Journey to Manitoulin Island

Toronto to Manitoulin Island via Guelph, Tobermory and Bruce National Park.
Photographs with the indomitable Holga + Fuji Neopan 400.

Aching for the Portage: A Week in Algonquin Park

The first of twenty-four portages feels like the chaos wrought by a summer storm upon a beach; the last, like an imperturbable old friend come to lean on your tired shoulder.

Everything in between is no more and no less an addictive progression of ache.

Before we began our Algonquin paddling adventure, I'd wondered whether the portage ache--the unique stiffening soreness of schlepping first a 55lb backpack and then a 42lb canoe over crooked forest trails as long as 2km in between each lake--would, like its counterpart the alpine ache, come to be felt as both agony and ecstasy.

When the very thing that is the cause of physical pain is also the cause of metaphysical joy, one tends to long for it, as with nostalgia. Like looking a photograph of childhood, one experiences both pleasure and pain.

For seven days in August we assailed the portages of Algonquin's northwest frontier, embarking our seventeen footer at Kiosk for a charted clockwise loop across no fewer than twenty-one lakes, from Kioshkokwi to lakes called Mink, Club, Mouse, Erables, Maple, Ratrap, Three-Mile, Mangotasi, North Tea and Manitou, among others.

Yes, we felt the ache. It was a great ache, attacking sharply with the inversion of the boat on our shoulders, pulling us out of breath, throbbing through our backs and legs and feet, and lingering in the form of evening spasms and morning stiffness. I miss it already.

Algonquin Park, Northwest Frontier from Kiosk (Click to enlarge)

ITINERARY
Day 1: Kiosk to Mouse Lake via Kioshkokwi, Little Mink, Mink and Club lakes. 13km paddling + 4 portages (2900m total). Portages are gentle trails cushioned by pine needles; a great way to start. We faced fierce, east-blowing crosswinds and white-capped rollers crossing Mouse Lake to a good campsite on the southern shore, though it made for a mucky evening swim.

Paddling out on Kioshkokwi. Photo by Richard A. Johnson.

Day 2: Mouse Lake to Maple Lake via Big Thunder and Erables lakes. 9km paddling + 4 portages (3700m total). Erables is a beautiful and peaceful paddle, with good-looking campsites. The island campsites on Maple Lake are justifiably popular, but we arrived too late to snag one, and so took a decent alternative on the western shore.

Dawn over Maple Lake. Photo by Richard A. Johnson.

Day 3: Maple Lake to Three Mile Lake via Ratrap, Boggy and North Sylvia lakes. 8km paddling + 4 portages (3100m total). Despite the toponyms, this is a beautiful stretch of landscape. The portages get a bit steeper and twisting as the day progresses, but the last one ends at a great beach. The rain began this day, and we scarcely saw the sun thereafter for 4 days.

Island campsite at Three Mile Lake. Photo by Richard A. Johnson.

Day 4: Three Mile Lake to Biggar Lake via Upper Kawa, Kawa and Sinclair lakes. 7km paddling + 4 portages (3200m total). A monotonous day, as the scenery between Three Mile and Biggar is unspectacular, and the paddling in between each portage is shorter than the portages themselves. Biggar is beautiful, and the campsites on the north shore of the main channel (9 in total) are about as sublime as this part of the park has to offer.

Early morning on Three Mile Lake. Photo by Richard A. Johnson.

Day 5: Biggar Lake to Manitou Lake via Hornbeam, Mangotasi and North Tea lakes. 14km of paddling + 4 portages (1100m total). The portages around the rapids between Biggar and Mangotasi are quite photogenic. We spotted moose on the western shore of Biggar, then beaver and blue heron on Mangotasi. The sandbar between Mangotasi and North Tea lakes was barely covered with low water levels, so we had to drag it. The island campsites on southern Manitou are the way to go.

Wooded campsite on an island on Manitou Lake. Photo by Richard A. Johnson.

Day 6: Manitou Lake to Manitou Lake. 4km paddling, no portages. We'd planned a more robust route to the northwest, via Lorne, Kakasamic, Fassett and Shada lakes, then back onto Manitou. But health issues directed us to the more direct route northward. Nevertheless, Manitou's famed headwinds and storminess (especially travelling north) made the journey a slog in the cold drizzle. The northern Manitou campsites are not quite as memorable as their southern counterparts.

Pulling the canoe into a campsite on northern Manitou Lake. Photo by Richard A. Johnson.

Day 7: Manitou Lake to Kiosk via Amable du Fond and Kioshkokwi Lake. A great finish: wild raspberries grow in abundance near the du Fond beach, the start of the portage. The portages of lower Amable du Fond are beautiful and (in our direction) all downhill; you can do them all as one single portage, or paddle the middle section (even in low water, as we faced). The cove out into Kioshkokwi is studded with grounded drift logs, making it a bit of an obstacle course.

Portager's view of the trail near Amable du Fond. Photo by Richard A. Johnson.

View complete photo gallery here.

101 Icelandic: A Thorough Tongue-Twisting Trek Through a Thwarting Language

It is entirely possible that the most garrulous person in all of Iceland is a man who spends most of his day alone on a mountain ridge between two volcanoes. Sigurður Sigurðursson is a seasonal warden of a lonely trekkers hut at a place called Fimmvörðuháls, and if you think you can hike up to his domain for a cozy night underneath the aurora borealis without learning how to pronounce Fimmvörðuháls--and without developing an affinity for the Icelandic language--you are sorely mistaken.

It's simple when you chop it down to the roots, he says (and given the lunar landscape of his realm he's certainly not talking about trees). Fimm is five. Vörð (pronounced vordh) is cairn. Háls is neck. The Neck of the Five Cairns. That's where we are.*

As he pours a cup of tea from the snow he kindly melts for all his guests (the nearest stream is about 2km away), Sigurður continues the lesson. He is wearing insulated snow pants held up over his robust middle with suspenders, and his high, round cheeks are rosy from a long day spent hammering trail-marking stakes into the ground; there is a semblance of a bald, beardless Santa Claus about his presence. It's a mid-September afternoon, but it's only three degrees at Fimmvörðuháls.**

Over there, he points out the window, is Mýrdalsjökull. Mýr is a wetland. Dal is a valley.*** Jökull is, of course, a glacier. The Wetland Valley Glacier. Behind it is þórsmörk, the Forest of Thor.**** Nearby is Goðaland, Land of the Gods. And of course on the other side is Eyjafjallajökull, Island Mountain Glacier.

Now you see how we Icelanders name our places.

Many travellers find Icelanders to be quiet. People of few words. Lukewarm and distant, like the local sun. But the irrepressible Sigurður would not shut up about the joy that is the Icelandic language until we had tied our tongues in knots and surrendered from the lesson. 

The cosmology of a place as small (pop. 320,000), as rugged (63% of the surface area is classified as "wasteland") and as isolated (no continent to call its own) as Iceland is by necessity both simple and puristic. After all, following its initial settlement era in the ninth and tenth centuries the country was set upon and dominated if not outright ruled by Norwegians, Danes, Scots, British, French, Spanish, Basques, Germans, Russians, Japanese, Americans and even Algerian pirates; by their fishing fleets and military alliances and political tyrants.

Apropos of which, the naming of places in Iceland has long been marked with utilitarian strokes, almost as if to convince outsiders of their insignificance, or to convince Icelanders not to get too sentimental about their homeland.

And further, the Icelandic language beginning in the nineteenth century went through a purist movement (which evolved into a full-fledged government language committee and language institute) both to protect and to cultivate the Icelandic linguistic heritage. Among its sphere of influence is the coining of neologisms and the, er, Icelandicizing of loanwords. 

In an oft-cited example, the Icelandic word for computer, tölva, is a portmanteau of the word tala ("number") and völva ("oracle"). An Oracle of Numbers, not a kömpútur.

In 1973 they even banished the letter z from the alphabet. Why? Not Icelandic. (Thanks but no thanks, England.)

So perhaps it was no coincidence that the ostensibly hermitic Sigurður (who actually spends most of the year living and working in Reykjavik) was the most talkative person we encountered in Iceland. He sits at a crossroads of some of the simplest, most unutterable toponyms in all of the country, and most of his interactions are with thrill-seeking volcano trekkers from far-flung lands, most of whom only half-heartedly attempt to pronounce Fimmvörðuháls before giggling and sighing, cute little Iceland.

Sigurður has heard it all. And like others before him, he's determined to Icelandicize your tongue, to send you on your way with a bit more respect for this rugged, hardly diminutive country than when you arrived.

We thanked him and trekked down the mountain. A few days later we found ourselves at Snæfellsnes. Snow Mountain Peninsula. We hiked up to Djúpalonssandur and down to Önverðarnes. And yeah, sometimes we wished there existed a Sigurður iPhone app to help us. But we sputtered Icelandic place names into the wind and giggled slightly less. He'd taught us well.

* To clear up the confusion, the sign in the photo points to Fimmvorðuskáli. Skáli is the Icelandic for hall or hut, which here means Sigurður's hut on Fimmvorðuháls.
** Celsius.
*** Mýr and Dal, if you look closely, resemble the English words "mire" and "dale." Not a coincidence.
**** The runic þ is an awesome letter and should be Iceland's next export, after the haddock run out.

This way to Thor's favourite Peninsula.

I, uh, Felt a Jokull (and other Icelandic things)

It had to be high on the list of places to visit in Iceland: Eyjafjallajökull, the ice cap and eponymous volcano that just a year ago erupted with more fury than a stampede of sheep, spewing clouds of ash across Europe and sending air-traffic controllers on a long-sought holiday (by train, of course).

How could one visit the land of jökulls and not deposit a soft, black footprint on the slopes of this tongue twister ("aye, if yet, la yokel"), if only to ensure that, at least at one particular moment, nature has relaxed its cycle of self-correction long enough for us humans to venture out of our caves?

In Iceland the natural world certainly has a way of reminding us not to take it for granted. Maybe it's the way the sun always seems so distant, at a languid low angle, as though Terrence Malick is in control of the lighting. Maybe it's in the wind, which blows up, down, warm, cold, east and west, seemingly all at once. Maybe it's the absence of trees, a taut lesson that what goes down doesn't always come back up.*

Terrence Malick was here.

Or maybe it's the way those infamous volcanoes keep all but the most brennevín-sodden of Icelanders (and the rest of us) continually on their toes.

Thus, climbing up and setting foot on Eyjafjallajökull is sort of the human way of letting nature know that, hey, point taken.

The ice and volcanic dunes of Eyjafjallajokull, 13 September 2011.

Last year a small chunk of the world fumed right back at the Icelandic volcano, angrily protesting the flight delays and the soporific haze drifting through all that clean, human air. But in fact, the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull (c'mon, you can say it) was one of the drowsiest by Icelandic standards.

If you want to talk about devastation, look no further than Lakagígar, the largest volcanic eruption in history.** In the summer of 1783 this twenty-five-kilometre long hole in the Earth exploded, darkening the skies of the world, blighting harvests, decimating flora and fauna, emitting rivers of fire and clouds of poisonous sulfuric gas continuously for eight months.

Lakagígar was so colossal it lowered the mean atmospheric temperature of the planet by nearly five degrees Celsius over a year. Its devastation of crop and livestock in Iceland was responsible for the deaths of 10,000 inhabitants; one-fifth of the entire population at the time. It also got me an A in freshman-year volcanology.***

Being that the deadly Icelandic eruption that caused Benjamin Franklin to posit an early theory of the delicate relationship between atmospheric composition and climate change also got me through that rough first year of university, I'd have been remiss if I didn't pay homage to this volcano, too.

Iceland is like nature's geological laboratory, an open-air museum of Earth's majestic, barely comprehensible dynamism dedicated singularly to making us feel very, very insignificant. A simple footprint is a supreme act of reverence. Point taken, world. I'll never complain about a delayed flight again.

* Just as Jared Diamond foretold.
** By volume of effluent, not by number of flights cancelled.
*** That course, Geosciences 1303, is still offered. Also, the grade was actually an A-minus, which is to an A what Eyjafjallajokull is to Lakagigar; differently uttered but similarly impressive from the vantage of something small, like a bee.

Discovery with a Paddle: Canoeing the Restoule and French Rivers

When Samuel Champlain paddled down the Restoule River with a party of Ottawa nation aboriginals in the early sixteenth seventeenth century, he believed he was beating a trail of discovery to a great, westward river that would lead to the mer de l'ouest, the ocean on the far side of what was, to Europeans, a new found land.

In the Canada of Champlain's peers, the frontier emerged from obscurity beneath each footstep and paddle stroke of he and his men. What became known as the French River was the first of many underestimations of Champlain, who was by all evidence one of the more gifted of the early European explorers of North America.

Champlain stood at the confluence of the Restoule and French Rivers and believed the latter flowed over the western horizon to the salted sea. (No doubt his indigenous guides, who may never have come across anything but fresh water during their inland lives, struggled in translation with this alien concept of saltwater.)

Champlain was wrong. But in his wrongness, he made if not a discovery then at least a revelation.

It may have dawned on him that he was experiencing the seduction of terra incognita. It's what we draw on maps before we ever experience the place to be mapped. It's what we claim as our own before we know if it can even be gained, let alone held and owned. It's what traps us into confusing our passion for discovery with a conquering of nature.[1]

So powerful is the force behind exploration that it can place a child's imagination inside the cunning mind of a man.

As Jean Baudrillard wrote of cartography in the postmodern age, "The territory no longer precedes the map, nor survives it.... It is the map that precedes the territory."[2]

The map, like Champlain's belief in a river to the sea in the middle of Ontario, is our imagination, our longing to explore. It is in some ways essential to our path. But it--and not the wilderness--is what must be gained and held.

What drives us to discover that which we do not know cannot be placed on a map. No matter what it promised on his map--no matter that he ended up with Georgian Bay instead of the Pacific Ocean, which turned out to be of no small import to Europeans--Champlain's only real discovery was that in going beyond his known frontier, he released the child inside him to explore a true wilderness.

What Francis Younghusband humbly wrote about the Himalaya applies well to the wilderness discovery narrative in general: "To those who have struggled with them the mountains reveal beauties they will not disclose to those who make no effort. And it is because they have so much to give and give it so lavishly to those who will wrestle with them that men love mountains and go back to them again and again."[3]

And so seduced, eager and aware, our group went a-paddling where Champlain had dreamt of reaching the far side of the world.

Our Route

The Champlain Loop along the Restoule and French Rivers we did in five days (many do it in four).[4]

Day 1: Approximately 46° 4' 2'' North latitude by 79° 46' 24'' West longitude is the starting point. From the south shore of Stormy Lake in Restoule Provincial Park paddling westward into the Restoule River, via the Scott's Dam portage (270m), and into a beautiful campground with good fishing on the south shore of Lennon Lake, which is no more than a widening of the river. 11km plus 1 portage.

Day 2: The remainder of the Restoule River westward with a portage (270m) around MacArthur's Rapids (CII; too low in August to run) and another portage (700m) around the series of falls down to the French. Out into Restoule Bay and the French River, through a small maze of islands and bays to a peninsula campsite (by far the least attractive of the trip) just opposite the bridge over Chaudiere Rapids. 14km plus 2 portages.

Day 3: Chaudiere portage (600m) leads into the southern bay of the Upper French River. Paddle hard (in headwinds and a downpour of rain, for us) around the islands east of the First Nation town of Dokis all the way up to Satchel's Bay, then to a glorious and surprisingly secluded campsite at the eastern tip of Sumner Island. 12km plus 1 portage.

Day 4: Back into the French River toward the vast expanse of Lake Nipissing, around into Frank's Bay to find the mouth of Shoal Creek. A 3.5-hour zigzagging course through the creek's marshes (and over nearly a dozen beaver dams) is exciting but ultimately exhausting, and involves three short portages (90m, 45m and 50m) around rocks. Over the final beaver dam is found the clear waters of Shoal Lake, with a large campsite near plentiful fishing holes on the far eastern shore. 15km plus 3 portages.

Day 5: The day of four lakes, from Shoal Lake to a portage (800m) that leads to Bass Lake, across which is another portage (900m) that ends at the western shore of Watt (sometimes called Clear) Lake. Traversing Watt Lake to its end the waters open up southward into Stormy Lake, heading back to the starting point at Restoule Provincial Park. 11km plus 2 portages.

Photographs copyright Richard A. Johnson. Taken with the great Holga 120N plastic camera, with Ilford HP5. Click here to view the full photo gallery. 

Oh, and there are other great photographs by fellow expedition members Dean and Mike.

[1] Inspired by chapters 2 and 7 of Where is Here?: Canada's Maps and the Stories They Tell by Alan Morantz, a book I kept closed until I could take it on this trip, and which is highly recommended as a companion read to this particular expedition.

[2] Quoted in Morantz's book, p.147

[3] From Mount Everest: Reconnaissance (1921); quoted in Sierra Nevada by Ansel Adams, 1938.

[4] Our guidebook was A Paddler's Guide to Killarney and the French River by Kevin Callan, which unfortunately was of little use beyond whetting our appetites for the trip. Though it contains a few snippets of advice regarding portages and campsites, those snippets are maddeningly incomplete by guidebook standards, and most of the narrative is narrowly anecdotal of a trip the author took many years ago. An internet search for trip advice and the purchase of topographic maps were more essential to planning. 

A Tuque in India

Ah, December. A line of no retreat for Winter. A season of snow and slipperiness. A time for Tuques. In Canada, anyway. 

Your humble Tuque Souq blogger left Canada nine months ago for India with a twosome of tuques in tow; since then Tuque No. 2 has enjoyed hibernation in a desk drawer wrapped around a camera lens. 

Tuque No. 1 had the mildew--omnipresent here in the sauna that is the state of Orissa--washed out of it in September to make the journey north to Himalaya in Sikkim, on a trek up to Goecha La, at the base of Khangchendzonga--"Mountain of the Five Fingers of Snow"--the world's third highest peak.

Khangchendzonga: 8600m (28,000ft) friend of the Tuque

 

Aside from these adventures, the mighty tuque seems to have little utility in India.

But at long last, Winter has arrived in the coastal jungles of Orissa. It's a nose-numbing 21 degrees Celsius (74F) in the frosty moonlight. At night, now, we sleep with only one fan blowing directly on us. In the dry chill of the early morning we must don t-shirts to survive. One of these days we may get desperate enough to wear socks.

Walking in a Winter Wonderland

Indeed, here in this vale of shiveriness, even our friends and neighbours are wary of Winter's unmerciful blitz. A land that previously we considered--back in the days of 44 degrees C--to be infertile ground for anything fleece or woolen, is in fact coming to life with ripe tuques!

Well, at least one!

Omani adventurer might be the first Arab to reach the North Pole

Omani adventurer Nabil al-Buseidi will participate in the biannual Polar Challenge next April and will attempt to be the first Arab to set foot on the (magnetic) North Pole.

Al-Buseidi is apparently known more commonly by his nickname "Nabs" - except in Germany, where he claims the media (rather glibly, we gather) dubbed him "der Sultan Auf Schnee," or the Sultan of Snow, for his combination of biathlon prowess and Arabness.

The 700-kilometre Polar Challenge begins at Resolute Bay on the mainland of Nunavut, where challengers acclimatize to the Arctic by skiing 105km to the official starting line on Little Cornwallis Island. The formal race then runs in 4 stages over Bathurst Island, across the frozen Northwest Passage to King Christian Island, and then over more iced sea to the Magnetic North Pole at 78° 35.7'N by 104° 11.9'W, or just off the coast of Ellesmere Island. The finish line is at an airstrip near Issachen Mine.

Competitors may travel by foot or ski, facing challenges involving constant sub-zero temperatures and roving polar bears. (The Polar Challenge's FAQ page highlights the degree of difficulty facing the adventurers.) The record time, from the 2003 race - the first held - is 10 days, 9 hours and 45 minutes. In 2007, a total of 6 teams comprising 15 people completed the challenge.

Nabs the Omani and his fellow competitors will set off next April. Stay tuned.