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...
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...
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