ISLE ROYALE NATIONAL PARK, Mich. — As the National Park Service celebrates its 100th anniversary, I still sometimes dream of moose and wolves.
They are the biggest attractions at Isle Royale, America’s least-visited national park and a personal favorite from a 2005 trip to the hiking-backpacking-and-paddling island in Lake Superior.
My trip included a brief visit to the island’s moose graveyard maintained by scientists Rolf and Carolyn “Candy” Peterson. He has been studying the relationship between moose and wolves on the island.
Moose bones fill the Petersons’ compound, including hundreds of skulls, many with antlers. It is an impressive but spooky site, a shrine to the moose and to the wolves that killed them.
The connection has been studied by scientists since 1959.
Reports say Isle Royale’s moose and especially the wolves are suffering.
The latest word is that only two wolves are on the island, a male-female pair that is so old and so inbred that it is unlikely they can reproduce.
The number is the lowest since a few wolves crossed an ice bridge from Canada to Isle Royale in the late 1940s. The first moose arrived about 1900.
That raises an interesting dilemma for the park service: Would the agency support bringing new wolves to the island?
The island is a federally designated wilderness and that means that nature is supposed to prevail on its own without help from man.
Importing predators like wolves would be a precedent-setting move for the park service. The issue is likely to be heavily debated.
A decision is not expected until late 2017, at the earliest. What would likely be required is importing an entire pack of wolves to replace the wolves.
The wolves peaked on Isle Royale at about 50 but inbreeding and freak accidents have cut into those numbers. Warmer Midwest winters prevent any new wolves from coming to the island.
The drop in wolves has resulted in more moose. Their numbers have doubled since 2005 to about 1,300 this year.
And those numbers are growing by 20 percent a year. That could result in the moose population continuing to grow, followed by starvation and a population crash.
Typically about 15 percent of the moose population is killed annually by the wolves. A wolf pack will kill a moose every four to 10 days.
Wolves are rarely seen on Isle Royale. You may hear them and you may find piles of droppings along trails.
Everyone wants to see a moose. They are the island’s rock stars and No. 1 attraction. The moose are one of the best reasons to hike around the island. They are most likely to be spotted at the western and eastern ends of the island closer to people.
You can learn more about wolves and moose from Michigan Technological University in Houghton at www.isleroyalewolf.org.
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Isle Royale is 45 miles long and up to nine miles wide. There are no roads, no vehicles, no bikes and few signs of man. It is very remote and isolated, a roadless backcountry. You can get around by boat, by seaplane and on foot.
The park gets about 17,000 visitors a year. It covers 572,000 acres of land and water.
It has a limited season from mid-April through October, although some facilities open later.
It is a place of boreal forests of birch, spruce, balsam and aspen, rocky shorelines, stunning summer wildflowers, quiet coves, noisy loons, 46 inland lakes, bald eagles and ospreys.
The Ojibwa called the island minongor, “a good place.”
The island has a rich history of lighthouses, copper mining, Great Lakes shipping, lumbering, commercial fishing and vacationing in the late 1800s and the early 1900s.
It takes a major investment of time, money and effort to get to Isle Royale from ports in Michigan and Minnesota. There are four ferries and one seaplane that runs to the island. Such trips will take from 3.5 to 6 hours.
Reservations for ferries and island lodging are required months in advance.
When Superior is calm, it is an easy trip. When the lake gets choppy, the ferry ride can become a real stomach-churner.
The park service advises passengers that stormy conditions may force them to stay on the island longer than planned or delay their arrival on Isle Royale.
You can also ship out of Houghton, Mich., and Grand Portage, Minn.
The ferries are not cheap. A round trip from Copper Harbor is $136 for an adult. The seaplane is $310 per person round trip.
That means the typical Isle Royale visitors has invested heavily just to get to the island. The typical visitor spends about four days at Isle Royale, far longer than most visitors stay at America’s other national parks.
Isle Royale also has a very high percentage of repeat visitors, more than most national parks.
Most visitors get off the ferries, get a wilderness permit and head off on foot to hike and camp.
There is a 60-room lodge at Rock Harbor at the eastern end of the island. It features bare-bones motel rooms and 20 small cottages. There is a restaurant and snack bar. It is pricey but so is everything about Isle Royale because of its isolation.
A peak-season room costs $256 a night for double occupancy
Concessionaire Forever Resorts also offers guided excursions and water taxi service to island visitors. For information, go to www.rockharborlodge.com.
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The park has 165 miles of trails. The No. 1 trail is the 42.2-mile cross-island Greenstone Trail that stretches from Windigo in the west to near Lookout Louise near Rock Harbor in the east. It is a moderate ridge-top hike that takes three to five days.
The trail, rocky and rugged, features wooded glades, sunny meadows, hot exposed ridges and killer views of the main island, 200 surrounding islands and the Canadian shoreline in the distance.
Hikers are forced to stick to existing trails by boggy terrain and thick underbrush that makes cross-country hiking impossible.
Water in the backcountry must be filtered because of potential contamination with parasites and bacteria.
The island is known for its bugs. Black flies can be a problem from June through August. Mosquitoes can be a problem into August in rainy years. Gnats can also be plentiful.
Be prepared. Wear protective clothing. Head nets may be needed and have DEET-containing insect spray handy.
Two attractions worth seeing are the Rock Harbor Lighthouse that dates to 1855 and the Edisen Fishery, a replica of a Lake Superior fishing camp.
The park charges a fee of $4 per day for visitors. For park information, go to www.nps.gov/isro.
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