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| There are a couple of different "West Branch, Sturgeon River" to choose from in Upper Peninsula Michigan. This one lies due west of Baraga. Access is off a dirt road, so early season will be 'iffy' . . . the road won't be plowed or passable. At the upper access, the river looks fairly 'lazy', as shown in the above two photos. Snags are likely to be a problem on the brief access paddle, as well as a concern in any of the drops. It is highly recommended to proceed with caution. Many of the drops are preceded by smooth bedrock which pitches increasingly downward leading into the main drop. There will be few eddies at good waterlevels, so it will be easy to paddle past a 'point of no return', and have no recourse but to run a drop 'blind'. |
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| The first falls pitches off fairly vertical on river-right (photo above left), while the center and river-left are more sloping (photo above right). |
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| Running the falls puts you into a bit of a dells (photo above left). The next drop (preceded by increasingly sloped bedrock) jumped off a short ledge and down steep rock (photo above right). River-left dropped into a bit of a rubble pile or snag (as I recall), thus should be avoided. It should also be noted that the bedrock is mostly sandstone. This means that (on low-water runs) boats will tend to 'stick' to the rock, rather than slide smoothly over it. |
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| Next, a couple short ledges are encountered. The first had a major logjam when we were there (photo above left), so was an obvious portage. The second (photo above right) was clear, and was an easy 'anywhere' drop. At high water, both of these could be nasty, uniform hydraulics. |
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The next drop was a great sweeping left hand slide with a little drop-off at the end (photo above left). At decent water levels, there may be some play possible here. The final drop (photo above right) was an interesting ledge, broken a bit on river-right, and a great vertical plunge center and left.
From here, the gradient quickly peters out, and the paddle out to the next road crossing was almost entirely flat with occasional (or frequent, depending on your tolerance for them) snags. There may be a 'road' (I.E., dirt track that comes from the put-in) close to the river down to the end of the gradient. If this is passable and not posted private, it may prove a better alternative exit, rather than the long flat paddle-out. |