Killarney by canoe, 2005

Canoeing Journal
Killarney Provincial Park, Ontario
August 27 through September 4, 2005
By Gary Hochgraf

Cast:
Gary Hochgraf
Karen H
Schuyler
Karen J

Saturday
Karen H. and I arrived at the ranger station just before their 5pm closing time after a long drive from the Adirondacks, and breaks when we took self guided walks as we passed through Algonquin Provincial Park. The first was around a spruce bog, mostly on boardwalks, where we learned the ecology of the acidic, nutrient poor bog; and the second to the brow of a gneiss cliff where we learned the local geology.
After checking in, we picked up the canoe at Killarney Outfitters, a Langford Nahani, re-packed, drove to the put-in on Bell Lake, and began paddling about 7:00pm. The third campsite was vacant so we took it. It has been drizzling on and off all evening, with low clouds, very high humidity and low visibility. We weren’t long in camp before night fell.

Sunday
The morning came with dense fog, visibility less than 500 feet. After breakfast the sun broke through and the wind picked up and soon the weather was clear with patchy clouds and a tail wind.
We followed Bell Lake north into Three Mile Lake, saw a Great Blue Heron and a few deer. We see many loons and mergansers. The lake level is low - a line of pollen is about 18” above lake level, and the old shoreline is above that. Many of the marshes are exposed to their muck.
The portage to Balsam Lake was especially easy. There is a little rail car big enough to hold one canoe, so we pulled the Nahani onto it with all the gear still in, and together we pulled the cart about 30m into Balsam Lake. Another small group of canoeists came in just as we paddled away into Balsam, and they used the cart to bring their two boats from Balsam to Three Mile.
Once into Balsam we slowed the pace, checked out a vacant campsite (a few blueberries but too much wind exposure) and poked along the shore looking at various flora and fauna.
We found a nice campsite on an island and claimed it for the night. The shore on the approach side is gently sloping bedrock, scoured smooth and striated by the glacier. Soil is thin but nevertheless supports a forest of stately pines and spruces. So we set up our tents and paddled back towards the portage to leave a note for Schuy and Karen, who arrive today. About half way there we saw a dark tandem canoe headed our way; as we got closer we could see it was black and competently paddled. It was Schuy and Karen.
We returned to the island together, set up a bear bag rope, more tents, had lunch, then went exploring. There is a second island connected to this one by an isthmus, and growing along the isthmus were wild cranberries! They weren’t quite ripe yet and very sour. Between our two island and the mainland is a marsh, but the water in this lake is about a foot low, so the marsh is mud, punctuated by tree stumps, logs, and occasional open water with water lilies. Many sun dew plants grow on the mud or logs. The sun dew is an insectivorous plant.
Dinner was tacos, with re-hydrated sun-dried tomatoes, TVP with taco seasoning, and cheese. Very good, and chocolate cheesecake for dessert. We took an evening paddle to a nearby rock face, scrambled around, and later collected firewood. The island has been scalped of all burnable wood. Later the stars came out. We hoped for an aurora, but settled for lots of stars, the Andromeda Galaxy, and a few shooting stars. Beavers swam by.

Monday
Bright and beautiful dawn, an orange sun peeking over the trees. I went for an early paddle, heard a beaver gnawing on a tree in the woods, and saw many swimming. Heard loons too.
Schuy made us blueberry pancakes for breakfast. Yum.
We struck camp and paddled west through Balsam Lake, turned right when it did, and stopped for 2nd breakfast on an island. Then on to the northern end of Balsam, through a marsh, then up a stream - wading and pushing the two canoes, over a beaver dam, and into Beacon Lake. This is a small lake with two campsites. We checked out the nearest first, on an island, and the other on the mainland, and one on nearby Fox Lake (occupied) and chose the island. The other Beacon Lake site was too hilly. Fox Lake is reached via a 200m portage along a lovely stream. We’ve been on gneiss bedrock all along, but Fox has the white quartzite along its southern shore and in the creek. This quartzite is part of what makes Killarney so dramatic.
After lunch Schuy and I took a swim and found out that the Nahani barely has enough buoyancy to float. Karen and Karen walked to the end of the island and back, and I paddled once around the lake. These are all incredibly clear lakes and quite nutrient-starved. Once we were all back together we took the portage to Fox again, and paddled around it. There we explored the remains of an old wooden cabin on the shore.
Back in Beacon, we had dinner while the low clouds thickened. Karen J. made us jambalaya rice with ham and peas, and rhubarb sauce for dessert. No stars tonight. We sat under the tarp when it intermittently drizzled.

Tuesday
Our hardest and longest day, but not really very hard or long. Morning broke still and foggy. The fog lifted by breakfast to reveal thin stratus clouds. When we entered this lake yesterday we pushed the canoes through a flowing breach in the beaver dam. Last night the beavers were busy. The breach is now closed with sticks, rocks and mud to about 3” above lake level. We dragged over it and waded down the channel into Balsam Lake. At the west end of balsam is a portage trail to David Lake, which we took. The path is heavily used and quite worn. The clouds lifted as we snacked at the put-in, and under patchy skies we paddled out into David Lake. To our surprise, there are cabins on David, which has no road access. And more surprising is that they are new cabins and a generator was humming behind them. We had thought that a camp on an island would be nice again, but as we passed that site we could still hear the generator, so we passed it on, and found ourselves in a delightful little channel behind the island, barely navigatable by canoe. We found the next campsite to be vacant and really quite nice, so we claimed it. Actually the campsite proper isn’t all that good, so we hung the tarp there to claim it (it had to be dried anyway), and set up our camp around the corner from it. Our site has a nice sloping apron of quartzite sloping down from it, just right for swimming, which we soon did.
Nearby is Silver Peak, the highest point in the park. So we packed up dinner, jackets, lights, and water, hung the bear bag, and paddled across the lake to the trailhead. We left the canoes on the shore and started hiking. The trail climbed a ridge adjacent to the lake, sometimes in woods, sometimes on open, blazing white quartzite with many cairns. It then dropped down to pass a few beaver ponds, and climbed steadily from there to the top of the peak. Karen J. decided not to go for the top, but the rest of us made it. We passed more than a dozen people coming down as we ascended. Most of the trail was in the woods, and much of that beside a babbling mountain brook. From the top we could see Lake Huron to the south and west, Manitoulin Island to the west, lots of small lakes in every direction, and to the north, the tall smokestacks of Sudbury, ON.
Shadows were lengthening, so down we went, joined Karen at the beaver ponds., then re-climbed the ridge by the lake. On the west end of the ridge we stopped and made supper as the sun set and the skies became ablaze with color. The low stratus deck of this morning had given way to cumulus in the afternoon, and by evening these had blown east leaving cirrus clouds; high wisps that caught the fading sunlight in pinks and purples, and reflected them in the lakes below. Magical.
We hiked the remainder of the trail in the dark to the canoes; then paddled under starry skies back to camp.

Wednesday
Blue skies, west wind. This morning the lake was not a mirror. I made a batch of blueberry muffins for breakfast.
We paddled to the east end of David, and took a quarter mile portage to a lovely beaver wetland/meandering pond, paddled to the end of that for a half mile portage to the west tip of Bell Lake, then crossed the bay for a 0.1 mile portage to Log Boom Lake. We stopped on the dam between Bell and Log Boom for lunch. This is a man-made dam mostly of rocks. All over the top of the dam and the inlet to the dam are huge logs, many with 2” holes drilled through them, and some with chains around them. We guess that these may be the remains of log booms used to close-off a bay while transporting timber down the lake, back when Killarney was logged.
At the end of Log Boom Lake we dragged over the beaver dam, paddled a small pond, carried around another dam, and entered Johnny Lake. We soon found a nice campsite and I went swimming almost immediately.
The camp has nearly tame chipmunks. They’ll take a nut from your hand. They run right through camp with us there as long as we’re still. Its hard to say whether they are cute or annoying.
Schuy made dinner- spaghetti with his own dehydrated tomato sauce. We all went for an evening paddle after clean-up. There are many bedrock outcroppings that come down to the shore. Some have fantastic twisted trees growing out of a crevasse. One had a small blueberry bush with twelve fat blueberries on it. It has not been a good year for the blues, so these were quite a treat. As dusk fell the beavers came out and slapped the water if we got too close. We found a patch of pitcher plants - another insectivorous plant. The first stars were coming out when we got back to camp.
After a campfire and more stargazing we settled down for the night. Schuy and I opted for a rock outcropping near camp and slept under the stars.

Thursday
Clear skies. Light west wind, brilliant sun. I got up before the sun and took Nahani out. Its incredibly peaceful out on the lake in the morning.
The others got up, and we had breakfast, packed up, and left. By now the wind had picked up, but we headed into it to take photos of some of the gnarled trees growing out of the rocks and of the pitcher plants. Then we turned with the wind and followed Johnny Lake east, portaged up a beaver dam, which was followed shortly by a 200m portage back into Bell Lake and right past the parking lot and our parked cars. There is a little store here connected with Killarney Kanoes, so we browsed their book selection and ID’d some of the plants and birds we’d seen.
Downwind along Bell Lake we went, and stopped at an island for lunch. Another family paddled out from the lodge in inflatable kayaks to go swimming. They’re going to have a tough time getting back.
Our campsite is relatively secluded in a bay. We went exploring, and just south of our site is a portage trail to Chain Lake, which connects to Little Bell then to Balsam. Karen J. and Schuy headed up the trail while Karen H. and I walked along the shore looking for moose. We found beaver footprints, canine (probably dog, remote possibility of wolf) and lots of deer prints. Then finally we found one definite moose print, and further on several sets of moose tracks.
We then re-joined Karen and Schuy up the portage trail. At the end of the trail is a beaver meadow with a meandering channel. And what a beautiful meadow. So we lingered there for quite a while, took a few pictures, and planned to return tomorrow with canoes. There had once been a corduroy road across this bog.
Back at camp we finished setting up, lounged, explored, collected wood, and chatted until dinner time. Karen J. made dinner - black beans with rice with vegs and chicken., and I added a bottle of wine (I had stopped at the car) and made chocolate cake for dessert.
Schuy, Karen H. and I took Schuy’s canoe out for an evening spin, then we all sat on the huge rock apron and watched the star show and listened to the loons.

Friday
Gray dawn, drizzly rain from stratus clouds, then dripping from the trees onto the tents. We keep the same camp for two nights, so there’s no urgency to get up out of a nice dry tent. But I got up anyway, retrieved the bear bag, rigged the dining fly, and started hot water for breakfast. By the middle of breakfast we could see blue skies to the west, and soon we were drying out. Eventually we got together lunch and raincoats (just in case) and headed the two canoes down the shore to the portage to Chain Lake, then up the trail to the beaver meadow. The channel meandered through the meadow and soon became shallow as we got to the base of a beaver dam. We quickly lifted the boats over and were afloat on Chain Lake. This is a small lake with extensive bog mats along the shores. We found the next beaver dam and carried the canoes into Little Bell Lake. By now the wind had really picked up, and the lake was wide enough to really affect us. There’s a campsite here on Little Bell, so we stopped to check it out. Very nice, and no neighbors.
Instead of taking the portage trail directly to Balsam, we turned left and followed the shore to the lake’s inlet - another meadow. These lakes are very acidic and have very little nutrients. the main causes of this are the geology and man. The bedrock here is very dense metamorphic gneiss and quartzite, which offers up its minerals reluctantly, so the soil is very thin, and nether have much buffering capacity. Acid rain is the other culprit, mostly coming from Sudbury, ON and the huge nickel smelter there. As a result of this acidity, one first notices the clarity of the water. Little ponds like this, which in other regions would be clear to 2-3 feet and dark brown, are instead crystal clear with visibility to 10-15feet. One lake in Killarney is reported to have visibility to 27m. The vegetation is unique too. There are two insectivorous plants - the sun dew and the pitcher plant. There are wild cranberries and other acid tolerant plants. Huge mats of floating dead vegetation form over quiet water, starving the water of oxygen while also providing a place for bog plants to grow. Decomposition is very slow too, and there are extremely few fish in these lakes.
At the end of the lake we found a channel through the bog, and followed it about half a mile, twisting and turning until we found the base of the next beaver dam. I suppose we could’ve continued, but it would’ve been more trouble than we wanted. So we turned back and meandered into Little Bell, and portaged into Balsam.
Lunch was on an island on Balsam, where there happened to be quite a crop of cranberries. After lunch we picked about a pint of the ripest ones. From here we headed east and downwind toward the portage back to Three Mile and Bell, but first we tried to explore a large bay (according to the map) behind an island. But the water was low this year, and the entire bay is choked with logs and stumps. It was a significant challenge just to paddle and push our way around behind the island. We used the rail car to portage Nahani into Three Mile, but the wind made it difficult, so Schuy and Karen just carried theirs over. Paddling through Three Mile and to our campsite was uneventful. We did however pass other canoeists heading into the more interior lakes as we were heading out.
Dinner was my curried vegs, this time with Thai cellophane noodles. We also cut each of the cranberries in half (or quarters) and cooked them down with all the honey that I’d brought plus a few packets of sugar. We let it cool in a pool by the lake. Boy was it delicious.

Saturday
Dawn was crystal clear, then clouds moved in. A nice colorful sunrise. We all slept out under the stars on the huge apron of glaciated bedrock that dominates this campsite. But we left our tents up just in case.
Breakfast was done, tents down, and everything packed and underway within about an hour and a half of sunrise. I had anticipated a headwind to the take-out and parking lot, but as with most of our days here, we had a tail wind!

The end