Thru-Hiking the Waterloo-Pinckney Trail, Pt. 2: Crossing the Highlands

Dan Cooke
May 2, 2023
7 min read

Updated: Mar 12

In honor of Earth Week, we embraced the challenge of thru-hiking the Detroit's region's most rigorous backpacking route: the Waterloo-Pinckney Trail. This second installment of our series on the Waterloo-Pinckney Trail traverses the most strenuous terrain of the entire journey - as well as discovering welcomed surprises to ease the "Survival Day."

Rainstorms while camping: possibly the greatest paradox in the backpacking experience.

On one hand, you'll never find a better "white noise" machine than Mother Nature maintaining a steady droplet beat against your rainfly. A wonderfully-deafening rhythm that beckons all weary hikers to further embed themselves into the cocoon of their warm sleeping bag.

On the other hand...you're camping. Scratch that, you're backpacking. You need to emerge from the depths of your bag, pack up everything within eyesight into your backpack - including the shelter currently keeping you dry - and hit the trail. The muddy, sandy, hilly, 12-mile Waterloo-Pinckney Trail preselected as your "survival day."

Yeah. Burrowing further into the sleeping bag sounded pretty good. I checked the radar, saw that the storms were scheduled to dissipate in a few hours, and succumbed to the temptation.

Fast forward a few hours and it's 9:30 a.m. The backcountry equivalent of sleeping in until noon. The natural drumroll that had lulled me back to sleep has calmed to an inconsistent drip, and a lone bird call alerts me that all systems are clear for a prospective launch from the tent. The light in my cavernous backpacker's tent is noticeably brighter now too. As a final precaution, I check the radar again.

Bad news. The storms are expected to linger until 2:30 p.m., albeit with brief respite periods like the next 30 minutes. The temptress known professionally as Big Agnes starts to whisper sweet nothings into my ear again, coaxing me back to my 20º-rated bag and Klymit air mattress.

"No," I say so audibly that the bird quits singing, confused with the faceless tent is suddenly speaking. "This is why I brought rain gear. Time to go."

The first battle of the day had been won.

There would be several more to fight throughout one epic Day 2 on the Waterloo-Pinckney Trail.