Arenac County Highpoint Trip Report

one tiny area in southwest 1/4 of northeast 1/4 - section 10-19N-3E (870+ ft)

Date: April 29, 2007
Author: Andy Hatzos

I took a slightly different route to this high point than the one described in Bill Schuler's directions and found it to be a pretty nice trip.

Starting at I-75 exit 195, I zeroed the odometer and headed west on Sterling Road. Distances are in miles.

1.0 - Turn north on Kern Road.
2.0 - Turn west on Lucas Road.
2.6 - Turn north at Sterling Truck Trail,
        which performs a loop around a pond before heading west.
4.1 - Reach a trail heading north.
        I pulled in and parked in a small clearing.

The trail I found is not listed on any maps but can be seen easily on aerial photography. The area is very swampy and parts of the road were almost completely covered by water. My car would have drowned but a vehicle with high clearance could stand a chance to get through.

From the starting point, the path bends to the northwest for a short distance, before heading mainly northeast toward the high point. At about the halfway point of the hike, there is a large clearing before a slight left turn. The next clearing has a few trails headed off to the right; roughly to the southeast. One of these trails has an obvious uphill slope and I took this one. It led me right to the north edge of the summit. The summit ridge is oriented north-south and the high point is very obvious.

The summit does feature a benchmark, which is not listed on the topo map. The benchmark, "Tittab", is dated 1981. It is listed by the NGS at 860 feet. This is a little curious, as the highest contour on the topo map is clearly 870 feet. There are also two reference marks nearby, which are easy to find. Reference mark 1 is on the north edge of the summit ridge and reference mark 2 is along the south edge. The views to the north are decent and traffic from I-75 can occasionally be seen to the northeast. The absolute highest point is near a few trees just north of the benchmark.

From where I parked, the hike was about a mile and a half round trip. My total time on foot was around 40 minutes.

report with links to photos