WildYooper Stories
Munising's Ice Curtains: Ice Climbing at Pictured Rocks, Michigan's Winter Spectacle
First time I saw the ice curtains at Pictured Rocks, I just stood there like an idiot with my helmet in my hand. All summer long, water seeps through that sandstone. Come winter it freezes on its way out, and the cliffs east of Munising grow these blue-white curtains a hundred feet tall, with climbers on them like spiders. People fly in from Colorado to climb ice in Michigan. Let that sink in.
Why here?
It's the geology, mostly. The same sandstone that makes the summer cliffs colorful leaks groundwater all year, and the leak becomes the climb. Reliability is the other half — the curtains form every year, tall and close to town, which is why Munising hosts the Michigan Ice Fest every winter, one of the biggest ice climbing gatherings in the country. During Ice Fest the town fills up with people carrying picks the way it fills up with sleds every other weekend.
You don't have to climb it to love it
Plenty of the famous curtains stand within sight of a plowed road or a short, packed walk — Sand Point way is the easy one. Bring binoculars, bring a thermos. And if the picture up top has you tempted, Ice Fest and the local outfitters run beginner clinics with every piece of gear provided. They told me if you can climb a ladder you can climb their starter wall, and having watched a grandmother do it, I believe them.
The sled trip version
Munising is a full snowmobile town — ride the Alger County trails in the morning, go stare at the curtains after lunch, eat a pasty on the way back. One warning, and I mean it: admire the ice from the marked spots, not from underneath it. Curtains shed. A chunk of that blue ice falling a hundred feet doesn't care how good your helmet is. Our safety page says it plainer.