I recently got back from a 4 day trip at the
end of June, paddling the tip of Bruce Peninsula/Fathom Five National Park and
it was fantastic. It had been on my list
of paddling trips within a day’s drive for quite a long time, and I finally
checked it off of the list. I am glad I
did.
The northern coast of Bruce Peninsula is
utterly spectacular and brilliant, especially when the weather is
cooperating. The water is amazingly clear
with deep aqua marine tones colors against the white limestone. It actually feels like a tropical
destination. Paddling along the coast
you get the best view of the Niagara Escarpment cliffs while paddling by huge
boulders on the shoreline, interspersed with the odd pebble beach. The cliffs along the shore are dotted with
caves, some of them at water level and have sinister gurgling sounds emanating
from them. You even have a good view of
the bottom; visibility is 10-12m (30-40 feet), the ghostly white limestone
reflecting the light in the depths makes for slightly eerie experience.
I spent two nights on Flowerpot Island, one
at High Dump and one at Stormhaven. I
made my way to Flowerpot Island myself for the first night, and my friend Peter
caught up with me on the second Flowerpot Island night, then we proceeded down
the coast for the other days. It’s the
first time I had done any significant ‘big water’ paddling for several days,
and it is quite different than the other paddling trips usually do on rivers,
smaller lakes and interior sites.
Flowerpot Island is in Fathom Five Marine Park, while Stormhaven and
High Dump sites are part of the Bruce Peninsula National park. Even though they are both National Parks, you
have to call two different places to reserve.
On Flowerpot Islandthere’s 6 campsites, and you reserve those by calling
the Fathom Five Park office. The other two sites – Storm Haven and High Dump
(referring to an old logging dump site) are reserved by calling the National Park reservation office, and both
are much more frequented my hikers on the Bruce Trail than they are
paddlers. All three campsites have
wooden tent platforms to pitch your tent (probably maximum two small tents per
site) and a shared composting toilet which uses wood chips for odor control and
composting, supplied with TP and even hand sanitizer.
We left our cars at Lighthouse point
in Tobermory, where there is free overnight municipal parking. Another good launch spot with parking is at
Dunks bay, to the south of Tobermory.
Both are a similar paddling distance to Flowerpot Island. From lighthouse point it’s about a 5km
paddle. 
You need to have much respect the water
when it is as big as Lake Huron and Georgian Bay. Both the weather and waves can change very
quickly and you have to be prepared. And
they can be independent – sometimes there’s no wind, but huge waves, sometimes
the opposite. Fog can also roll in at
any time, reducing visibility. There’s
no way canoes here, it has to be a kayak, unless for a very short stretch when
it is calm. The shoreline is all rocky
and is frequently difficult landing, even in small waves. You need to be an intermediate kayaker,
having a paddle float and being capable of self rescue at the least. If you are with someone else, you should have
practiced a two person rescue before.
The water is cold year round, so I brought my drysuit for the crossing
to the island, even though it isn’t very far – about 5 km from lighthouse
point. And you pass by a small island
called Middle Island on the way, making your way to the east side of Flowerpot
towards the Beachy Cove site.
Flowerpot Island is
named after, and known for the iconic ‘flowerpot’ stack formations on the
shore, there are two of them. Many
tourists to the Tobermory area take day trips to the island from several boat
operators, through the commercial dock.
The campsite has a smaller dock intended for powerboats I assume, the
dock isn’t very useful for paddlers as it is too high out of the water. The Campsite (called Beachy cove, although
there’s not much of a beach, just a bunch of rocks) on the East side of the
island is protected from a breakwall if the waves are coming from the East,
although the prevailing winds are Northwest.
The island is made from old fossilized coral reefs covered with
limestone. There’s a picnic spot for
the daytrippers, as well as a small loop hiking trail, some stairs up to a
cave, and a lighthouse station to see on the north side of the island, and a
house/cottage sometimes manned by volunteer staff that sell cold drinks to
those wanting refreshments. The hiking
trail is about a 5km loop, goes past the flowerpots where people can hang out,
eat lunch and swim on the limestone shelves.
Since I was there for two days, I explored the island quite a bit and
did some difficult bushwhacking to reach a pretty cool clifftop that overlooks
the harbor, I am sure the parks people would prefer people to stay away
from. 
We left relatively early the day we were
leaving the island, as the wind and waves typically pick up more towards the
afternoon, and we had quite a way to go that day, all the way down the coast to
High Dump campsite. We lucked out and
the weather was gorgeous, warm, full sun, slight tailwind, little waves for
most of the trip except as we approached High Dump. We explored the coastline, Driftwood Bay,
Overhanging point and the caves at the waterline, stopped for lunch on a rock
shelf near Cypress Lake campground and the famous Grotto, a cave with a pool in
it that has an underwater passage out to the bay. Just East of Cypress Lake we passed Storm
Haven backcountry campsite where we would stay the next night and continued
on. The water started getting a bit
rough around cave point, where the spectacular cliffs plunge into Georgian Bay. You can kayak under the overhang high above
and past more caves, then the home stretch towards High Dump.
High dump is a beautiful campground,
especially when it’s low occupancy, with a long curving white limestone rock
beach to the east. To the west you can
make out Flowerpot Island in the distance and Bear’s Rump Island on a good
day. There’s 8 sites here. Hands down the best is #8. It is close to the water and it has a built
in beer cooler… or spring, rather - that
comes out of the rocks. Nice and cold. This campground has some new-and-improved
bear hanging apparatus where there’s a series of wire ropes on pulleys
supported by a steel structure for hanging your food. Bears are quite common around here. They used to have communal steel mailbox-like
bear boxes stored at ground level, but I can attest that they didn’t work all
that great, since I had all my food eaten out of one of them 10 years ago while
hiking this section. Despite the
distance we had paddled that day, we still had a good part of the day left, so
we relaxed, and made a couple’easy chairs’ out of the flat rocks on the beach
to sit in. Sitting in a chair with a
back was wonderful.
The next day, I got up
really early, took some sunrise photos, and we set out after leisurely packing
up and eating. We only had about 7 or 8
kms to go, back to Storm Haven camp. I
planned in this leisurely day, as the waves and weather could have been much
worse causing us delays in the last couple days, but fortunately that wasn’t a
problem and we had extra time. So we got
to Storm Haven, found our site 
Storm Haven has several
campsites near the water, and some up on top of the escarpment as well. The composting toilet is in the middle of the
stairs on the way up. It is a nice camp,
has bear hanging apparatuses both near the water and up on the escarpment, and
has a great view of Cave point to the East of it. But, it also seems to be a site that many
hicks camp at, since it is only 1 or 2 kms from Cypress lake car campground and
doesn’t take much effort to get to. Some
litter was left at the campsite, some had made fires right by the tent
platform. I saw a beer can in the water,
etc.But it really wan’t all that bad.
We spend the rest of
the day hiking to the Grotto/Cypress Lake along the Bruce trail. That night it rained really hard – 40mm in 13
hours of nonstop rain. Now, I was finally
glad I brought my tarp which I was bellyaching about the day before, since it
took up half of the room in my rear hatch and was large, bulky and otherwise sucky
to pack into my hatch. A cool thing we
saw that night was a bunch of glowing pieces of pine. It has bioluminescent fungus growing in it,
so it looked like shards of green glowsticks at night. I was aware that some bioluminescent fungus
existed, but mainly in tropical regions, I didn’t know it was in Ontario. After researching I found it is probably Armillaria mellea, although it could be a couple other
species.
The last day was the stretch back to the
Lighthouse and our cars. It was foggy in
the morning, we couldn’t see Cave point.
We also had to wait for a break in the rain to start packing up. I started packing up before the rain stopped
- I out to my kayak to put on my drysuit…
or better known as my don’t give a fuck suit to make things more
comfortable. We packed up and started
out, the waves were a bit choppy and coming from multiple directions as we
moved along the coast. We cut across
some of the bays to make the trip shorter.
In the home stretch, as we rounded Dunk’s Bay rocks, the waves were
getting quite large, and random, rodeo style, as the waves reflected off of the
cliffs. We made it to the point opposite
Lighthouse point after struggling with the waves. We were glad to finally get into some calm
water, the choppy stuff in large waves takes all of your concentration with
constant corrections. We paddled across
to the lighthouse for a rough, ungraceful takeout as the waves were hitting the
table rocks and we both fell in trying to get out.
The North Bruce/Tobermory area is one of the
best places around Ontario to experience some excellent sea kayaking with
beautiful scenery and some great backcountry campsites. You just need to be prepared for what the weather
and waves with throw at you. My only
regret is not having enough time to explore some of the shipwrecks in the area,
and the other islands of the Fathom Five park.
Oh well, I guess I’ll have to come back some other time. :)
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