Waterfalls of the Keweenaw

Conditions:

Warm, cloudy, little recent rain

Companions:

Katie, Logan, Steele

Vehicle:

Saturn Vue

Katie, Steele and I decided to go for a trip down past L'Anse one afternoon. I made an ambitious plan to hit up plenty of falls, most of them near Arvon and Skanee. We grabbed the puppy and headed south out of Houghton.

The first stop was Power House Falls. I was a bit sore about these falls, as we had visited them three times without finishing them all up. Camera was dropped on the first visit and we missed Power Dam Falls on the second, so I wanted to be sure about this time. We headed straight instead of turning off of Power Dam Road and parked by the meadow, hiking straight down to the water. Steele and I then headed downstream looking for the falls while Katie stayed near the meadow.

The walk downstream Falls River was nice, as there are plenty of little drops along the way. Power Dam Falls ended up as the upper portion of Power House Falls, but the walk was nice and Steele and I had a nice chat. I suspect that the dam that was removed ten years ago (or so) formed the real falls, but now that it's gone, people have started calling the upper falls of Power House a new name. We headed back along the road to get back to Katie.

We stopped at Subway next for a quick dinner and headed up to Aura. Before visiting the next falls, I was hoping to get a nice view of Huron Mountains from Pike's Peak, the highest point on Point Abbaye (north of L'Anse). While it is quite forested on the peak, recent logging activity on the southern slope did give us a bit of a view. To see over the undergrowth, though, we had to stand on stumps or rocks, and even then it was limited by bushes and small trees.

Heading down, we drove straight to Lower Silver Falls and ate our subs here. While Katie and Steele finished their dinners, I headed straight down onto the upper portion of the falls and walked downstream on the rocks. These falls are a set of two steep chutes, with the bottom ones emptying onto a small, wide falls and deep pool underneath. There's an outhouse near the parking area, and the entire area is well visited, though it is a bit difficult to get all the way to the lower chute. Turns out that there is a more impressive falls just upstream from these, but I didn't end up visiting those until a month later.

After these falls, we headed further east to Slate River, though the lack of trail immediately turned Katie off. We checked both sides of the river and didn't see the path that led up the eastern bank. Accepting defeat, we headed out and looked for a southbound Dakota Farm Road that would lead us to Middle Silver Falls. This road ended up being a gated logging road, so we didn't go to these falls either. After both of these failures, we accepted defeat and headed back to Houghton.