We got to Killarney after dark and stopped at the entrance to change into cold-weather gear. I was in a sort of silvery collared zip-up and sneakers. No one else seemed to be dressed for a mid-90s Britpop concert: another lesson in woodcraft. On socks, at least, I was solid: a neoprene pair and a pair of special wool hiking ones called the Ultimax Rebel Fusion Crew II ("Hey, marketing department! We need a name for a pair of socks." <Marketers look up crazy-eyed from coke mirrors, scramble for whiteboard>). An older couple pulled up to use the washroom, learned we were thinking about canoeing out into the back country that night, looked distracted for a second as though mentally composing statements for the coroner, and wished us good luck.
At about 8pm, six of us were standing on an eerie beach trying to decide whether to go or wait until morning. Evelyn and Geordie, who organized the whole business, had gotten in earlier and had promised to set up a light to guide us in; but it was a two hour trip, with two portages. There was no moon and no stars. We turned off our headlamps to check visibility. After a minute, I thought I could make out two shades of blackness; the lighter one might have been the opposite shore, or a cloud bank, or a smudge on my glasses. On the one hand, there was a strong feeling we might be swallowed silently by the Stygian blackness and be lost forever to the human world. On the other, getting in in the middle of the night might be useful for some reason. After a long pause, some clear thinker suggested we might as well wait until morning, and everyone agreed.
Our group was 5/6 outdoorsy and capable. In the time it took me to work out the site we'd pulled into had no firewood, the others had gone out on the scrounge, come back with armfuls of it, sorted it minutely by diameter, laid it out beside the pit, started a fire, made tea, and opened some wine. People texted Geordie to explain about the Stygian blackness and we slept.
The morning brought light, wind, and no particular warmth. We pushed off and battled a north wind across a sea of cold ink in three translucent peashells, which the others made seem less heroic by joking and stopping to take pictures. At the east end of George Lake was a liftover where an obnoxious beaver had dammed an outlet. After that, we paddled the length of Freeland Lake and did a 400m portage, where I learned how painful canoe yokes are. The thing cut into my shoulders like a knife. People like Shane jog along these portages as though they've absentmindedly forgotten there's a canoe on their head. I had to set an end down at the halfway mark and take a swearing break. I may be too thin. I can't stay warm for the same reason; I'm all surface area, like an elephant ear.
On Killarney Lake, we were disoriented. But there was a blaze of green on the opposite shore, so we set the bow towards that, and it turned out to be Geordie's pants. By night a light, by day Geordie's pants; Jehovah and the wandering Israelites operated a similar system with less success.
Site 18 was a big flat space high above the water, opposite a shiny quartzite dome patchily covered with trees, like a great doughy thing furred with streaks of multicoloured mould -- like something you'd find at the back of your fridge and throw away unidentified, but also very beautiful. Geordie and Evelyn had set up a tarp to block the worst of the scouring wind and pointed out the sheltered bits and the good spots for tents. We made a huge pile of gear and went for the food, which was in watertight barrels and my little canister.
Smell control is one of the stranger campsite jobs. The problem is that bears have noses like bloodhounds and are, if bear experts can be trusted, interested in everything. They're attracted to food, but also to toothpaste and detergent. (In the same way, while they do smell fear — a whiff of mild trepidation will bring them arrowing in from miles away — they can also detect wistfulness and world-weariness in minute quantities. Try not to experience these feelings, especially inside your tent; if you must have them, move a hundred metres away from your sleeping area. Tourists are cautioned that foreign emotions such as schadenfreude and ennui are particularly intriguing to bears.)
Sanitation of a kind was provided by a pit with a lidded wooden box on top set way back in the empty woods. It's an incredibly disquieting place at night, silent, dark, and open on all sides. You creep up with bear spray in hand and sit scanning the forest in front with your headlamp, hoping 180 degrees of surveillance will be enough. You wonder about the box itself, imagine your doctor clearing her throat uncomfortably and asking how you were exposed to bear syphilis.
After lunch — more of the excellent arepas we had on Philip Edward Island — four of us went off for a hike. I've been making a half-hearted effort to be less comically unprepared, so brought along my sad little emergency kit — a space blanket, extra water tablets, a store-bought first aid kit. In the past, my emergency plan was to sit quietly and wait for death. I'd just bring a book. I'm not sure I've improved things that much. The first aid kit is particularly underwhelming. In a real emergency, you'd dive into it for morphine ampules and a bone saw and come up with some scraps of moleskin and a "soothing wipe" for mosquito bites. The freeze-dried enchilada I've been carrying around is also, I think, going to go into the kit; the key to maintaining an emergency food reserve is to bring things you're too scared to try without death staring you in the face.
There are also pre-packed survival kits, which seemed too silly even for me to buy. I thought of myself shivering alone in the barrens, squatting down and dumping out a bag of orange Kinder Toys — tiny compass, tiny knife, tiny signaling mirror — and a little pamphlet ("So You're Going To Die...") with a portrait of its bearded author smiling from the cover. In the spirit of ultralight backpacking, I think I could pare it down to just the mirror and a one-pager: "1. Use the mirror to fix your hair; 2. Lie down; 3. Cross your arms over your chest; 4. Wait."
I've become a bit of an expert on Mountain Equipment Coop's catalogue. I consider myself more or less one of their favourite regulars.
This time, there were none, but it was swarming with hikers (it's accessible from a parking lot). Maybe the blueberries along the trail were out of season, maybe the bears were already hibernating, maybe they didn't want to share the trail with dozens of hikers with dogs and children. I didn't either, particularly. Babies, especially, always sap my feeling of intrepidness.
Killarney is better than Algonquin: more varied and more beautiful. Algonquin's a same-y rolling woodland; Killarney has old white mountains crumbling into clear lakes, mixed and changing forests, pink granite shores. The Crack trail was packed with soggy yellow leaves and ran through fall forests and a narrow crevasse — the Crack — to a scramble up a white rockfall to a famous outlook with a majestic view of lakes and autumn forests where a bunch of people were lounging around eating chips. Kids from Toronto puffed up and said "it looks like CGI" and talked about what a good Facebook background it would make, like missionaries sent out into the world to spread contempt for millennials.
On the way back, we stopped to check out a better and more quiet viewpoint Todd had scouted out, then lost the trail a few times. The signage was strange; there are lots of blazes, and then none at spots where side trails branch off only to narrow and disappear. The others skipped lightly ahead like woodland elves and I picked my way heavily over leaf-covered roots and squinted after them. Cat's white jacket bobbed in the distance like a friendly will-o'-the-wisp that leads people back to their canoes.
The four non-hikers were deep into preparations for a colossal meal. I offered around the freeze-dried meals, on the theory that these people might not know they didn't have to prepare a state banquet every time they went into the woods. There was no interest. Not even in the freeze-dried enchilada, even though it's a space-age miracle waiting to be experienced. I was ready for this kind of campsite cooking, but the dinner touched new heights of ludicrousness. There was a boeuf bourgignon (reportedly excellent); a root vegetable thing; a fish and scallop soup; grilled sole; and a pumpkin cake with salted caramel. It was probably the finest meal ever eaten with a spork.
In the morning, we straggled out of tents and pressured Todd to bake scones. We broke things down, dumped packs into the canoes, and set off again. A sheltered spot was found for lunch, a modest three-course affair with mimosas. We pulled out again on the last stretch, some of the people in the canoes up ahead — almost certainly Ilya and Geordie — singing Rule Britannia.
Evelyn and Geordie peeled off to go home. The rest of us had decided to squeeze in one last exhausting hike first, a steep and unofficial one starting from a campsite on George Lake. I don't know the number, but this site is notable for having probably the worst toilet in the world. Not the most disgusting — refer to past blog entries for candidates — but the all-around worst: A rotten wooden box that's accessed by a hundred metre scramble up a steep hillside and is surrounded by prime bear feeding grounds of blueberry patches and mast-bearing trees. Of the hike itself, I remember steep climbing, getting slightly lost, standing on ridges with sweeping views of the park, and lying down on a rocky outcropping feeling very tired.
It had been a fun weekend with kind and interesting people, full of exciting wilderness challenges like hiking, scrambling, canoe navigation, and washing up after a 4 course meal for 8 with a potful of warm water and a squirt of biodegradable soap. We hauled the canoes back up into the beach we'd started from, took pictures, discovered that the camp showers were closed for the season, and stopped at the washrooms at the gate, where I washed the grime of three campfires and two strenuous hikes off my sunburned face.
At about 8pm, six of us were standing on an eerie beach trying to decide whether to go or wait until morning. Evelyn and Geordie, who organized the whole business, had gotten in earlier and had promised to set up a light to guide us in; but it was a two hour trip, with two portages. There was no moon and no stars. We turned off our headlamps to check visibility. After a minute, I thought I could make out two shades of blackness; the lighter one might have been the opposite shore, or a cloud bank, or a smudge on my glasses. On the one hand, there was a strong feeling we might be swallowed silently by the Stygian blackness and be lost forever to the human world. On the other, getting in in the middle of the night might be useful for some reason. After a long pause, some clear thinker suggested we might as well wait until morning, and everyone agreed.
Our group was 5/6 outdoorsy and capable. In the time it took me to work out the site we'd pulled into had no firewood, the others had gone out on the scrounge, come back with armfuls of it, sorted it minutely by diameter, laid it out beside the pit, started a fire, made tea, and opened some wine. People texted Geordie to explain about the Stygian blackness and we slept.
The morning brought light, wind, and no particular warmth. We pushed off and battled a north wind across a sea of cold ink in three translucent peashells, which the others made seem less heroic by joking and stopping to take pictures. At the east end of George Lake was a liftover where an obnoxious beaver had dammed an outlet. After that, we paddled the length of Freeland Lake and did a 400m portage, where I learned how painful canoe yokes are. The thing cut into my shoulders like a knife. People like Shane jog along these portages as though they've absentmindedly forgotten there's a canoe on their head. I had to set an end down at the halfway mark and take a swearing break. I may be too thin. I can't stay warm for the same reason; I'm all surface area, like an elephant ear.
On Killarney Lake, we were disoriented. But there was a blaze of green on the opposite shore, so we set the bow towards that, and it turned out to be Geordie's pants. By night a light, by day Geordie's pants; Jehovah and the wandering Israelites operated a similar system with less success.
Site 18 was a big flat space high above the water, opposite a shiny quartzite dome patchily covered with trees, like a great doughy thing furred with streaks of multicoloured mould -- like something you'd find at the back of your fridge and throw away unidentified, but also very beautiful. Geordie and Evelyn had set up a tarp to block the worst of the scouring wind and pointed out the sheltered bits and the good spots for tents. We made a huge pile of gear and went for the food, which was in watertight barrels and my little canister.
Smell control is one of the stranger campsite jobs. The problem is that bears have noses like bloodhounds and are, if bear experts can be trusted, interested in everything. They're attracted to food, but also to toothpaste and detergent. (In the same way, while they do smell fear — a whiff of mild trepidation will bring them arrowing in from miles away — they can also detect wistfulness and world-weariness in minute quantities. Try not to experience these feelings, especially inside your tent; if you must have them, move a hundred metres away from your sleeping area. Tourists are cautioned that foreign emotions such as schadenfreude and ennui are particularly intriguing to bears.)
Sanitation of a kind was provided by a pit with a lidded wooden box on top set way back in the empty woods. It's an incredibly disquieting place at night, silent, dark, and open on all sides. You creep up with bear spray in hand and sit scanning the forest in front with your headlamp, hoping 180 degrees of surveillance will be enough. You wonder about the box itself, imagine your doctor clearing her throat uncomfortably and asking how you were exposed to bear syphilis.
After lunch — more of the excellent arepas we had on Philip Edward Island — four of us went off for a hike. I've been making a half-hearted effort to be less comically unprepared, so brought along my sad little emergency kit — a space blanket, extra water tablets, a store-bought first aid kit. In the past, my emergency plan was to sit quietly and wait for death. I'd just bring a book. I'm not sure I've improved things that much. The first aid kit is particularly underwhelming. In a real emergency, you'd dive into it for morphine ampules and a bone saw and come up with some scraps of moleskin and a "soothing wipe" for mosquito bites. The freeze-dried enchilada I've been carrying around is also, I think, going to go into the kit; the key to maintaining an emergency food reserve is to bring things you're too scared to try without death staring you in the face.
There are also pre-packed survival kits, which seemed too silly even for me to buy. I thought of myself shivering alone in the barrens, squatting down and dumping out a bag of orange Kinder Toys — tiny compass, tiny knife, tiny signaling mirror — and a little pamphlet ("So You're Going To Die...") with a portrait of its bearded author smiling from the cover. In the spirit of ultralight backpacking, I think I could pare it down to just the mirror and a one-pager: "1. Use the mirror to fix your hair; 2. Lie down; 3. Cross your arms over your chest; 4. Wait."
I've become a bit of an expert on Mountain Equipment Coop's catalogue. I consider myself more or less one of their favourite regulars.
MEC employee: <sotto voce> Oh God, this dude again.The lake, which had been dark and hostile in the morning, had turned green and pleasant in the sun. I took the stern in a canoe on the way to the trailhead, which went better than expected, in that no one was killed. Virginia came with me, the less reckless Cat went with Todd. Four is a good number for a hike; noisy enough to warn bears, and enough to carry me in a litter if I get injured or bored. On the way, Todd entertained us by telling us how many bears they'd seen on a previous walk along this route (seven).
Me: Good afternoon. I am a mountain man, and today I require a sturdy knife for bear-stabbing and light whittling. I have also expended the can of bear spray you sold me on Tuesday and require another.
MEC employee: What... what are you doing with it?
Me: That is not your concern.
This time, there were none, but it was swarming with hikers (it's accessible from a parking lot). Maybe the blueberries along the trail were out of season, maybe the bears were already hibernating, maybe they didn't want to share the trail with dozens of hikers with dogs and children. I didn't either, particularly. Babies, especially, always sap my feeling of intrepidness.
Killarney is better than Algonquin: more varied and more beautiful. Algonquin's a same-y rolling woodland; Killarney has old white mountains crumbling into clear lakes, mixed and changing forests, pink granite shores. The Crack trail was packed with soggy yellow leaves and ran through fall forests and a narrow crevasse — the Crack — to a scramble up a white rockfall to a famous outlook with a majestic view of lakes and autumn forests where a bunch of people were lounging around eating chips. Kids from Toronto puffed up and said "it looks like CGI" and talked about what a good Facebook background it would make, like missionaries sent out into the world to spread contempt for millennials.
On the way back, we stopped to check out a better and more quiet viewpoint Todd had scouted out, then lost the trail a few times. The signage was strange; there are lots of blazes, and then none at spots where side trails branch off only to narrow and disappear. The others skipped lightly ahead like woodland elves and I picked my way heavily over leaf-covered roots and squinted after them. Cat's white jacket bobbed in the distance like a friendly will-o'-the-wisp that leads people back to their canoes.
The four non-hikers were deep into preparations for a colossal meal. I offered around the freeze-dried meals, on the theory that these people might not know they didn't have to prepare a state banquet every time they went into the woods. There was no interest. Not even in the freeze-dried enchilada, even though it's a space-age miracle waiting to be experienced. I was ready for this kind of campsite cooking, but the dinner touched new heights of ludicrousness. There was a boeuf bourgignon (reportedly excellent); a root vegetable thing; a fish and scallop soup; grilled sole; and a pumpkin cake with salted caramel. It was probably the finest meal ever eaten with a spork.
In the morning, we straggled out of tents and pressured Todd to bake scones. We broke things down, dumped packs into the canoes, and set off again. A sheltered spot was found for lunch, a modest three-course affair with mimosas. We pulled out again on the last stretch, some of the people in the canoes up ahead — almost certainly Ilya and Geordie — singing Rule Britannia.
Evelyn and Geordie peeled off to go home. The rest of us had decided to squeeze in one last exhausting hike first, a steep and unofficial one starting from a campsite on George Lake. I don't know the number, but this site is notable for having probably the worst toilet in the world. Not the most disgusting — refer to past blog entries for candidates — but the all-around worst: A rotten wooden box that's accessed by a hundred metre scramble up a steep hillside and is surrounded by prime bear feeding grounds of blueberry patches and mast-bearing trees. Of the hike itself, I remember steep climbing, getting slightly lost, standing on ridges with sweeping views of the park, and lying down on a rocky outcropping feeling very tired.
It had been a fun weekend with kind and interesting people, full of exciting wilderness challenges like hiking, scrambling, canoe navigation, and washing up after a 4 course meal for 8 with a potful of warm water and a squirt of biodegradable soap. We hauled the canoes back up into the beach we'd started from, took pictures, discovered that the camp showers were closed for the season, and stopped at the washrooms at the gate, where I washed the grime of three campfires and two strenuous hikes off my sunburned face.
