“The Park has got to figure out how to address the dead fall hazard,” declared Glen Lake Fire Department chief John Dodson after the October Glen Arbor Emergency Services meeting. The “Park” he refers to is the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore (SBDNL). All that dead wood, he says, “is fuel building up. Our fire department does not have the staff to maintain a wildfire the size of Alligator Hill.”
Although my friend, Bonnie Gonzales, didn’t quite make it up Alligator Hill when she tried the first time, she felt it was doable. She wanted to try it one last time before she left for the winter. The trick would be to take the fairways rather than the impassable trail. I was game, so we met at the trailhead entrance by the charcoal ovens one sunny Sunday in mid-October.
This week, Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore workers began clearing the Alligator Hill Trail of downed trees, following the Aug. 2 storm that decimated local forests. Alligator Hill is located just west of downtown Glen Arbor, north of Little Glen Lake, and offers stunning views of Sleeping Bear Bay.
Deputy Superintendent Tom Ulrich reports that Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore is pursuing funds from its regional office of the National Park Service to re-hire seasonal workers and clear the Alligator Hill trail by cross-country ski season.
What trees, plants and animals will repopulate the area of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore that was decimated by the Aug. 2 megastorm — particularly Alligator Hill? We asked that question of the National Lakeshore’s chief of natural resources, Kevin Skerl.
Sun co-editor Mike Buhler took these photos of the destruction to the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore and Glen Arbor area following the Aug. 2 megastorm.
“Where were you when . . .?” None of us will ever forget, and so now we will always trade our stories of this shared local tragedy. Waiting for Kelly McAllister to make me a malted, I gazed through the windows of McCahill’s Crossing Dairy Bar at the Glen Lake Narrows to see the eerie white cloud front race at terrific speed eastward across Little Glen Lake. Instantly the air was a greenish blue-black chaos of horizontal hail, thick rain, and leaves. Heedless of the danger, we gawked out the big windows at plunging power lines, frantic trees, and the growing line of cars refusing to cross the narrows and the bridge they couldn’t see because the lake was airborne. When the lights went out for good Kelly calmly called Consumers on her cell. We only had to inch around one tree as we drove homeward on Benzonia Trail minutes later. Countless others were not so lucky, and their stories have been our daily bread for a frantically memorable, strange, and communal cleanup of a week.
During one extraordinary week in August 2015, the sounds that dominated our town were the whirr of winds and the ugly crack of trees, followed by the buzz of chainsaws, the hum of generators, and the cheering and car honking as Consumers Power trucks and linemen rolled into town like a liberating army.
What will the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore do with the Alligator Hill trail west of downtown Glen Arbor, which was decimated in the Aug. 2 megastorm. Hundreds of trees fell during the windstorm, punching enormous holes in the canopy and rendering the popular hiking trail unrecognizable.
It began last March over at Woodstone. While Karen and Peter Van Nort were off in sunny Arizona, their house sitter was out walking their dog one day when an acquaintance drove by in a Glen Arbor Outdoor truck. He mentioned that he was checking their clients’ vacant homes as a precaution and asked if she had checked the Van Nort’s basement.