Algonquin Park Spring 2009 Day 4

Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4

Day 4


Awoke early again and this time because of how cold it was, I imagine that it was between 2-4 degrees Celsius, I couldn’t sleep anymore in this cold so I decided to get up; I put on some warm clothes and warmed up around the fire. At first thought I’d take some early morning pictures of the lake and the horizon; boy did I ever get lucky this time around, there was a loon swimming around the lake washing itself and basking in the suns warm rays. Initially I had thought that it didn’t notice me and just kept going about its business, but soon I realized that it was well aware of my presence as it kept looking over at me. However this didn’t seem to bother it as somehow it knew that I posed no threat, it kept doing what it was doing while slowly swimming towards me. I had managed to get some really nice shots of it while it was swimming by. It seemed like this early in the morning it actually enjoyed my company, and I its. It was great, I have never taken pictures so close up of a loon before, later I realized how great they turned out as you could make out the individual markings on its wings from them.


Some pictures of the loon














As the loon went by, I decided to check the time; boy was I surprised to learn that it was still 6am! But I had been up for already a good 40 minutes so I decided to just stay up and make some food and coffee. Getting the fire going was a easy as everything was dry by now, I had warmed up the soup we made the night before and also got a cup of coffee going. All in all it was a great time to spend by myself while the guys were still sleeping. I just sat around the fire warming up and writing journal entries for this trip report. At around 8am I noticed that the clouds were coming in hard and fast, and not the good kind, it had also started dropping in temperature and I felt like a storm was brewing. In a few minutes I had seen a few snowflakes drop as I was pretty sure that it wouldn’t snow. I was proven wrong 20 minutes later as a huge storm from the north had hit us in full force. The winds were picking up speed and snow started to fall with great ferocity. The snow was getting so heavy now that it was becoming white out, that day I realized the true power of northern weather; it went from sun early in the morning to a snow blizzard in a matter of hours, it made me respect the weather and what it could do. Naturally as it was coming down I took this time to take some amazing pictures of the downfall; it was like a photographers dream the winter weather without the winter. I was however having a hell of time trying to keep my camera and lens dry; I parked myself right under a tall tree so I could take some pictures without being hit too much by the snow.


Some pictures of the blizzard












A whole three hours passed as I was out there by myself keeping occupied before the guys finally woke up. At first it was one of my buddies, we had decided to make the last of the pancakes and right as we are about to eat them our other friend wakes up. His timing was impeccable always waking up a minute before the food was ready, skipping out on the whole cooking and fire making process. We definitely had a good laugh about that as it was really convenient for him and not so much for us. After me and my friend had put on our winter coats and tuques my friend who just woke up finally divulged to us that he had badly packed for this trip, only brining 2 shirts and no jacket or even a sweater. He only had his bright orange fishing vest with him, we had laughed for a good long while at him for being this ill prepared; we also took some pictures of him freezing his ass off. It had also turned out that he hasn’t been sleeping well at nights because of his sleeping bag was not well suited for this cold weather. It was funny because as we were preparing for this trip for months our buddy decided to leave it all until the last minute and naturally had forgotten a bunch of critical things such as clothes and utensils. I am pretty sure that this snowy weather had taught him a good lesson in the importance of packing early.





Adam "Northman" Lantz, freezing his ass off


After having a good laugh at the expense of our friend we had decided to go get some more wood gathered if we’re going to last it through this storm. We had headed to the same spot where we had raided the wood earlier in the trip to see if we could find some more downed trees for us to chop. Luckily this campsite was free of marshes all around and we had found a bunch of downed trees for us to bring back to camp.

Now this is where things got interesting, I had decided to bring back the canoe with the wood all by myself across the lake which was only about 300m from our site. The trip there was easy, as the canoe was nicely loaded at the front keeping me going straight. On the way back as I took all the wood out it had not occurred to me that the canoe would be way too light for me to travel alone in it and it would be uncontrollable if any wind picked up. This is exactly what had ended up happening, as I tried to steer the canoe the wind would push the other side in the opposite direction of my steering, after fighting with the wind for a good five minutes, as I was doing a major steer in the right direction a huge gust of wind comes in and capsizes the canoe with me in it. I take a dive head first into the water, at this point I had started to panic a bit freaking about over the fact that we could lose the canoe. The water oddly enough was not as cold as I thought it would be; I had only a few seconds to gather my marbles and turn over the canoe to let out the water in it. I had decided that I couldn’t get back into the canoe in this windy weather and had only one shot to swim with the canoe in one hand and paddle in the other fully clothed back to shore. Luckily I was only about 300m away from shore but the swim was very hard as I had no use of my arms only my legs and being fully clothed had definitely weighed me down a good bit. After struggling through the water for a good 10 minutes I had finally reached the shore. I could see the guys on the other side of the lake and I yelled over to them that my canoe capsized and that I was soaked. The great thing was that I the snow gave us some reprieve at this point, so it wasn’t as cold as it could have been. I took off all my wet clothes laying them out on the rocks to dry, leaving only my boxers; I put a bunch of wood back into the canoe to weigh it down at the front and got across the water to pickup my friends. They definitely had a good laugh at my expense, but at least I figure I got out of it with no problems and saved the canoe for us. The next couple of hours were spent drying out my clothes on the fire, while I put on my spare dry clothes during the wait. The night was capped off by a huge bonfire which was our last big hoorah before the end of the trip; after the bonfire we all set off to bed to our final night in the park.






Day 5 Leaving the Park


We had awoken all at the crack of dawn 7am, got together all our gear and setoff on our way out to Rain Lake. Once again as it was when we were getting into the campsite it was raining on our way out. We had all put on rain gear and got ready for our final push out of the park. Things went pretty easily until canoe back on Rain Lake, we didn’t realize how long it was the first time around, it took us about 2 hours to paddle just on rain lake. An amazing thing happened as we were paddling out though, my buddy yells HOLY CRAP! And we look up and there we see a cow moose with its young calf standing about 10m away from our canoe in the water. However as I am about to go for my camera the fact that my buddy yelled so loudly the cow moose had bolted into the forest with its calf following closely behind, alas a picture of a moose has eluded me once again.

We finally reached the access point 4 on Rain Lake after a long 5 hour journey, we were all soaked by this point even through our rain gear, and we threw our gear in the car and took off.



Conclusion


All in all it was a great trip, we were all glad to be out there after a long two year lull in our camping travels. The trip was ridden with inconsistent weather at times downright disastrous, but we were able to cope quite well with it, apart from only 1 person the rest of us were well prepared for the cold, rain and snow. We got home all pretty worn out from the 4 days and relaxed the next couple of days before we had to get back to work. We’re already planning another trip this fall so I am looking forward to get out there again hopefully this time with better weather!


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Algonquin Park Spring 2009 Day 3

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Day 3


Awoke early again around 8am, just something about early mornings in the wild makes the scenery so great that I can’t seem to keep sleeping when such beauty is happening around us. The morning was nice and cool with partially cloudy skies, in fact this was the first time I saw blue skies the whole trip. After taking some pictures of the horizon and the lake, I suddenly heard this one thundering sound which I initially thought was a helicopter, however upon looking at the sky I realized it was a loon taking off and hitting its wings on the water that was making this loud sound, I managed to catch a few pictures of it flying away.

After this I had awoken one of my friends for an early morning canoe ride and exploring trip. As we got into the canoe the sun was in full swing and we were both pretty anxious at some good weather at least some sun that we can soak in. We decided to paddle to the western end of the lake as we saw some marshes there; we figured it would be good for some fishing and some picture taking. As we reached the marsh we found it there was a small river feeding the lake and there was a huge downed tree there which would be perfect to photograph.





Downed tree with its roots exposed





Marshy Area



I had climbed out from the canoe unto this one patch of land that kind of looked like a small island in the marsh and proceeded to take a few shots of the downed tree. After this we headed back to the campsite for the much needed breakfast. On the menu was some pancakes and syrup; we had a hell of a time trying to get the mixture of the batter properly mixed ended up using the pancakes mix all at once, but we finally got the proper consistency. After a few pancakes that didn’t turn out we finally got them to stick together after adding some butter to the pan, which as we found out helped them stick together nicely. This was also around the time that we saw our first and only other people during our whole trip; it was two men coming down from Juan Lake and paddling towards the exit at Rain Lake no doubt; we had all waived to them as they went by, and that was the last people we’d see until we came back to the Rain Lake drop-off point two days after.

After filling up on pancakes and syrup we decided to do a day trip to Sawyer Lake, as we had heard that it has a good amount of small mouth bass, brook and lake trout. We had packed minimally only our tackle, camera and some snacks and setoff across the portage to Sawyer Lake. The portage took only 15 min as we only had to make 1 trip this time; boy was it easier without all our heavy gear. When we got over to the lake we started paddling, I had thrown in my crank bait and started reeling it in, as I was close to the boat it took a swipe at it by at the last second changed its mind and took off; I had later realized that this was probably due to the bright orange hunting vest that my buddy was wearing which most likely spooked the fish. Oddly enough after that one bite we did not get a single hit on our lines. We had spent a good amount of time paddling up and down the lake, letting the wind take us to the other side so we could fish, but once again no luck. We stopped at this one campsite that was at the northern side of the lake, and decided to spend some time basking in the suns warm rays on rocks.






The guys after our portage to Sawyer Lake





Myself in the backdrop of Sawyer Lake




Some late evening rain


After doing the Sawyer Lake to Jubilee Lake again we had decided to raid the campsite right across of us for firewood. We had been lucky that it looked like it was tended by a forest ranger as someone had used a chainsaw and cut a whole whack of wood for us to use. We had gathered it all and paddled across the lake to our campsite, happy to have found such a big load with little work, it had saved us the much needed energy.

The night was spent over the fire having a few drinks, and making a vegetable soup. The soup turned out great; it had rice, barley, carrots, potatoes, bouillon cubes and beans in it. All in all it turned out to be a great hearty soup which helped us warm up and regain some energy which we had lost during the day trip to Sawyer Lake.





Hearty vegetable soup





My friend also made some bannock from the recipe we learned from Ray Mears. Here it is cooking slowly on the flame.


Bed time was early again and this time around it got pretty damn cold overnight.


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Algonquin Park Spring 2009 Day 2

Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4

Day 2


The second day began bright and early, I awoke to another cloudy morning, I was hoping to get some pictures of the sunrise but no such look, and my only thought was that at least it wasn’t raining. By the time all my friends got up it was 10am we decided to make breakfast. On the menu were 6 eggs and a whole package of bacon. I done up my eggs English breakfast style scrambled with butter and seasonings, both my friends seemed to like this recipe. We finished off breakfast with a package of bacon fried in a frying pan over some embers; this was a much needed fat boost for our day. Since it wasn’t raining we decided to hop in the canoe and go for a bit of a ride around the lake, to checkout some scenery and throw in the rod a couple of times.





Fishing from the canoe



Canoeing over the lake was definitely a great experience, as there was nobody else camping on the lake we were completely secluded. It was a great feeling, a feeling of inner peace overcame me, I only wished I could do this more often. On the way over to the other end of the lake we decided to see if we could checkout a few other campsites for firewood; as ours wasn’t the greatest location for this, it was surrounded by a marsh and a few streams making fire gathering virtually impossible without getting your shoes soaked. We found a site with an already downed cedar and proceeded to chop it to bits and pieces. Luckily we brought two axes at this time, with me having a 17 inch axe and my friend having a 25 inch one we made short work of the cedar.




Real world lumberjacks





Mid-swing action into a dead tree





Beautiful Trillium


We loaded up the canoe and two of us went back to the site to bring back the wood while the other stayed and chopped some more wood. We brought in enough wood to last us the day and night, only took us a couple of hours. At least this was work we did not mind, being out there in the outdoors with all the fresh air; far better for the mind and body than sitting in our cubicles at work.

After the wood gathering it was time for our 3 pound pork loin roast that I brought with us; I had gotten it a week earlier from St Jacobs Market in Waterloo. We found two Y shaped branches and proceeded to make a spit, the first skewer we made was perfect except that for some weird reason my buddy chopped about 20 inches away from it making it way to short, so he had to go back into the forest and make a bigger one, could have saved himself the work if he just left it as it was. After finally making the spit we built a big fire to the one side of the pit so we could always have fresh embers fueling our spit. We had attached the pork loin to the skewer with some thin rope and proceeded to slowly cook it over the next several hours.





Pork roast slowly cooking over the embers





Finished Result some of the best meat I've ever eaten



The wait was a good time as we drank the beers that we brought over for the trip, I also brought over some buckwheat honey to glaze the roast as it slowly cooked over the embers this also helped the meat from burning too much on the outside. After about 3 hours of cooking it was all ready, the meat turned out to be quite amazing, it was cooked thoroughly through. It was one of the most amazing dinners that I’ve had in the wild, nothing better than pork roast and beer around the campfire. Day 2 was also an early night as our day trek had depleted our energy, after a couple of drinks we went to bed around 10 o’clock.

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Algonquin Park Spring 2009 Day 1

Location: Jubilee Lake, Algonquin Park Trip Report

Date: May 28^th-June 1^st, 2009

Number of People: 3
Access Point: 4

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Prelude

We started planning this trip months before, as we were quite excited to get out there, it has been over 2 years since our last trip to Algonquin Park so we wanted to make sure everything was well prepared for this trip. It took me over 3 months to properly prepare, getting all the little things and big things to make this trip possible. We also wanted to pick a good spot that was pretty secluded and in a park area that we’ve never been before. We have previously gone to Opeongo Lake and Wenda Lake, both in center and east sides of the park respectively. We decided this time around to try out the south-western area of the park and figured Rain Lake with its access point 4 would be a good starting point. After much deliberation we had finally decided to go from Rain Lake and portage to Sawyer Lake and after that our last portage to Jubilee Lake. As the days counted down to the trip the weather forecast was not looking agreeable on the first day up there, they were calling for rain all day and at times thundershowers; but this was the point of no return so we had no choice but to brave it out.

Day 1

Canoeing through Rain Lake

As we were driving through the park to get to the canoe drop off point it was raining on and off so we were hopeful that it would give us some time to get there but no such luck; as we were ready to drop off the canoe in the lake it started pouring pretty hard; we got on our rain gear and were ready to setoff. Looking back now I am pretty glad I brought both pants and a rain gear jacket, as the rest of the guys only had their jackets, and my friend had only a poncho meaning the water just got into the shoes, pants and through to the arms; goes without saying that my friend was freezing his ass off during the canoe ride. As we were paddling through the lake it was raining the whole time at various strengths, at times it would be complete whiteout with the rain coming down pretty hard making navigation hard; because of this we decided to stop at one of the campsites on Rain Lake so I could get out the map and check our direction. After a long arduous paddle through Rain Lake (which took us about 2 hours to complete) paddling against rain and hard winds; we finally got to the end of Rain Lake and to the portage over to Sawyer Lake.

Portage to Sawyer Lake

We got off the canoe and unloaded all our stuff, we had to make a couple of trips first bringing our gear, packs, food, chairs, and tents; only to come back to get the canoe. We have done a 3.6km portage from Grand Lake to Wenda Lake, and compared to that one this 360m portage to Sawyer Lake was a joke.

Canoeing through Sawyer Lake

After completing the portage to Sawyer Lake, which only took us twenty minutes or so we were ready to paddle through Sawyer Lake. The lake itself is pretty small only over a kilometer across, and by this time the rain gave us a bit of a reprieve from the downpours; we reached the portage over to Jubilee Lake in about 30 minutes of paddling. Now I’ve read some things about this portage that it can get quite muddy and treacherous at times, and boy were they right. The mud was so thick at times that we had to cut through the bush carrying both our things the first time and then the canoe. At this point we were all getting pretty tired from a long drive and lack of sleep, so this portage took quite a while the first time around. Having reached the end we put our things in the boat one final time and set off across Jubilee Lake.

Canoeing through Jubilee Lake

The start of Jubilee Lake paddle was pretty rough as we were going through this one narrow passage not realizing that there was two huge rocks right below the water and we were heading straight toward them. After the huge initial bang, we got around these boulders only to notice that there was a bunch of paint on these rocks and not only our canoes; I could tell that this is an area where many people have crashed into. Luckily the canoe was fine with only a superficial scratch on it. After about 30 minutes of paddling through the lake we have finally reached our campsite on the northern shore and began to unpack.

Setting up the camp

Our site on first arrival

Naturally after raining the whole night and day everything was soaking wet. We proceeded to setup the tents first making sure we put a tarp under them so we can keep dry. We also put two tarps over them to deflect any water coming down. What we noticed right away as we were setting up the tents is the amount of moose droppings around the site, this is probably a favorite moose location as it is cleared out and with a nice access to the water should the moose decide to swim across. Now the first challenge came, how do get a fire going with everything being soaked for the last 10 hours. So we decided to use the method I learned from watching all those Ray Mears shows, splitting into logs and from then on creating thin strands of wood called a feather sticks. Luckily there was some left over wood for us to use, so we spent the next 30 minutes of so creating a giant pile of these feather sticks and building a square frame fire around them. Our first try at doing this did not succeed as we later learned to start a fire it is much better to use a tee pee shape. The first trial ended in disaster as it had burned all our feather sticks and left us without tinder. We decided that the second time around we should go look for some birch bark first and then use that with unison with the feather sticks and a tee pee shaped fire.

After trekking around the forest near our site we came to an old birch which had a lot of bark already coming off it, we stripped this dead bark and brought it back to the campsite. Now this bark was still completely soaked but the great thing about birch bark is if you break up the pieces thin enough they will burn even when wet. So second time around we used birch bark and feather sticks with a tee pee design which got the fire started like a charm. We were able to get it going pretty strong, feeding it with cedar and spruce bowls which light up pretty strong and create a lot of heat so we could dry out some wood with them, not to mention there was a good amount of them around us as the forest mostly consisted of conifers. After going non stop since 8am, it was already 1pm and we still have not had anything solid to eat besides some trailmix and energy bars; we decided to do up some pork kebabs over the fire. I had brought over 3 pounds of meat for these kabobs and marinated them in vinegar and various spices such as cumin, black pepper and threw in some fresh rosemary for taste. Having carved out 4 long skewers from branches I stuck on the pork meat and cooked us up a nice lunch. The kabobs didn’t take long at all to cook; as we were starving at this point the kebabs definitely hit the spot.

After eating we spent a couple of hours gathering any dry wood we could get our hands on and then proceeded to dry out our clothes and shoes, as by this point we were all soaked thoroughly. The rest of the day was spent again gathering wood for the fire and feeding it. By early evening we were all pretty beat from a long day of travel. I climbed into the canoe with my buddy for one last paddle around the lake at dusk, after this we all hit the sack.

Dusk canoe trip

The night was cool but my sleeping bag kept me nice and warm and the tarps over the tent kept us well dry, I heard from my friends that it was pouring overnight but I didn’t hear anything I was out like a light switch; I also had brought some ear plugs on account that my friend snores like an old steam engine, and I’m glad I did, as you could hear him outside well away from the tent.

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