Tunnel of Trees in Winter: A Local’s Honest Guide

By the third day of a ski trip, somebody’s legs are done. Ours usually quit on a Saturday, which is how we drove the Tunnel of Trees in winter the first time — a rest-day experiment that turned into a tradition. The canopy over M-119 doesn’t close when the fall color drops. The road empties, the hemlocks hold the snow, and Lake Michigan turns to pack ice below the bluff. If your family knows this drive from a summer trip or our fall color route guide, the winter version is the same 20 miles with the volume turned all the way down.

What the Tunnel of Trees in winter actually looks like

The route is the same one the October crowds drive: M-119 from Harbor Springs north to Cross Village, the only state highway in Michigan with no centerline. What changes is everything around it. After a fresh snowfall, the sugar maples and beeches hold white for a day or two, and the hemlocks — some along this road are more than 200 years old — stay draped long after. The canopy reads as a real tunnel in a way bare November branches never manage. The glimpses of Lake Michigan through the trees turn into sheets of blue-white ice stretching to the horizon. And the traffic — the one honest complaint about this road in color season — is simply gone. On a February weekday you can drive ten miles without seeing another car.

Time it right and the drive is at its best late morning after the plows have come through, in the day or two following fresh snow, with sun. That combination happens more often than you’d think up here.

Drive it like a local, not a hero

The road is plowed, but it’s still narrow, winding, and shoulder-less, and in winter the snowbanks make it feel narrower. The rules we actually follow: don’t drive it during an active storm, go slow enough that the hairpins are boring, and skip it entirely the morning after an ice event. Snow tires or all-wheel drive make the whole thing relaxed instead of tense. Top off the gas tank in Harbor Springs, throw blankets and snacks in the back, and know that the faster inland route can bring you home from any point if conditions turn.

One more thing to check before you go: in April 2026, a culvert washout closed a section of M-119 between Good Hart and Cross Village, with a marked detour on nearby roads. Repairs were still in progress as of this writing — check the current MDOT road status before you plan on driving the full run to Cross Village.

What’s open in winter (and what isn’t)

Good Hart General Store — the warm-up stop

The store at the route’s midpoint has been feeding travelers since 1934 and stays open year-round — grocery, deli, bakery, and post office in one building. A hot pot pie eaten in a warm car while snow comes down outside is, our kids would argue, the entire point of the drive. Winter hours run shorter than summer ones, so check before you build lunch plans around it.

Legs Inn — look, don’t lunch

The famous stone lodge at the end of the road in Cross Village closes for the season — it runs roughly late May through mid-October. It’s still worth reaching the village just to see the row of upturned stove legs along the roofline against the snow, with the frozen lake panorama behind it. Just don’t promise anyone pierogi in January.

Pond Hill Farm — the winter playground

The working farm near the route’s south end is the winter anchor for families: a free sledding hill with tubes on hand, groomed trails for snowshoeing and cross-country skiing, farm animals that don’t care what season it is, and hot cocoa in the café afterward. If you have kids under ten, this stop can absorb half the day on its own. Hours vary in the off-season, so check ahead.

Snowshoeing kids can actually finish

Two options bracket the drive, one for each end of the ambition scale. For little kids, Pond Hill’s groomed farm trails are flat, short, and end at cocoa — start there. For families with older kids and real winter boots, Wilderness State Park sits north of Cross Village at the top of the route: the Lower Peninsula’s largest state park, open to foot, snowshoe, and ski travel all winter. The Sturgeon Bay Trail runs 2.6 miles along the bay, but there’s no rule saying you finish it — walk out twenty minutes along the frozen shoreline, turn around, and you’ve still given the kids a Lake Michigan winter they’ll talk about at school.

Is it worth it in a thaw week?

Honest answer: it depends what you’re driving for. Northern Michigan winters swing, and a January thaw can leave the canopy bare and the woods brown for a stretch. The road is still empty and the ice on the big lake is still worth seeing, but the postcard version — white canopy, blue sky — needs recent snow. If you wake up to a fresh few inches, drop whatever the plan was and go that day; if it’s been raining on the snowpack for a week, spend the morning at Pond Hill or in downtown Harbor Springs instead and save the drive for the next system. The flexibility to choose your day is the real advantage of staying close.

The rest-day rhythm we use on ski trips

This drive earns its place in a ski week. From The Bird House, Nub’s Nob is 7 minutes and The Highlands is 8 — so by midweek, when somebody’s quads are filing complaints, the tunnel is the ready-made legs-day plan. Our version: slow breakfast, on the road by 11, pot pie at Good Hart, the Cross Village overlook if the road’s open, then sledding at Pond Hill on the way back and home before dark. Nobody clicks into a binding, and it ends up being the day everyone remembers.

It also works as the centerpiece of a non-ski winter weekend — the quiet season up here is the cheapest and least crowded time to bring a big group north.

“Our favorite version of this road is the one nobody photographs — February, fresh snow, and not another car for ten miles.”

This article was curated by the owners of The Bird House by Premium Stay Rentals.