Late Fall Overnighter

With such mild weather for November, Cait and I decided to do a quick overnight hike in Killarney Provincial Park, southwest of Sudbury, Ontario.  Along for the trip was our (nearly) fearless travelling buddy Panzer.

We arrived at the gate house around 1pm on Saturday, only to find the park office closed.  We filled out the self-serve registration envelope and hit the trail, knowing we had only a few hours of daylight.  The initial section of trail climbed steeply from the eastern edge of the George Lake campground, and emerged onto a granite ridge with great views.  The trail followed the ridge for some time, and eventually descended into nearby lowlands.  We encountered several very wet sections of trail once off of the ridge, but nothing that couldn't be avoided.

Having skipped lunch on our drive to the park, we stopped and Wagon Road Lake for a quick meal of pita and hummus, enjoying the warmth and sunshine.  After the break the trail crossed the lake via a substantial beaver dam, and then followed what appeared to have been a very old logging road for about 200 meters.  We again traveled through some very wet and muddy sections of trail, but soon emerged into a deciduous forest which had dropped all of its leaves.  The resulting carpet of bright yellow and orange leaves combined with the sunshine made for a refreshing change from the often enclosed mixed forest we left behind.  As the sun was quickly sinking, and the light failing, I was beginning to think this section of forest would make for a beautiful campsite if only we could find a water source.

However after another kilometer the forest abruptly changed to dark evergreens again.  We were very pleased to discover upon entering the evergreens that the next official campsite was at the their very edge, and overlooked a small shallow lake.  We immediately dropped our gear and began the quest to find decent firewood before the daylight failed completely.  We lucked out, as the open deciduous forest we had been walking through was just steps to the west of our campsite, with better light to see by, and lots of fallen deadwood for our fire.  After getting a healthy, comforting blaze going, we set up our MSR Hubba Hubba, unrolled all our bedding, and got Panzer some food.

We enjoyed a very relaxing evening under a clear sky next to a bright fire.  We both crashed before 10pm.  At one point in the night there was some rain, but it lasted only a few minutes and was very light.  The next morning we took our time packing up and making breakfast.  We hiked out at a quicker pace than the trip in, with the promise of a second breakfast at Perkins in Sudbury fueling our hike.