As the days got closer
it was apparent that the temperature would make things interesting, as some
nights were -20 and colder in the forecast. The weather despite the cold turned out amazing, ultra clear and no wind for the entire weekend.
Day 0
We decided to get a
head start to Killarney on Friday evening to make the most of the Saturday,
especially since the days are short in the winter. So we went up to Parry Sound which cut 3
hours off of our travel and crashed in a Motel.
Day 1
We got up at 7, ate
some leftover pizza, hit up Tim Hortons for some drinks and some more breakfast
and hit the road. We got to George Lake
campsite office at 10:30 to get permits .
On the way in we stopped at both Johnnie Lake and Carlyle Lake accesses
to see what they were like. We were
hoping that we could get to the end of Johhnie Lake road by car in order to
shave off 4kms of one of the routes that we wanted to go on, but that wasn’t
the case. Both accesses only had a small
area by the highway plowed for parking. Originally while planning we wanted to
leave from Johhnie Lake, over to Bunny Rabbit and base camp at Sandy Lake. That would have been 14kms and we decided
slogging through fresh snow for 14 kms seemed a little too optimistic. So, in
the end we parked at Carlyle access, and tookwhat would normally be a canoe
route to Kakakise Lake, Norway and finally to Sandy Lake. This route was 7kms to base camp and I am
glad we chose this route, since it took us until 4 to do just that.
We parked at Carlyle,
got our gear together on our Pulk sleds and took off. Michael’s sled was just a sled with a roe
attached to a hip belt, as it was his neighbor’s kids’ sled that he borrowed
for the trip. Mine I attached some PVC
pipes together to form more of a proper pulk.
As we started off we
were following some tracks from someone else pulling a sled. The slog across Carlyle is a lot longer than
you expect, around the corner and to the portage to Kakakise. Up to the portage I was wondering who was in
front of us. I was hoping whoever was in
front wasn’t going to Sandy Lake or Norway, so we could lay fresh first tracks
ourselves. Soon we found out that
whoever was in front of us set up camp with a canvas tent and stove on the
portage to Kakakise, so after that we were plowing through the snow. Good for the scenery, but the going was much
tougher than on an established trail. I
love the freedom of being able to walk across lakes in the winter to areas you
would normally require boats to access.
The sky was brilliant
blue and very clear. Every time we
rounded a corner we were amazed by the beauty of the Landscape. There was an ice storm a few days prior,
followed by some snow, so it was a winter wonderland we were looking at. Some of the portages had quite deep snow, you
could make out some very old tracks in some places that were snowed over long
ago, but other than that it was pristine.
We got to the place we
wanted to camp at 4 ish, still had a bit of light. We camped in a sheltered spot at the tip of
the lake. Michael proceeded to stomp out
a pad for tents. I started to pile up
snow for a quinzee, but we quickly ran out of light and I decided to use a tent
for the first night instead of the quinzee.
When the sun went down
it got really cold really fast. I guess
that’s the downfall of having a super clear crisp sky. I should have changed clothes and put on
multiple layers immediately after I stopped doing high output activities, and I
got cold quickly, but drinking hot liquids and getting some high energy foods
into me helped tremendously. I slept
well and was actually sweating in the night, since I put my summer sleeping bag
as a liner inside my -20 rated winter bag.
I also slept on a reflective tarp, on top of which I put a zlite
sleeping pad, and on top of that a Thermarest guidelite sleeping pad. Before bed, I filled up a Nalgene with
boiling water, put them in a sock and put them in the sleeping bag, and changed
into perfectly dry thermals for sleeping in.
Day 2
We got up around
7. Getting dressed in four layers takes
a long time to get out of the sleeping bag in the morning. We made breakfast, I piled a bunch of more
snow on my quinzee pile and we headed out for Silver Peak around 11 for another
high energy day. We brought day packs
with enough gear to deal with whatever we would run into. On the map we picked a line that had the
least steep inclines. We were planning
on going up a couple gullies as seen on topo maps but on the way up we actually
ended up going up some ridges instead which had a bit less snow than the
gullies. There were some quite steep
sections that was hard going especially with deep snow. The snow type/quality and depth kept changing
in different spots which made it interesting.
My favorite snow texture was on the windswept ridges, where it was like
hard styrofoam which the crampons easily bit into and didn’t suck your energy
like the deep snow did. On the way up
somewhere, my SLR lens broke.. from the
cold, ice, or both. I could only take
wide angle shots.. glad I brought my
small camera, too.
We ended up at a small
swamp to the southwest of Silver peak, and the views just kept getting better
as we went. A little bit of wind started
coming up as we got to the top. The ice
storm from a couple days ago made for some spectacular alien-like landscape
near the peak, reminiscent of a Doctor Seuss world. This was my third time to Silver Peak, and I
don’t think it would have been possible to be clearer. Beautiful shocking blue sky and winter
landscape. You could quite easily see a
horizon of Manitoulin Island and Georgian Bay to the southwest, plumes of steam
from Espanola mills the othe northeast, and of course Sudbury and the
superstack to the North. It was quite
chilly and windy at the peak, but we changed into our insulated jackets quickly
while we ate some food before the journey back to camp.
We headed back to camp
in the same general direction that we came up from, but this time we went down
the gully that we were supposed to.
Going up took 3.5 hours, down 1.5.
Each step was half step, half slip in the deep snow, so we made good
time.
Close to rejoining our
original path at the bottom of the slope, I noticed some moose footprints in
the snow and when I looked up, we came across a fresh carcass of a young moose
that was eaten by wolves. By fresh I
mean less than a day old, with no snow and sharply defined tracks. And by carcass I mean just the ribs and
backbone remained, picked absolutely clean, surrounded by blood mixed with
snow, wolf tracks and several tufts of fur.
The legs and head were missing.
At least it looks like the moose was taken down quickly and it wasn’t a
drawn out chase through the wolves. The
scene was quite eerie and makes you think about things and the brutal reality
of the wilderness. This scene was only
about 500m from our camp, but we hadn’t heard anything despite the nonexistent
wind. Perhaps it all happened before we
got to our camp earlier the day before and the wolves had moved on by the time
we got there.
Exiting the woods we
saw some snowshoe tracks from others that had followed our tracks into the
woods, and we wondered where these people were camping – we would find out the
day after. We made the quick trip back
to camp – the sun was already going down and our camp was in the shade. I promptly collected some firewood first,
since we wanted to have one that night.
I found some nearby dead branches sticking up out of what would normally
be a swamp near our campsite. I then
changed into warm/dry clothes in preparation for the approaching cold and after
I dug out my quinzee. I couldn’t let all
that snow piling go to waste and not use it, and I wanted to try out the
novelty of sleeping in what was essentially a snowbank. It really didn’t take much time to hollow out
a large enough spot so I could sit up and have my full length inside. I also poked a hole in the roof for a vent,
and transferred my mattresses and sleeping bag.
Michael still slept in his tent that night.
I also dug a pit for
the fire, chopped the wood up and we had a welcome fire. I placed a buch of green logs/branches at the
bottom of the pit and made the fire on top of that to slow the melting of the
ice underneath. The fire was welcome and
my feet were nice and warm from it. We
ate, boiled water for our sleeping bag Nalgenes and retired for the night, me
to the quinzee, Michael to his tent.
Day 3
I woke up sweating -
the quinzee’s insulation sure works.
Time to pack up and get back to the car.
The weather had changed, itwas now overcast, but still no wind. Gentle large flakes of snow were falling
vertically
We took our time eating
breakfast, then methodically packing up.
I managed to pack my sled a lot better than on the way in since I put
more thought into it instead of just throwing everything on and lashing it
down, like I did for the trip in.
We followed our path
backwards towards Carlyle, the going is much easier n an established trail with
hardened snow than pushing through the soft untracked snow. We followed the footprints we saw the other
day and ran into two men camping on Norway Lake. We chatted with them a bit and they said they
followed our tracks part way up Silver Peak but turned back when it started
getting late.
We continued on the
paths, we came across even more tracks ad the path was pretty solid in
places. Michael going downhill with just
a sled without poles was a bit awkward and he got bowled over a few times by
the sled behind him. We made good time
back. The last 1.5km across Carlyle Lake
was a bit of a chore, but I took off my snowshoes and just walked along the
hard trails.
We hit the road and
made it back to Guelph by 8:30, luckily the roads were in great condition and
moving well except for near Barrie, as usual.
Some Tips:
-using a pulk sled
helps carry more gear and is easy to make see this link: Building a
Pulk Sled
-There’s no access to
end of Johnnie Lake road in the winter, only a small parking lot at the end
-permits are still
required in the winter for Killarney
- Building a quinzee is
a warmer option than a tent
-bring lots of fuel for
melting snow
No comments:
Post a Comment