarry was still operating.

While the history is interesting, of equal and related import is that this site once had one of the larger cave systems in Michigan.

These caves were almost entirely mined away for the limestone, but two sinkholes remain in the quarry floor, where small streams run in from the edges and then simply vanish into holes. They go underground for a few miles or something to dump into the nearby Hendrie river, if I remember correctly.
—Chris Hallaxs, FortunceCity.Com, undated

Soldier Lake & Delirium Wilderness

Rustic cabins

I know what you mean [about staying in rustic cabins]. Just any place where it doesn't rain on you overnight is good, and if it is tight enough to keep wind and bugs out, that's fabulous.

During the last couple of years, I have run across a handful of deer blinds that quite possibly exceed those specifications.

The best example stands 12 to 15 feet in the air on four large posts, is about 7 or 8 feet square, shingle roof, propane heat, and sliding vinyl or aluminum windows. I'd be fabulously thrilled to be able to pull something that luxurious out of my backpack at whim. :-)
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, February 13, 2003

I spent a long day wandering around the Soldier Lake area one time with no particular goal or direction.

The area SEEMS pretty much high and dry; sandhills with scattered dry lakes at odd spots, of which Soldier Lake itself is one.

There's probably a technical term for these lakes, but I think of them as stranded bits of long-receded Lake Superior, stuck between ancient sand dunes.

I walked for a bit southward on the NCT from Soldier lake, and another time I drove around for a ways on a road that heads south off of M-28 right after you pass Soldier Lake campground heading east.

This area has a huge cleared-off area which apparently was once used as a military firing range, because there are long 10-foot tall berms bulldozed up in a regular formation.

They seem to be spaced roughly at 100-yard intervals, which makes sense for target practice.

On top of one the larger ones, you can sift your fingers through the sand and pick out literally handfulls of fully steel-jacketed, lead core .30 caliber bullets.

If you had one of those cat litter box sifters or similar, you could probably gather a five gallon bucket of bullets in fairly short order. I'm getting to a relevant point, really.

I stopped here once to sight a rifle in, and after doing so drove all over the road that heads farther from the huge clearing. It's all the same sandy jack pine plains as far as I noticed.
—Chris Hallaxs, GreatLakesHikes YahooGroups.Com Message Board, March 3, 2003

More of Chris' wilderness trip journals

 


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