Summit Peak observation towerPorcupine Mountains · Western Upper Peninsula, Michigan
Esc or Return to reading to come back
Photograph 01 · The Overview Effect
Summit Peak
An observation tower lifts hikers above the hardwood canopy near the park’s highest ground. The drone keeps rising.
Open fullscreen to see the photograph edge to edge.
Field note · Summit Peak observation tower
Two ways up.
Summit Peak is the highest point in the Porcupine Mountains, at nearly 2,000 feet, and a roughly fifty-foot observation tower lifts visitors clear of the hardwood canopy. On clear days the view from the top reaches Lake Superior, and some visitors report the Apostle Islands and Isle Royale on the far horizon.
The tower is the older technology of the overview: a fixed platform that trades a climb for a wider view. The drone extends the same impulse a little further, and this frame holds both at once, the built vantage and the flying one, above a forest that keeps going in every direction.