Waterfalls of the Keweenaw

Conditions:

Hot, cloudy, humid, buggy, some recent rain

Companions:

Logan

Vehicle:

Ford Taurus

Even though I had visited Canyon River Falls twice this summer and seen all three of the main drops, there was something on a topo map that bugged me. Approximately two miles inland from US-41 was a small mark for an 'Upper Falls', and I was fairly sure that the canyon didn't stretch that far. Puzzled by the fact that it was an 'upper' falls and that the trail seemed to end at the downstream end of the canyon, I decided to go back to Canyon River in hopes to find another set of falls downstream from the canyon.

We set off late in the afternoon and parked at the roadside park entrance. Heading quickly along the trail past several tourists, we only got a few pictures of the canyon's falls and continued past the canyon. The trail seemed to die past an odd cairn downstream from the canyon, but then picked back up after a few dozen yards.

The river began to widen and become quite shallow, with rocks poking up from the riverbed, so Logan and I decided to just jump from rock to rock instead of wading through the tall grass and swampy banks. There's a large meander to the right that we cut off, but for the most part, we stuck right with the river on the way down. Sturgeon River starts to deepen and slow down after the meander, so we headed up the bank but kept a close eye on the river.

There was several markings on the trees up here, but they seemed to be showing property lines more then a trail, as the going seemed to be getting tougher. We ran into a power line that cut across the river, allowing us to see the entire flat, swampy area that the river had entered. This was rather unecouraging, but we continued on for close to half a mile through very thick undergrowth before realizing that the river was far too calm for rapids, let alone falls.

We headed back the way we came, sticking a bit higher to the banks to avoid the swampy ground near the river, and made it out of Canyon River Falls before the sunset. I checked on some maps afterwards, comparing the power lines location, swamp, and potential falls location, but no two maps agreed on the location of 'Upper Falls'. Most of them showed the swampy area downstream from the falls, which means that they are, in fact, the falls as Sturgeon River exits the canyon. Thus, while they are called Upper Falls, they are actually the lowermost Canyon River Falls. Even though we didn't find any new waterfalls on this trip, it was nice to realize that we didn't have to go back through those thick woods again.