Killarney, Part IV (parts 1-3 below)

I am hoping for clear, cold and quiet weather this week, my ideal recipe for photography. However, as this day turns slowly into night, it becomes obvious it is going to be anything but that tonight. It’s still warm, in the sixties and the winds are picking up. I watch as the gusts grow continually stronger, sending waves of crisp leaves sweeping across the ground and raining from the trees. Above, ominous gray clouds freight train across the sky. After several days of unusual warmth just prior to my visit, a cold front is approaching; the weather gods are about to set things right for this time of year.

The storm seems to be justifying my decision to rent the yurt instead of camping. Now inside, I hear the fury growing stronger, lashing the canvas roof and walls again and again with waves of rain. I begin to wonder just how well built this thing is; another shuddering gust has me concerned it could be torn from its moorings. Eventually though, I get used to the howling winds and pounding rain and drift off into an uneasy slumber; I dream of tropical storms and hurricanes…

Apparently, the yurt is built well enough; it survives the night. I awake in warmth but sense cold lurking just outside the door. There’s a different sound on the roof this morning, a rapping instead of a tapping – freezing rain. I step out to pee and almost fall on my butt, there’s a thin sheet of ice coating everything. The temperature has dropped like a rock overnight, from sixty to twenty degrees (F).

By the time I finish breakfast, wash up and dress, it has warmed up enough to turn the precipitation back to all rain, but it’s still not letting up. I drive to the Georgian Bay shore trailhead and sit for a minute pondering whether I should attempt the hike in this cold rain. Not much stops me; I set out. The first thing I see is a little sign stating “Rocks slippery when wet” -this whole hike is a clamor over smooth rocks. The sign proves prophetic (no surprise), within a matter of minutes I am forced to turn back. The cold rain has indeed rendered the rocks dangerously slick.

Nothing else to do so I head to the little town of Killarney. I take a slow drive around; it takes all of about two minutes. The park has increased in popularity since I first visited many years ago but this tiny town has hardly changed at all - it still has that quaint old fishing village feel that I am so enamored my. Until the 1960’s when they punched a road through from the highway 45 miles away, it was only accessible by boat or small plane.

The rain lets up just enough to park my vehicle and walk around town. The summer gift shops are now closed; they’ve been boarded up since September 2nd, the end of the Canadian Labour Day weekend. Not much of a tourist season up here, but that's one of the reasons I like it - no glitz or glamour. Walking to the western edge of town, I discover an area overlooking the bay that I had somehow missed before. It’s a perfect place to watch the sun disappear below the watery horizon; how I love a good sunset! I’ve been coming here for thirty years and still somehow managed to miss this vantage point, guess it sometimes pays to have a rainy day!

Killarney, Part Three (Parts 1 & 2 below)

My camp-to-be is still occupied when I arrive in the park so I go for an amble to untie my legs. I return later to the now vacated yurt, ready and waiting for me to move in. By the time I settle in it’s mid-afternoon, too late to go for any kind of an ambitious hike (dark comes early this time of year) so, instead, I wander along the lake’s edge, admiring the ancient rocks that define Killarney.

Accented by the late afternoon light, the near shoreline of George Lake glows an improbable pink. From a distance, the rock appears rounded and smooth – this from eons of erosion and numerous glacial bulldozings. A closer up inspection however, reveals deep grooves, fractures, fissures and scour marks – this rock has truly been ‘etched by the ages’. In addition to its unique coloration, in places you’ll find rich veins of smooth, marbley-white quartzite running through it, quite striking in contrast to the pink. These quartzite veins remind me of a much larger version of the delicate inlays you’ll sometimes find in high-end wood furniture. Mother Nature’s inlays.

Now I gaze further out into the distance upon the impressive ridges of gleaming white quartzite, remnants of a once towering mountain range, that plunge precipitously into the lake. Hiking up on those ridges in bright sunshine can be literally blinding – sunglasses de rigueur.

I then try to imagine these diminutive mountains once soaring higher than the Rockies but I fail miserably; I just can’t envision these ancient, rounded ridges as the spiky towers they undoubtedly once were.

The rocks here are among the oldest on the planet; depending on where you are in the park, they range from about 2.2 to 3.5 billion years old. I think about how long these mountains have been crumbling and dissolving to reach their current state and I realize just how little of that time we have been around – modern man doesn’t even qualify as a blip on the radar.

Meandering now away from the lake, I enter the woods and the piney/earthy scent immediately hijacks me, as some smells are wont to do. I slip into a reverie; a highlight reel of past visits dances through my mind. I remember as if it were yesterday the first time I climbed to the top of Killarney Ridge and was completely dumbstruck by the view. I recall the sudden and enthusiastic chorus of a wolf pack howling together on some distant ridge; until that moment I had never heard a wolf howl or even been in a place where wolves still roamed. I’ll never forget watching the setting sun light the red rocks of the Georgian Bay shoreline on fire and marveling about how I’d never seen bare rock look so beautiful.

And then there was the night that, while admiring a perfect reflection of the Big Dipper on the still surface of Lake George, a shooting star streaked across the scene, how I wished I’d been able to capture that on film! Once I ran into (well, not literally) the same moose twice on a trail at two different elevations, as if he was a friend, meeting up with me. Another time I was privileged enough to watch a family of otters play at waters edge like kittens as I silently drifted by in my canoe. I remember spotting a beautiful flower I’d never seen before along a trail and wondered what it was; when I looked it up later imagine my surprise when I found it was a wild orchid - I had always thought orchids were too exotic to be found along hiking trails!

I thought I’d died and gone to heaven the first time ever I woke to eerie warbling of loons reverberating across the lake in the complete stillness of dawn – how I thrill to that haunting sound, even today. And I’ll never forget seeing that black bear family I mentioned earlier, sitting placidly and contentedly by the side of the road, munching on berries. This place holds so many wonderful memories for me I could go on forever... as these scenes flashed through my head I realize just how much I love this place and why I am drawn back again and again, like nowhere else...

Part Four soon!

Killarney Part Two

---> Make sure you read Killarney - An Epic Journey (Part One) first!

...I leave at 2am to avoid Toronto traffic and to gain almost a full day of daylight in the park. The weather was drizzly when I left, but six hours later, as I neared my destination, the weather gods give me the gift of a beautiful sunrise. I stop to do a little shooting.

Finally, after three hundred and twenty long and dark miles, I turn onto Route 637 - only 36 more miles to go - I start to get excited! This is a quiet and scenic road; a perfect lead up to the park. It’s dead-end and only exists to service the park and the tiny town of Killarney beyond it, so there are few human artifacts to spoil the wild on either side of the road.

The first thing I see after turning the corner is a fox trotting down the middle of the road with something in its mouth. It's a turtle – I sure didn't expect that, I thought it would be a rodent of some kind. Years ago, I saw a bear sow and her two cubs munching on berries at the side of this very same stretch of road.

When I first started visiting the park years ago, this road was much rougher, the campground check-in was a little self-service kiosk, and the campground was very primitive. Now there is an imposing visitor’s center, hot showers, and, in addition to the campsites, yurts, the first ever roofed accommodations in the park.

To me, the camping experience is more authentic than sleeping in a room at night. I am immersed in my subject twenty fours hours a day and feel more connected, usually resulting in better photography. Contradictorily however, this time I’ve rented a yurt. I kind of wish the yurts weren’t here so that I’d have had no choice but to camp. I am hoping the added comfort will equal better photography since I won’t be wet and/or chilled to bone like I usually am when camping this late in the season. On the other hand, I am worried that the disconnect each night may actually cause the opposite to occur. We’ll see!

Being late in October, the regular camping season is over. The showers are locked tight, the water’s been drained and the ‘sneaker crowd' (I cringe when I see people hiking these slippery rock and root strewn trails without solid, ankle supporting hiking boots) is gone. There is some consolation in this as it feels just a little bit wilder, more like it used to be. If they continue to add improvements to this place, they will eventually improve the wilderness right out it!...

Look for Part Three soon...

Killarney - An Epic Journey (Part One)

OK, I’m addicted. I admit it. To the Killarney Wilderness Park in Ontario, Canada. I think about her all the time. If I don’t get there at least every year or two, I start to go crazy, she consumes my thoughts. This promises to be an epic journey - thirty years from my first ever visit here and the first time exploring the park alone, just my camera and me. But first, a little about the park.

Killarney, she is old. Really old. About 2.2 billion years ago, a towering range of mountains , higher than the Rockies, rose up. After all these years of erosion and glaciers later, what’s left is a much more subdued range of mostly white quartzite. In a huge but vertically challenged province like Ontario with little or no real mountains, these stand out. Add deep blue lakes with pink granite shorelines and emerald forests and to the rugged, wild beauty of these mountains and you have the formula of paradise, at least to these eyes. The park has only one campground, the rest is wild. About 247 square miles of wonderful wildness to lose yourself and forget your troubles in. The rugged and remote La Cloche Silhouette trail alone is 63 miles rugged miles long and usually takes a week to ten days to complete.

I remember vividly how disappointed I was when driving there for the very first time – I was only a few miles from the park and still no mountains in sight! I had read of quartzite cliffs – where are they? I arrived at the campground, drove in and… was blown away! The rugged, wild, mountains seemed to rise straight up out of the waters of George Lake – it was love at first sight and that love has only gotten stronger.

I have been to Killarney at least a dozen times since, but never on my own. I can’t properly concentrate on photography when I’m with others so this time will be different, I hope to do her justice on film. It’s gonna be a great trip, I can feel it already...

To be continued...