Best Hikes in Michigan

Michigan's ranked summits cluster almost entirely in the Upper Peninsula's ancient Precambrian highlands — the copper-mining ridges of the Keweenaw Peninsula, the Huron Mountains above L'Anse, and the basalt-and-conglomerate wilderness of the Porcupine Mountains along Lake Superior — bedrock over a billion years old, part of the same shield rock that underlies much of Canada. The live high point, Mount Arvon at 1,972 feet in the Huron Mountains, is also Michigan's official state high point, but only since a 1982 resurvey: neighboring Mount Curwood, about 5 miles away and only a few feet lower here, was long assumed to be the taller of the two until a professional survey corrected the record. Two entries break from that Upper Peninsula pattern: Cote Dame Marie and Comstock Hills sit roughly 220 miles south, in the outwash hill country of the northern Lower Peninsula near Roscommon and Ogemaw County. Wolf Mountain's 0.4-mile out-and-back is the shortest hike in the group; Mount Horace Greeley's 15.1-mile out-and-back, out toward the Keweenaw's northern tip, is the longest. 11 more Michigan summits are already queued in the database — these 14 are simply the ones with a confirmed route and elevation profile today.