Wayne D's Blog

On Tuesday I got back from a six day canoe trip to Killarney provincial park. Our group of eight people with four canoes paddled and portaged from the Willisville access point through Charlton Lake, Howry Creek to Murry Lake our first day. When we arrived in Murray Lake late that first day we found that both campsites were taken even though we had a reservation. Unfortunately you reserve a lake and not a specific spot so we didn't know which of the two groups were interlopers. With only 30 minutes of light left we found a rock outcrop with enough flat spots for our four tents and made camp. The next morning we started out early and continued through Howry Lake, Gem Lake and Fish Lake to our second night campsite in Great Mountain Lake. Along the way we paddled through the incredible scenery of the Canadian Shield alongside the La Cloche Mountains. The La Cloche Mountains have been eroded over eons to such a degree that they aren't really mountains anymore but they are still impressive.

The water was warm and the weather was good, after we made camp we swan in the lake and relaxed after our two days of traveling, portaging and paddling. We were awakened the next morning by the sound of chain saws and hammering, people were working on a cottage site on an island in the middle of Great Mountain Lake very close to our campsite. Sigh, why doesn't our government buy these people out and keep the park for everyone. We spent a rest day in Great Mountain Lake taking a side trip to Gail Lake. Gail Lake has a really nice campsite on a large rock outcrop the comes up out of the lake.

On our trip back we decided to risk the portages from Fish Lake to Goose Lake even though we had been warned when we checked in that the portages had not been maintained. The first portage from Fish Lake to Round Otter Lake had about five or six trees across the trail at various points. It would have taken at most an hour with a chain saw to clean them up, I wonder what we pay camp fees for? Though strong winds a few weeks before had blown over many trees throughout the park it was obvious from the state of the foliage on these trees that they had been down for quite some time. During this leg of the trip we saw three moose, a cow and a calf and a solitary moose at another point of the journey. We also saw a pile of bear poop festooned with berries right in the middle of the trail. Things went pretty smoothly until we left Goose Lake to enter Rocky Lake over what was supposed to be a 50m portage and found that a beaver dam had pretty much dewatered the eastern quarter of Rocky Lake. All that remained was a narrow mucky channel. After we tried pulling the canoe over the grass, poling it with a paddle that would sink two feet into the muck and pull the paddle out when I tried to extricate it from the mud we hit upon the idea of tieing two ropes on the front of the canoe and having one person on each bank. Before coming up with this method I sank up to my knees in the muck at least four or five times as I tried to pull the canoe along with one rope. After we came up with this method we almost flew through the rest of the tow. After a few beaver dam liftovers it was back in the canoes through the rest of Rock Lake and Grow Lake to our campsite at the east end of Van Lake. A nice campsite on a pretty lake but we were unable to find the KYBO that is supposed to be placed at each campsite. What do we pay our camp fees for?

The next day it was through Van, then Van Winkle Lake paddling into a strong headwind. We then traveled through Harwood and Leech Lake to our longest portage of the trip, 950m. Through the trail was relatively flat the large number of trees that had been allowed to obstruct the trail made for a difficult slog through the rocks and trees. Judcious use of a chainsaw by the rangers would have been appreciated. After the portage we were back in Murray Lake and stopped at one of the campsites we were supposed to have our first night out to eat lunch and recover from the efforts of the portage. We then retraced our route out of the park stopping to camp at the site of an abandoned cabin in a unamed lake on Howry Creek.

The next morning it was up at 6 a.m. to paddle back to Widgawa Lodge, where we had parked the vans, load up the gear and head back home.

Things to remember for next time

1. Wear socks all the time, the scabs on my ankles haven't fallen off yet
2. Wear water shoes with stiff bottoms, the bottom of my feet are still sore. The cheap water shoes are fine for the beach but for a portage old running shoes are better

The picture at the top of the posting is from www.leslierohonczy.com.
I didn't take a camera because I didn't want to worry about losing it, if you want to see Killarney Park pictures try http://friendsofkillarneypark.ca/photogallery/
I'm still waiting for a spellchecker Yahoo 360 development team.