Chapter 7: Canoeing Killarney
September 20 - September 28, 1997
September 20, 1997: A rainy day in Ottawa, after a rainy night, damp and uncomfortable. We slept in, went shopping for some food items for the canoe trip, filled up with diesel, packed up to leave, spent quite a bit of time at the dump station doing a thorough cleanout job on the blackwater tank, and finally got on the road at 3 p.m.
We stopped just before dark at Champlain Provincial Park, east of North Bay. Ontario parks aren't cheap - $17.25 for electricity only. The design of the park services is a little weird. They have provided 30-amp service at nearly all the sites, but the electrical outlets are back in the woods, halfway between two adjacent sites. They are so far away that we had to walk through the woods searching for them, and most 30 map extension cords wouldn't reach. And why go to the expense of running expensive electrical service to every site and then not include water? Once the trenches were dug for the wires, dropping in the water pipe would have been a rather small additional expense.
Anyway, it's a pleasant park. The Amable du Fond River runs through the park, about 100 feet from our site - fast and noisy. The rain ended almost as soon as we left Ottawa, except for a few showers.
9/21 We woke to brilliant blue skies, with the thermometer at 34 degrees. The truck is covered with heavy frost. Our little electric cube heater (1500 watts) kept the trailer fairly comfortable - about 63 degrees inside, so we haven't yet tried the furnace. We've seen only a little leaf color, and we hope the frost will accelerate the color change. If the forecast is favorable, we'll start canoeing tomorrow.
The drive to Killarney was long but uneventful, and we arrived in the park at about 5 p.m. We were welcomed to the park by a beautiful silver-tipped red fox standing alongside the highway watching us go by, just a few hundred yards before the park entrance.
After putting the trailer into a campsite at the George Lake base campground (no services), we walked back up to the office to register for the trip into the interior and check out water conditions. The camping prices seem a little strange. The base campground is $15.25 per night for a campsite with no services, and has mostly pit toilets. The backcountry sites, with even fewer services (we have to burn our garbage and carry out anything that won't burn), is $8.00 per person per night, $16/night for the two of us.
The water level in the park is quite low, and some destinations are impossible. O.S.A. Lake is fully booked for the coming week (Sept. 22-27) - amazing! We're feeling like a lazy trip, with lots of time to hike through the forest or sit in camp listening to the loons. So we settled for a fairly short and simple route - two nights on Killarney Lake, two nights on Norway Lake, back to Killarney for one night, and out the next day. The portages on this route are quite modest - 80 meters from George Lake to Freeland L., 455 meters from Freeland L. into Killarney L., then two days later, 1390 meters from Killarney L. into Norway L., then the same thing returning two days later. The direct paddling route is only about 30 km for the entire trip, although we'll undoubtedly cover a lot more distance while exploring the nooks and crannies along the way.
Later in the evening, I walked back to the park office with the laptop, found the office lady cooperative about use of the phone for downloading our mail, but found the phone itself uncooperative. This is the second time I've been unsuccessful in getting the modem to work with a supposedly ordinary phone line - I've no idea why. It could be a digital PBX, but the office lady didn't think so, and it's rather small place to have that kind of system.
9/22 A great day to start canoeing - cold, but clear. It took longer to get ready than we thought, and we weren't on the water until after noon. Killarney is as spectacular as ever. When we passed out through the opening in the cliffs into the main part of George Lake, the grandeur of the place, and the strong west wind, hit us simultaneously. We had a fairly exciting ride east down the lake with the wind and waves pushing us along through the whitecaps, with me trying to spit my attention between enjoying the scenery and keeping the canoe from broaching as the waves hit the rear port quarter..
Freeland Lake and the early parts of Killarney Lake are more protected from the wind and were relaxing. Freeland Lake is a solid mass of water lily leaves for its entire length, but the flowers are long gone. As we came out into the main part of Killarney Lake, the wind hit with full force again. We had intended to go most of the way down toward the east end of the Lake and camp on a point on the north shore, convenient for hiking up into the mountain ridges. But the wind was fierce. Occasionally, we went down the face of a wave so fast that water came over the bow of the canoe. And this canoe is designed for these conditions - with a high flared bow. We realized that if we went on down the lake and found our preferred site already occupied, that we might not be able to paddle the several miles back upwind. So we stopped at a fairly near site on the south shore. As it turned out, it was a good choice - the north shore site turned out to be occupied - after dark, we could see their campfire far down the lake.
9/23 After a leisurely morning, we headed out to hike up the quartzite ridges on the south side of the lake. This was our first chance to try out our GPS receiver in forest conditions. I set a waypoint at our camp, and we headed into the woods. After a kilometer or so of bushwhacking through dense forest, Helen headed back to camp, and Dave continued on alone, setting waypoints in the GPS at several key points along the way. After a couple of detours inland to avoid sheer cliffs, I (Dave) found a feasible route up the rocks. It took another 90 minutes, to get to the top of the cliffs, where I had a spectacular view of the entire lake, as well as O.S.A. lake to the west and Georgian Bay in the distance to the south and West.
The GPS took all the challenge out of getting back. Pushing one button gave me a heading to the first waypoint on the route back. From then on, all I had to do was follow the arrow - the GPS not only gave me a compass heading and distance to the waypoint, but also told me what direction I was actually walking, and how fast. Even under the dense forest canopy, it maintained contact with the satellites and told me where I was, where I was going, and how fast. Remarkable! Clouds had been filling in all morning and just as I started the return route, it began to rain. Bushwhacking through wet foliage isn't much fun, but at least it confirmed that the GPS is reasonably waterproof.
9/24 Another leisurely morning, then we packed up and headed east to Norway Lake - a pleasant paddle down Killarney Lake followed by a somewhat less pleasant 1390-meter portage. We had Norway Lake all to ourselves, at least as far as humans were concerned. The rain had smoothed out the portage trail and there were only three sets of fresh tracks - a man and dog coming out and a large moose going in. We had originally intended to go right on through Norway Lake and take the portage over to Sandy Lake, but the annotated map in the Park Office indicated that Sandy Lake was closed, so we made camp on Norway. This lake has only two campsites, on opposite ends of the lake, well out of sight and hearing of each other, so there is more of a feeling of isolation than on many of the other lakes.
9/25 After breakfast, we packed a lunch and headed up the quartzite ridge to the north of the lake. Silver Peak, the high point, was about 3 km away (as the crow flies - considerably further on the ground, and with lots of steep ups and downs), and we didn't really expect to get that far. But there are several smaller peaks much closer. The GPS was again a big time-saver as we scouted along the base of the cliffs looking for an easy way up and setting waypoints so that we, hopefully, could find the same path down. The typical 100-foot accuracy of the GPS sometimes isn't sufficient to get us back to the same narrow passage through the cliffs, but it's a whole lot better than what we could achieve with just map and compass, and a lot faster too. By lunchtime, we had found our way to a peak that had a wonderful view, and we relaxed for a while, eating and enjoying the scenery. Georgian Bay was spread out to the west and south. To the east, we could see why Sandy Lake is closed. A small lake which has to be paddled, midway in the portage from Norway to Sandy, perhaps half a km of water, was almost completely dry - mostly mud and grass. Perhaps the beavers went on strike and let their dam collapse. We were reminded of the first time we went to Sandy Lake, perhaps 20 years ago. On that occasion, the maps didn't show this small lake at all. Rather, the map indicated one very long continuous portage from Norway to Sandy. But partway through the portage, we were very surprised to come to a lake. We wasted an hour scouting through dense forest along the shore looking for a continuation of the portage trail. We finally loaded the canoe, paddled across, and started scouting the opposite shore, where we eventually found a continuation of the portage trail. Apparently, it was a brand new lake, presumably created by beavers damming a creek. A few years later, we got a new edition of the park map and discovered that the lake had appeared on the new map. It was a short-lived lake - now it's gone again.
The trip back down the mountain was uneventful and we spent a lazy evening around the campfire.
9/26 Another lazy morning. Around lunchtime, we packed up and portaged and paddled out to Killarney Lake, this time going all the way to the northwest corner of the lake, which we hadn't previously explored. We found a nice campsite with a great view, #23. The heavy usage on this beautiful and easily accessible lake meant that there was little firewood near camp. After setting up camp, we explored along the shore with the canoe until we found abundant dead wood, then filled the canoe with wood and ferried it back to camp. While cooking supper, we had to keep our food bags very close to us, and even so, it took constant alertness to fend off a couple of aggressive mice. At one point Helen picked up a food bag to get some ingredient, and found a mouse scrabbling around inside the nylon bag.
The clouds had dissipated earlier, leaving a sparkling clear evening, so we let the fire burn out quite early, about the time it got fully dark, and then spent a while out on the rocky point watching stars, meteors, and satellites until we got too sleepy to pay attention.
9/27 After lunch, we packed up and headed back to civilization, retracing a familiar route. For a change, the wind cooperated, and it was an easy 3-hour paddle and portage back "home". We were back at the trailer in time to move it from the parking lot to a campsite before dark.
9/28 When Dave awoke and looked out the trailer window in the morning, the first sight was of a red fox trotting along the road in front of the trailer. Later, we saw the same fox returning down the road behind the trailer (we're in a pull-through site). We hadn't unhitched the night before, so we got an early start and drove from Killarney north to Sudbury and then west to cross the border at Sault St. Marie, then down through the Upper Peninsula to Mackinac.