Dumb & Dumber

Just northeast of London (on Highway 401), we drove through the front of the large low pressure system. The pressure gradients were tight and steep. The wind it created buffeted our truck seriously enough that we stopped at a service-plaza to tighten the lines holding the solitary canoe lashed on our roof rack.

It was near blizzard conditions when we pulled off the highway at Woodstock to get dinner. There was already 4 to 5 inches of snow on the ground and we had to engage the four-wheel drive to get up the short but steep hill into the parking lot of the steak house. With our headlights shining into the large window of the restaurant, all we could see were the faces of all the patrons staring back out at us and our canoe. The looks on their faces told the story . . . they thought we were either stupid or crazy or both.

The Great Blizzard of Barrie

This trip was to become all about snow and ice. The date was November 13, 2003 and we were on our way to canoe a 3-day circle route in western Algonquin Provincial Park. A large and powerful winter storm was squatting over southern Lake Huron and its counter-clockwise force reached all the way from the western suburbs of Toronto to North Bay, blanketing the western half of Algonquin Park in the process. Our attitude was simply that we would continue on with our plan and if deep snow or frozen lakes turned us back, we had also brought our snow shoes and related gear so the canoe trip would just morph into a snow-shoe camping trip.

We had intended to make it all the way to Huntsville for the night. However, traffic was down to one lane and crawling along at about 40 mph as the high wind drifted the heavy snow across Highway 400. So, we pulled off at Barrie at 9:30 PM and took a room at the Travelodge. The snowfall was 12 to 15 inches and because of the 35 mph winds, giant drifts were piling up against anything that formed a barrier. Looking out from the hotel lobby, at our truck with the mounted canoe completely caked in snow and ice, the paddling portion of our trip was looking more and more doubtful.

We went to sleep with the wind rattling the windows of our hotel room and in the morning it took us a while to clear the deep snow off our truck. However, the wind had subsided. As we completed the drive to Huntsville (67 miles north up Highway 11), we came to the pleasant realization that Barrie had taken the brunt of the storm, because the snow was now only 3 to 4 inches deep. There were no serious drifts and the wind was dead calm. We stopped thinking about snow-shoeing and returned to the mind-set of canoeing.

"You wanna rent what and go where . . ?!"

Algonquin Outfitters at Oxtongue Lake were just a little surprised at my request to rent a canoe from them. Brian’s canoe was a Swift Osprey, a Kevlar solo boat, and I had intended to rent the same from AO but they would only reluctantly agree to rent me a Swift Raven, a durable solo boat constructed of ABS plastic and 15 pounds heavier than the Osprey. AO really tried to talk us out of going into the more remote western interior of the park and recommended something right off of Highway 60 on Rock Lake. They were afraid we would get iced in, be forced to abandon the boats and have to hike out. We managed to muster a fair amount of bravado laughing off their concerns while assuring them that we would not get trapped. With some hesitation, AO agreed to our route.

We passed through the small hamlet of Kearney about noon and entered the gravel portion of the access road 10 minutes later. The snow cover on the road was only 4 inches deep but there were no tire tracks preceding us. We wanted solitude and we were going to be granted our wish.

About 6 miles from the put-in, the road bisects a large marsh which the Magnetawan River meanders through. At this location, the road looks more like a causeway as it passes over several culverts until it reaches high ground on the other side. Because the water level was high and the culverts were failing, this causeway was about 8 inches under water and the road was semi-washed out. We engaged the four wheel drive and the road surface held as we passed over to the opposite side.

"So this is trail-blazing?"

Within a mile we came to the first tree knocked down across the road by the storm. I was able to stand on one end of it while Brian drove the truck over it and we were moving again until about a mile after that, when we came upon the second blow-down. This tall pine tree had been caught by the tops of the trees on the opposite side of the road and although the trunk would clear the canoes, the branches hung all the way down to the road. We solved this problem by digging out our camp-saw and cutting out enough of these branches to form a tunnel to drive through. The third and final tree, which the storm had knocked down, was about 2 feet in diameter and 3 feet above the ground and we couldn’t budge it. Our camp-saw was just barely long enough to cut the girth of this tree but we were able to cut out an entire section wide enough for the truck to drive through. This cut out section was so heavy that we had to tie a rope around it and connect it to the truck’s tow hooks to drag it out of the way.

We were feeling pretty resourceful but we were also losing valuable daylight on our first day of paddling. We were hoping to get as far as Daisy Lake which was three portages, two lakes and a pond from our put-in. We knew that if we encountered many more of these trees across the road, we would end up camping in the parking lot of Access Point #3. If we’ve learned one simple rule from all these canoe trips, it’s this: you have to stay flexible with your plans. As the human element, you are not really in control once you pass through the portal from civilization to the wilderness. You must be ready to switch to "Plan B" or "Plan C" and so on.

Our luck held and no more obstacles were thrown across our road. We put into Magnetawan Lake at 2:30 and there was an ice shelf about half an inch thick extending about 65 feet out from the shore. It was just thick enough that I had to chop around the canoe in several places before it gave way, allowing the canoe to settle into the water. I had grabbed a beavertail paddle at AO and the round edge of the blade did a pretty fair job at chopping ice.

Magnetawan Lake was full of disconnected ice crystals that swirled around the boats as we paddled through and although we pointed them out to each other, we never carried the discussion any further. By further, I mean we never talked about how ice forms. It forms one crystal at a time and the crystals connect to each other and eventually you have solid ice. The only requirement is below-freezing temperatures for some duration of time and although scientifically it’s a little more involved than this; the colder it gets, the faster the crystals connect to each other.

All the take-outs and put-ins had that same half inch thick ice shelf extending 30 to 65 feet out from shore and they all required some chopping to push the canoes through. There was a creek that had to be crossed on the 420 meter portage between the unnamed pond and the approach to Daisy Lake. In the past, the Rangers had placed a series of rocks in the stream bed for people to walk across but these had been washed out by the fall rains. In the summer we would have just walked through the stream without even a second thought but the high temperature was only 35°F (2°C) and we really didn’t want soaking wet feet if we could avoid it. Anything that got wet during the day would freeze during the night. We pulled out our trusty camp-saw (again) and sawed off some sections of nearby deadfall and dragged them to the creek making a very crude bridge. It was a good plan, well-executed but unfortunately the far shore was all wet mud that we could not avoid and we ended up with wet feet anyway.

A Pragmatic Discussion Of Feet

The discussion as to what are the right shoes to wear on a late season canoe trip is one of those controversial issues with many answers, none of them necessarily wrong. We had discussed this at considerable length and had come to a few conclusions. First, this time of year because of snow and rain, shoes will get wet. It is unavoidable. Second, because of the low temperatures, the short daylight cycle and the lack of bright sun; those wet shoes will never dry out. Third, unless you take some action to keep them warm at night, those wet shoes will be frozen by morning.

We had left our waterproof, Gore-Tex lined hiking boots in the truck with the snowshoes because it was just too difficult to slide them under the seat when kneeling in the canoe. Some paddlers prefer rubber "Wellington" type boots or the L.L. Bean type (rubber lower/leather upper) but these are no less cumbersome than other boots and would be equally difficult to slide under the seat when kneeling. Normally, we bring two pairs of shoes on a paddling trip; one pair that we wear in the boat that is generally always wet and one pair that we wear in camp that is generally always kept dry.

This time of year, however, it’s as wet around camp as it is on the portage trail so taking two pairs of shoes would just mean two wet pairs instead of one. The option we chose was one pair of shoes and Brian wore neoprene socks while I decided on multiple changes of warm synthetic socks. Neither of us ever suffered cold feet but we both had to bag up our shoes at night and stick them into our sleeping bags to keep them from freezing (Brian had to do the same with his neoprene socks). I placed my used wet socks in a large ziplock-type bag and they more or less froze solid for the duration of the trip.

Of Fire And Stoves

We arrived at Daisy Lake and took the first campsite on the north shore as the twilight set in. The time was 5:00 PM and we only had 30 minutes of diminishing light to collect firewood. Before we were able to find some decent seasoned deadwood, we ran out of light and had to put on our headlamps. The recent high winds had blown down lots of trees and it was cold enough that the little branches were frozen and broke off easily so we couldn’t tell what was seasoned and what was not.

We thought we had picked a good seasoned tree but as we tried to burn it over the course of the night, we had to continually blow on the fire to keep it burning . . . actually, smoldering and smoking was more like it. We spent a lot of effort and energy trying to keep this smoker going.

The temperature continued to drop below freezing and after we had the tent up and all our gear inside, we fired up Brian’s new, untested MSR Pocket Rocket. This stove burns propane/butane canister fuel and as it sat on the cold ground trying to bring the water to a boil, it sputtered for two minutes and went out. It was just too cold for this type of fuel. I had my white gas MSR Whisperlite as a backup so I pulled it out, assembled it and fired it up. Fired is the right word as this little stove put out an orange flame about a meter high and spilled burning raw fuel all over itself and the ground.

The cantankerous antics of this stove have become quite commonplace for me and these huge flare-ups just didn’t excite me any more. On a paddling trip in early spring, my Whisperlite ignited a picnic table and we had to hurriedly haul water up from the river to put it out. On this cold late-fall night, I quickly shut it down and re-lighted it and it hummed to life flawlessly. I have continuously threatened to discard this stove and buy something else but I’ve been threatening that for six years and this love/hate relationship is something I’ve come to grow comfortable with. The bottom line is that eventually this stove always works just as it was designed and brings our water to a rapid boil.

"Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?"

As we stood around our smoking fire, we heard the most unique sound. It started guttural and ended in a short howl. Brian had heard this before when he performed field-work in eastern Poland tracking the movements of wolves. I had never heard a wolf before but I had heard many coyotes and this was no coyote. The wolf sounded like he was just outside of our view in the darkness surrounding our camp but he could have been anywhere. It was a very cold, windless night and sound tends to travel great distance in those conditions. This was the only noise we heard from the wolf and an hour later we retired to the tent.

The night was going to be very cold with the predicted outside temperature at 12°F (-11°C) so it took us about an hour-and-a-half to get everything prepared for sleeping. My three-season tent is too open to trap a lot of body heat but it managed to stay about 28°F (-2°C) inside. We were both either wearing or were wrapped up in every article of warm clothing we had brought because our bags were only rated at 20°F (-7°C). Sleeping bag ratings are misleading because what it really means is that 20° is the absolute minimum temperature that the bag will provide some insulation from the cold. Even though wrapped up in all our clothing, we were both right on the edge of discomfort all night.

Both of us slept in short increments waking up every hour chilled and being forced to adopt some other position to maintain the minimum comfort level of warmth. In this semi-state of restless sleep, at around 2:00 AM we both heard the loud and angry report of a screech owl followed immediately by the howl of the wolf. There was a short but distinct rustling sound and then all fell silent again. This burst of action between two nocturnal predators sounded to us like they were both fighting over the same prey . . . perhaps some very unlucky and unfortunate rabbit. It was unknown to us whether the wolf’s howl had been that of the victor or the frustration of the loser. In either case, it had sounded like they were just outside our tent door which I’m certain they were not. Inside a tent in the middle of the night, raccoons sound like moose and squirrels sound like bears. Thirty years before, while backpacking deep in the Wind River Mountains of western Wyoming, in the heart of Grizzly Bear country, I heard the very heavy footfalls of what I figured had to be a large Grizzly walking around my tent so with my girlfriend nearly in tears and my adrenalin pounding, I grabbed my flashlight and my magnum pistol and I rolled out of the tent into a combat stance and came face-to-face with a two pound ground squirrel.

It has been over twenty years since I sold or gave away all my firearms and for Brian and I; just to hear this twenty second drama unfold was well worth the wet feet, smoky fire and general discomfort of a cold November night. This short canoe trip had been and would continue to be a challenge in every way, just as we had anticipated, but to hear a wolf in the proximity of our camp twice in one night was a bonus we had not expected.

"Where’d the water go?"

Our night of fitful semi-sleep continued and at 7:00 AM we climbed out of the tent wearing practically everything we had packed. Firing up the Whisperlite, it worked flawlessly and we were consuming hot coffee and cold Pop-Tarts within fifteen minutes of rolling out of the sack. At 8:00 AM the sun rose above the trees and everything including us started to warm up but by nine, heavy clouds rolled in and that was it for the sun. In fact that one hour was the only sunlight we had seen in a week (or that we would see in the week to come).

The lake was still open water in front of our camp but the eastern end of Daisy appeared to be ominously solid ice where there had been no ice the night before. This was our intended route to the headwaters of the Petawawa so we were just a little concerned about the rest of our trip. As we broke camp and packed up, we discussed this situation and asked the question, "How thick could the ice possibly be after only about 15 hours"? When we shoved off, at about 10:00 AM, the temperature had "climbed" to 26°F (-3°C).

As I approached the ice sheet, I brought my Raven up to "ramming speed" so that I would slice through it assuming it couldn’t be any more than ¼ inch thick. I hit it with good speed but to my surprise, the canoe slid right up on top of the ice and left me high and dry. Although the ice did depress slightly, the boat didn’t break through and I had to chop perforations all around the hull with my beavertail paddle before it settled into the water. This process took time and a lot of energy because the ice had frozen to a thickness of about 1¼ inches and this situation brought a dramatic close to our "Plan A". We weren't going to make it to the upper Petawawa River on this trip.

In fact, it was beginning to look like the folks at AO were going to be proven correct and we were going to get iced in. We turned around and started cutting our way toward the 1,455 meter portage over to Ralph Bice Lake and although the trailhead was only 500 feet from our position, it took nearly an hour of breaking ice and pushing the canoes, a couple of feet at a time, with the paddles to make shore. Arriving at the head of the portage trail, we had a discussion about what we would have to do if Ralph Bice was as frozen as Daisy Lake. It would be too difficult to chop through a lake as large as Bice so we figured we would have to portage overland back to the parking lot. Anyone who has been in Algonquin knows that the forest is thick with undergrowth, deadfall, outcroppings and ravines and this would be a very difficult hike. We had a GPS and we both had compasses so we weren’t concerned from a route-finding perspective. But, we were concerned from the sheer difficulty of bashing through the bush with boats and gear.

The portage trail was frozen and very slippery in the downhill section having become a (sort of) stream channel in the fall rains and this forced us to walk off to one side through the underbrush. The treachery of this trail slowed us down and the two-trip portage took us 2½ hours and it wasn’t until 1:30 PM that we had everything sitting on the shore of Ralph Bice Lake. We had been quite anxious about finding this big lake frozen over but to our great relief, it was clear of ice.

The Poetry Of Late-season Paddling

There was no wind but the cold air caused the heat to wick off of my neoprene paddling gloves and I had to add my wind-proof outer shells in order to stop the evaporation process and keep my hands warm. The rest of my body managed to stay warm from the exertion of paddling the Raven down the lake. The Raven was a beamy, deep hulled canoe that required to be leaned in order to be paddled comfortably. This also forced me to exclusively use the J-stroke with the occasional correcting pry because, leaned over on the left side as I was, in order to change sides with the paddle, I had to physically change position and lean the opposite side over to utilize the sit-‘n-switch method.

The heavily overcast sky; the bare trees along the lightly snow-covered forested shore and the cobalt grey color of the lake’s surface gave Ralph Bice a lonely, deep-winter look even though the temperature had climbed to its daytime high of 35°F (2°C). One truly can’t appreciate the level of summertime noise made by insects, birds and other wildlife until you paddle this park in late season. When I stood perfectly still, the only sound I heard was a subtle ringing in my ears from a lifetime of filtering the noise of my environment. This is what late-season paddling is all about . . . just the paddlers and the elements. The insects are gone, the birds have migrated and the larger mammals have found hidden places to winter-up.

There was the customary ice shelf at the take-out to the trail over to Hambone Lake but our route across Hambone was more or less open water. As we passed the small bay that leads down to the portage to Daisy (which we had paddled the day before) we saw that it was completely frozen over. Not that we really needed confirmation but this reinforced our feeling that we were definitely doing the right thing by heading back to the truck. The lakes were freezing up and if we stayed any longer we were going to get iced in.

Fooled Again

Our luck was not to hold, however. As we completed the short portage and approached the put-in to Magnetawan Lake, we observed the entire lake was frozen over. Being ever-the-optimists, we once again asked the question, "How thick can the ice be? . . It was open water only yesterday." Standing at the water’s edge, Brian hit the ice with his paddle and it slipped from his grip and went skittering off across the solid ice.

All those swirling crystals we'd observed the day before had connected to each other to form 1¼ inches of frozen surface. I slid the Raven out on the ice and using the beavertail paddle, I started chopping. Brian was following directly behind (with his back-up paddle) and I retrieved his primary paddle that had slid out on the ice surface and we started the slow and arduous process of moving toward the final take-out of our trip.

We moved at the snail’s pace of one canoe length at a time. The process was this: Once I broke through, Brian would slide halfway up alongside my canoe, grab my gunnel and more or less thrust my Raven up onto the ice. I would then chop slots all around the hull until the canoe broke through and we would repeat the process all over again. I would also try to push the boat as far ahead on the surface as possible but the abrasive coefficient between the ice surface and the bottom of the canoe’s hull was great enough that this was not very successful. It also expended a lot of energy.

We continued to work our way across Magnetawan, about 18 feet at a time, toward the take-out and what normally would have been a 10 minute paddle took us two hours of hard effort. It was 4:30 PM when we reached the dock at Access #3 and by the time we got everything loaded into and onto the truck, it was after sunset and we had to break out the headlamps one last time to securely tie down the canoes.

"Did I say, we always stay at the Rainbow?"

The drive out was uneventful and it was nearly 7:00 PM when we reached Huntsville. We drove to the Rainbow Inn that sits right on the main drag about 5 blocks from the downtown millpond. It has become a tradition of sorts to stay at the Rainbow but I’m not sure why. It’s clean and comfortable with satellite T.V. but it costs about the same as the other hotels in the downtown area and yet when we find ourselves in town, we always stay there. I suppose it’s just one of those habitual patterns we tend to fall into. We continually challenge ourselves in our wilderness paddling trips and we almost never paddle the same route twice but when we’re in Huntsville, we always stay at the Rainbow Inn.

Over dinner and cocktails at the Cottage Restaurant, which overlooks the downtown millpond, we discussed the trip. As short as the trip was, it still continued our education about cold weather paddling and camping. We began to realize that we needed to carry a chainsaw in the truck to cut out blowdown across the access road. I say that we "began to realize" because in both 2004 and 2005 we were still encountering trees across the road and we were still using our campsaw to cut them out. I think I can say with a fair amount of certainty, that we will have a chainsaw stuffed in the truck for our trip in the fall of 2006. (Note: We came closer to carrying a chainsaw in our fall ’06 trip because we each pulled our respective saws out of storage but couldn't get either one to start. And, before we could get them serviced, the trip was upon us. Maybe the fall of 2007 . . . ?)

Regarding Our Continuous Education

On ice-chopping . . After this trip I constructed a broom handle with a steel chisel point on one end and a claw on the other. There is no denying that I made a mess of that beavertail paddle by using it to chop ice. I have yet to use my invention because the next three late fall paddles involved rain, wind and cold .. but no ice. My homemade ice breaking, canoe dragging "kluge job" continues to hang in a dark corner of my garage awaiting its moment of glory.

On camping gear . . We are either going to purchase 0°F (-18°C) sleeping bags or purchase a 4-season tent. We’ve been making these trips with 20°F (-7°C) bags and sleeping in my 3-season Eureka Backcountry Four tent and it just isn’t quite warm enough. The Eureka is a very sound tent but the rainfly is too open on the ends and too much heat escapes through the mosquito net ceiling. I think we would rather purchase a 3/4 season 3-man tent like the Marmot Swallow which we could seal up tight against the elements. Colder rated sleeping bags would add increased bulkiness but the tent’s dimensions and weight would change very little between the Eureka and the Marmot. If anything, the Marmot, being a newer design, would probably be less weight and bulk. On these fall trips we carry only the absolute necessities, so that we can move as fast as possible. Therefore, we minimize our packed bulk .. which is absolute key.

On footwear . . I’m still at a loss on the perfect footwear for cold season travel. The problem with late fall is that everything is always wet. Snowshoe camping is easier because the snow is cold and dry and just shakes off your boots. My system of a heavy synthetic sock with an inner liner sock inside a pair of Columbia River-Runner shoes was O.K. because even though my feet were always wet, they stayed warm. I don’t like boots in a canoe because I paddle 95% of the time from a kneeling position and boots aren’t flexible enough to easily slide under the seat. Brian’s system of neoprene socks inside river shoes was also O.K. .. but wearing neoprene for extended periods of time takes a toll on your feet. This material just doesn’t breathe. I have decided that I would take a look at light-weight mountaineering approach shoes with a Gore-Tex membrane. These shoes are light, flexible, supportive, protective and waterproof. The downside is that these shoes are expensive at slightly over $100 (USD) and the lugged sole will pick up lots of mud on the portages and transfer it into the floor of the canoe. Like all the literature says, there is no perfect shoe. (Update: Brian has purchased a pair of waterproof over-shoes that are flexible over-the-calf pull-ons that go right over your shoes. They are called "Trekkers" by Neos.)

And In The End . . .

The next day we dropped off the Raven at AO and departed for home. The trip was uneventful with the single exception of an automotive fatality on the 401 that forced a long detour through the countryside around Chatham. For us, the 2003 canoeing season had come to an inglorious end.

© Copywrite by Neil E. Miller - December 2006