We spent the day with Joanna at the McCormick track, trying for some boreal species. We had hoped for gray jay and boreal chickadee, with spruce grouse and yellow-bellied flycatcher thrown in. A bay-breasted warbler would have been nice too. The only new species we got was yellow-bellied flycatcher for both of us and a ruffed grouse for me. Had some great views of warblers and kinglets, but no new species.
The McCormick tract is a 17,000 acre federally designated wilderness area. That’s about 27 square miles. There is only one three mile long trail through the area. Accessing the rest requires back country skills and a certain amount of chutzpah.
The nexus of the wilderness area was first purchased by Cyrus McCormick, founder of International Harvester in 1902. He built a large camp with trails running through the area and connecting to the ever so exclusive Huron Mountain Club to the north. Apparently Cyrus, though an industrialist, was something out of the Teddy Roosevelt Rough Riders mold. He was a believer in the wilderness life. He worked alongside the laborers to cut trail through forest and swamp and built lodges for the family. Eventually the family donated the property to the U.S. Forest Service. Some areas have never been logged and there has been no logging in the rest of the area for over a hundred years.
Peshekee River in the Wilderness Area.
Access to the area is along the Peshekee River on a failed railroad operation called the Peshekee Grade. Around 1890 a supposed engineer named Milo Davis got the bright idea to build a railroad shortcut from mines in Champion to ore boats on Lake Superior. Ol’ Milo figured the best route for a short cut was straight north, never mind having to build up the rail bed through swamps and blast through rock outcrops. For good measure the route was up a pretty steep grade the whole way. A couple million dollars and ten years later the shortcut was ready for operation. The first train couldn’t make it up the grade, the rail bed gave way, and the train crashed. Milo hightailed to Mexico. Thanks to his ineptness we have a very bumpy road to the McCormick Tract and beyond.
Peshekee River.
Peshekee Grade rock cut.
Turns out that I made a little math mistake on my August 2nd post. When I calculated the percentage of the year gone by I used the number of days for September 2nd, not August 2nd. Also the date on the graph was incorrect. This is the kind of math Milo used to build the Peshekee Grade.
Recalculating for today’s date, and the number of species we have seen so far this trip, we now stand at 83.4% of the goal for Ed, 79.1% of the goal for Lise, and 60.1% of the year completed. Please see Figure 2 for the correct representation of the current standings. Please note that despite these rookie math errors, no electrons were harmed in the making of these graphs.
Figure 2. The percentage of our goal compared to the percentage of the year gone by.
Ed's and Lise's Biggish Years 