The new 190-kilometre Hiawatha Water Trail will make Lake Superior’s south coast more paddler-friendly and add another piece to what may become the world’s longest paddling trail.
The Hiawatha Water Trail serves one of Superior’s paddling hotspots, the area centred around Marquette, Michigan. It includes the sandstone cliffs, sea caves, waterfalls, and sand dunes of Grand Island National Recreation Area and Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.
A waterproof map, available this summer, will show access points, campsites, hazards and sensitive areas. And unique to the Hiawatha are kayak lockers at several urban areas along the coast.
“Essentially, these are small sheds with lockable, kayak-sized compartments,” explained Sam Crowley, one of over a dozen trail volunteers. “Paddlers will be able to stow their gear and go into town to resupply, eat a meal, or spend the night.”
The Hiawatha Water Trail, proposed in 1995, is the brainchild of Marquette outfitter Bill Thompson. The idea took off from the outset, and soon a group of like-minded kayakers had gained the support of local government, businesses and private landowners, and began developing brochures and signage. The number of volunteers grew. The group sought state and federal grants to fund the development of campsites, and has taken an active role in the management of Grand Island National Recreation Area and Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. The Hiawatha organization acts to promote the interests of paddlers in both protected areas.
Crowley feels that by exposing a greater number of people to the coast and increasing public awareness of sensitive shoreline features, the trail will inspire more people to stand up for the coast’s preservation.
For thousands of years prior to urbanization and private land development, there was an informal, paddler-organized water trail of native Ojibwa campsites around the entire shoreline of Lake Superior. Today, people like Sam Crowley are recreating the old trail piece-by-piece, and introducing a new generation of paddlers to the area in the process.
So far, three water trails dot the American side of Superior: Michigan’s Hiawatha and Keweenaw trails, and Minnesota’s Lake Superior Water Trail. The Canadian equivalent is the Great Lakes Heritage Coast, essentially a government-operated water trail following the north shores of Lake Superior and Huron. Add a couple more to the south shore, and increase paddler involvement in the Heritage Coast initiative, and a modern incarnation of the traditional trail will be complete, extending over 4,000 kilometres around Lake Superior.
This article first appeared in the Summer 2004 issue of Adventure Kayak Magazine. For more great content, subscribe to Adventure Kayak’s print and digital editions here.
