The High Country Pathway and the sinkhole country

If you really want to disappear into the woods, the High Country Pathway runs right through Montmorency County. It’s a loop of about eighty miles — one of the longest backpacking trails in the Lower Peninsula — winding through the Mackinaw State Forest across hardwood ridges, meadows, cedar swamps, and quiet streams.

A spur connects it to Clear Lake State Park, so you can pick up the trail just north of Atlanta, and nine rustic campgrounds spaced along the route let you walk it over several days. Most of it is so remote you’ll see far more elk, deer, and hawks than people.

The trail also leads toward one of Michigan’s strangest landscapes: sinkhole country. Long ago, underground streams dissolved the limestone beneath these forests into caverns, and when the roofs collapsed they left deep, cone-shaped pits in the ground — some now holding small lakes. Follow the pathway up toward the county’s northern edge and it ties into the Sinkholes Pathway, just across the Presque Isle line, a short marked loop that circles a cluster of these strange pits.

For anyone who loves wild, empty country, this part of Montmorency County is hard to beat — endless state forest right out the back door. You can find trail maps and campground information at Michigan.gov/DNR.