Canoes, black bears and beavers
Trip Start
Jul 08, 2008
1
4
51
Trip End
Oct 31, 2010
Killarney,
Ontario,
Canada
Monday, July 21, 2008
We drove over to Waterloo the night before heading away and we got to try out our hosts' new electric bike. You plug it into the wall and it can go for something like 60km on a single charge. Legally you are not supposed to go faster than 30kph but it is possible to do a little tweaking to get the bike to go faster. The bike was pretty cool to ride but with a very different feeling, balance-wise, to riding a bike. Nancy was a little scared to turn corners at first so ended up doing such a big lap around the neighbourhood that we sent a search party out for her. It has pedals but they are set so wide apart they seem mostly for show. Getting an e-bike is definitely a much greener alternative to a second household car but an ordinary push bike would do that job, so long as you don't mind getting sweaty
Nancy on the e-bike
.But back to the canoing. The other couple on the trip were called Gina and Dave and they had brought their young collie/lab cross puppy called Pepper. She was absolutely adorable and Nancy was very pleased when it was decided that all the girls were to go in one car, dog included, for the 6-hour drive north, which meant she got to babysit Pepper in the back.
Killarney Provincial Park is one of the most popular parks in Ontario and camp spots are booked out six months in advance. The trip had been planned for six but two had canceled so we were able to join in the fun.
The park is a huge network of lakes fringed by pine trees, which quickly give way to birch and maple. White quartzite rock outcrops dot the landscape.
So this was the scene of our introduction to canoeing and portaging (said with a pseudo French accent - port-arge-ing) otherwise known as carrying your canoe and all your belongings along a path until you can get back in the water.
I found canoeing very awkward for the first couple of days
Pepper the unbelievably cute puppy dog
. The canoe won't go straight, because the person in the back has more influence on the direction of the canoe, so you have to keep correcting by means of the j-stroke (fanning the paddle out a little at the end of the stroke). But this takes a while to get accustomed to, and in the meantime you move very inefficiently and put considerable strain on the arm trying to steer. The other downside of canoeing is that canoes are nothing like as efficient as kayaks and have a lot of storage space. This encourages campers to carry far too much stuff. Our packing was lean, but our hosts' was not. All this has to be portaged.
My first portage was less difficult than I had imagined. About 800 metres on a reasonable track, feeling like a snail in a peculiar shell. Then we followed a little river along to a much shorter portage, and on again to find a campsite. We checked at least half a dozen before we found one unoccupied, and it was at the end of a remote arm of the lake. It was very peaceful set amongst pines and maple with a beaver den nearby.
Our introduction to Canadian camping was pretty luxurious. Dinner was chicken stir fry (real pre-cooked chicken) with dessert, and this set the scene for absurdly elaborate meals over the next couple of days.
The last act for the night was putting the bear barrel up a tree. It has to be 3m off the ground, 2m away from the trunk, and 1m below the branch it is hanging from. Everything with any scent must be removed from the tent (toothpaste, deodorant etc) on account of the omnivorousness of bears
Setting off
. The next morning I was up at 5.30 to look for wildlife. I thought I heard the beaver but couldn't see him. Although I had a nice paddle, no wildlife, other than chipmunks and squirrels was around.
Then it was back for a sumptuous breakfast, followed by a paddle to the start of a hike up Silver Peak, the tallest hill around.
We had not gone far when we Dave (a bit ahead of us) started clapping and saying 'get away bear!' I panicked. Where was it? What if it went away before I could see it? It was up a tree. I ran forwards, scrambling for the camera (as did Nancy). Fortunately, it took its time in coming down and then scampered off, clearly frightened of us. He was a black bear and clearly a juvenile, perhaps twice the size of a labrador. I was happy. The Canadians were a little appalled at our behaviour, but there was really no danger and we were never any closer than the point at which the bear was first spotted. Meredith though is bear-phobic (ursophobe?) but once she was persuaded it wasn't a cub, she was glad to have seen a bear and her fear was helped by having seen that it was scared of us.
The rest of the hike was less exciting, but we had nice views from the top of the hill, and gathered blueberries from the summit
Puppy demonstrates downward dog yoga position
. I begin to see why bears like these (and Dave and Gina's dog learned to eat them off the bush too). They are refreshing, grow at ground level and have no thorns, but it must take an awful lot of berries to satisfy a bear. On the way back we came past patches of berries with great purple stained bear scats nearby. They are clearly a favourite. Along the way we were constantly accompanied by the cries of other hikers of 'so cute', whenever Pepper came in to view.
We were hot and very thirsty when we got back to the canoes, but the paddle home went much better than expected. My steering had improved dramatically and we spent almost the entire trip facing the way we wanted to go. It makes the trip far more pleasant.
The beaver was out when we got home, but we saw very little of him, just a furry head in the distance.However, he made up for that the next morning, swimming laps in front of our campsite between 5.45 and 6.30 with the occasional tail-slap for no apparent reason. And the paddle home that morning went very painlessly.
Despite both cars being on empty, fuel-wise, we managed to make it back to a guy down the road who was selling gas and then it was a long drive back.
M
