Killarney Northwest Loop, Day 3
Great Mountain Lake

This is part 4 of 9 in the series Killarney Northwest Loop, 2015

Our third day was to be a break day to enjoy Great Mountain Lake, so I planned to do some ridge running to get a view of the area around us. From our campsite on the island in the east bay Great Mountain Lake wasn’t that impressive. While it is pretty I had hoped for a lake ringed by tall quartzite mountains. We found them when we went paddling to do our ridge running.

At the southern end of the lake is an impressive cliff next to the portage that leads to Little Mountain Lake. Unfortunately, the best campsite on the lake which has a spectacular view of this cliff also happens to have a private cabin on it. The cabin was precisely why I avoided the south end of the lake when choosing a campsite. There’s an official campsite closer to the cliff that I’d choose in the future, or I’d take the advice of the guidebooks and reserve the single campsite on Gail Lake which is a short portage away from Great Mountain.

Best Campsite

I was hoping to summit some of the peaks on the south side of the ridge that flank the Silhouette trail, so we beached our canoe on the shore of the lake and started bushwhacking uphill. Ridge running in Killarney is moderately easy except for the navigation challenges. The bush is thin enough that no trail is needed, and when you reach the exposed quartzite the views can be spectacular.

We did summit the smaller local peak that looks down upon Little Mountain Lake. We could see all the way to the south LaCloche range, and in some locations we could see both Great Mountain and Little Mountain Lakes. Little Mountain is everything that I’d hoped Great Mountain would be. The water shines with the unique shade of blue that Killarney lakes are famous for, and the tiny lake is surrounded by towering white peaks. Unfortunately the only campsite on Little Mountain is reserved for hikers so we couldn’t stay there.

We enjoyed the view for a while before pressing on to greater heights. This is where poor planning bit me. The terrain kept rolling up and down, and even though we were only a few hundred meters from our destination it was getting late and we were low on water so we decided to turn back. If I were to attempt this climb again I’d paddle across Little Mountain Lake and then follow the Silhouette Trail to the base of the mountain to reduce the amount of bushwhacking.

As we descended back to our canoe my GPSr suffered a glitch and erased all of the track data from the trip so far. Up to this point all of the track points are synthesized from my satellite beacon or interpolated from my pictures. Not only was it frustrating to loose the record of our trip so far, it also made it a bit more difficult to find the best way down off the mountain to where our canoe was parked!

A small weasel or otter popped out of the bushes to watch us as we got ready to board the canoe and fight the winds back to our campsite. It watched us for a while before darting off very quickly in the other direction. Unfortunately I didn’t manage to get a picture of the creature.

Once back at our site we had a leisurely evening and I took advantage of the opportunity to wash some of the sweat out of my clothes.

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