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The Ledges
After three weeks away from the trails on family business, I decided to take an extra day off work and conquer two trails at once. This sent me to the Lansing area where I took on The Ledges and then hit the Green Trail out at Lake Lansing Park-North. After a few weeks of rough weather and then warming up, both trails proved to be a different points of unfreezing, which made it difficult to go without crampons but proved that my microspikes were too much. Needing a few items as we gear up for warmer weather, I did grab a pair of Yaktrax the next week after a few mishaps with having gear that was meant for slightly more difficult weather.
The Ledges were the trail that finally got me to download the All Trails app, which, I have to say, I love so far. It is The Ledges, not Ledges Trail, as it is called in the book. That trail is somewhere in Peninsula, Ohio. If you aren’t looking through AllTrails, you’d also need to search for Fitzgerald Park instead of the suggested Fitzgerald County Park. That is the actual name of the park, but didn’t come up when looking through my GPS options.
This is the trail that finally got me to download AllTrails (which I love). It is 2.4 miles with an optional 1.3 mile loop on the other end, with the trailhead and parking in between. If I hadn’t planned to do two trails, I would have checked out the loop as well.
I don’t know why in the world this is considered easy, although I’m sure it’s much more passable when it isn’t covered in snow and ice. I have deemed “easy” trails as ones I would take my mother on, and this definitely isn’t one of them. When they say narrow paths, they mean it.
I went back and forth with my spikes. Down the stairs and through Island Park, I went in just my boots as they were perfectly fine, but I wore my spikes and used my trekking pole for the entirety of the ledge. On the way back, I awkwardly used it in my other hand to feel more steady on the edges.
You can also access The Ledges via Island Park, but the entire trail (and the best way to “loop” with the island) starts in Fitzgerald County Park. The Indigenous peoples called this area Big Rock, but it seems that spiritualists took over in the 1890s. Their pavilion was converted into a theater by the Grand Ledge community in the late 1950s and still stands in the park.
Green Trail
This is actually just the Lake Lansing Park North Trail, which is one of several color-coded trails in the area, largely used for skiing in the winter. Although, I saw almost no one. I ended up taking the longer, Blue Trail at 3.5 miles. It is only .2 miles longer than the Green Trail and you actually are on the green portion for the majority of the trek.
This is a one way trail, but I would suggest instead of starting at the trailhead, parking at the end of the trail. When you come to the sign that points you toward the trails, turn right toward “Oak Knoll” instead of left toward the trails. Here, there is a connection back to the trailhead.
As I had done both hikes on spikes, I decided to take them off at this point and walk up the road back to my car instead of the ice that awaited me cutting back up to the trailhead.
This trail was really rough on my legs because it was not consistently frozen. The trail was a myriad of different terrains because of this: frozen solid, unfreezing (leading my boots to go through the ice), muddy, and the soft wood of the bridges. I did not often feel stable on my spikes unless it was on the solid ice. And, the changing terrain led to spike maintenance upon returning home (and planning to purchase less aggressive shoe wear).
Raven K 