Snowshoeing isn’t usually considered an ‘extreme’ sport. There are tales of snowboarders hiking up mountains in the backcountry, but the focus here is on the trip down, not the climb up. My first exposure to snowshoeing was in gym class. After a brief lesson we’d be escorted outside where a row of old wicker snowshoes were leaning against the fence. We’d strap them on and then tromp awkwardly up and down trails near the school. The snow was so beaten down we didn’t need the shoes for floatation. They were more like an ungainly fashion accessory than an actual aid to getting around. “Look at me, I have baskets on my feet.”
I tried snowshoeing a few more times after that, but often when we’d arrive at the trailhead for a winter hike we’d decide to leave them in the car because there just wasn’t enough snow to make it worth the extra effort. It was back in 2013 that Mike and I were talking about trying snowshoeing again. I was trying to think of a destination that would actually require snowshoes and Killarney came to mind. For our destination I chose Teardrop Lake, a small little pond nestled high up in the hills that separate George Lake from OSA Lake. This would lead us into the backcountry far from well travelled trails.
That trip was an eye opening adventure. Not only did we need our snowshoes in order to complete the trip, it was incredibly difficult, but also incredibly rewarding. We had beautiful clear skies that highlighted the desolate winter scenery of the park. As we climbed up the hill the destination changed. We did visit Teardrop Lake, but the real reward was when we ascended the nearby peak and took in spectacular views of the interior of the park.
Mike and I have returned to Killarney in the winter several times over the last six years. We’ve visited so many of the ridges that we’ve run out of new destinations that are within a days walking distance of the edge of the park. Mike suggested that this year we return to where it all began and climb back up to Teardrop Lake.
I was eager to try again, but I was also a bit worried. Every year I seem to be in worse shape than the last, and these trips are pretty physically demanding. I’ve had several age related injuries over the years and these have also begun to slow me down. I was determined to get into better shape before this trip, and even did a few ‘training’ hikes, but then I was struck with a really nasty flu. It took me out for almost a month, and I had barely recovered in time for the trip.
Mike, on the other hand, has been exercising like a fiend. Fitness has become his new religion and he’s in much better condition than he was on that first trip. He’s suffered the odd age related injury as well, but I felt that he was better prepared for the rigours of this trip than I was. One of my main goals was to see if I could still do a trip like this and make it to the top without Mike having to carry me out.
The Silhouette Trail
The first part of our trip was along the Silhouette Trail. The Silhouette is a long rugged trail that forms a large loop around the interior of the park. The first section is relatively tame, but it does start with a very steep hill right where it leaves George Lake Campground. It always gets my heart going a bit, and I was extra conscious of that today because of how out of shape I am. I did get moving a bit better after the hill, but I was grateful for the frequent breaks we took as Mike recorded segments for a YouTube video.
The trail was nicely broken here. The areas near the campground always see plenty of use, and it makes the going much easier, but by the time we reached the turn off where the Cranberry Bog Trail leaves the Silhouette Trail we were treading through undisturbed snow.
By now this is a fairly familiar route for us. We leave the Silhouette Trail at Little Sheguiandah Lake and cross over to George Lake. Little Sheguiandah is a small lake, but very pretty, giving us our first real glimpse of the parks treasures. It’s carved out of a small bowl of pink granite and ringed with shear cliffs. The hard crust on the snow gave way with a loud cracking sound just as I stepped out onto the ice. It startled me, but the ice underneath was sound and we crossed the tiny lake without incident.
George Lake
There was some open water below the small rock shelf that separates the two lakes, but the rest of the ice on George Lake was solid. The snow on the ice was also polished by the wind, so it was very thin and easy to walk on. It made for an easy crossing, and we took our time taking pictures and enjoying the scenery.
Mike got some shots with his drone. I’d be reluctant to fly a drone in the park in the summer when there are lots of people seeking peace and solitude, but in the winter we rarely encounter other people once we’re a few kilometres from the access points. Imagine our surprise when just six minutes after landing we saw a lone camper crossing the lake on cross country skis pulling a sled with his gear. He was leaving the trail that heads over to OSA Lake, where I assume he may have spent the night. We were sticking to the west end of the bay, because the trail hadn’t helped us that much on our last trip.
The Climb
We’d been spotting the odd snowshoe or ski track on and off since leaving the Silhouette trail. But once we got off of George Lake the only tracks that we saw belonged to animals. There was a large bank of snow along the north side of the bay. I’m not quite sure what caused it. It was a couple of feet higher than the snow on the lake, but it gave way as we walked on it and we sank in often.
We entered the woods, and after checking the map I started to climb uphill. It didn’t take long before I realized that we had a problem. It was a pretty steep slope, but that wasn’t the issue. The snow wasn’t good. It was in fact, quite bad. If you’ve spent much time engaged in winter sports like snowshoeing or skiing you soon learn that there are lots of different types of snow. Some hold your weight well, and others don’t. The temperature was hovering around 0° C, which usually makes the snow dense and firm. We hadn’t had any difficulty on the smooth surfaces of the lakes, and the well travelled Silhouette Trail had been reasonably easy as well. But here in the woods it was almost impossible to get any purchase without digging all they way down.
I’d plant my snowshoe on top of the snow, and at first it would behave nicely – a slight amount of compaction, and then it would bite and support me. But when I tried to lift my other foot the packed snow would crumble and turn to powder that would run out from under my shoe like water. We’ve had a lot of freeze thaw cycles this year, and they had left the snow layered like wafers, with thin layers of hard crust separated by fine powder. It was the worst combination for going uphill – I’d have to lift my leading foot on top of the snow uphill while my trailing foot was buried almost to my crotch. When it would collapse and the powder would flow out it would bury my other foot and I wouldn’t have made any progress up the hill. If I tried to dig out a trench the layers of crust would resist my efforts to break through until I had all of my weight on them.
I was breaking trail and was having to stop to catch my breath every step. Mike offered to break trail, but I had set my eye on a tree up the hill and was determined to make it there before I gave in. It took us ten minutes to go barely 200 meters horizontally and 20 meters vertically. I was exhausted, we only had four hours left until sunset and we had over two kilometres to go to the peak of the hill. Both Mike and I were starting to worry that we wouldn’t make it to our destination, but we continued to slog on with Mike in the lead.
The last time we did this trip I’d spent a lot of time plotting our route beforehand, and it didn’t work out. We got stuck several times and had to make detours as we circumnavigated obstacles. This time I didn’t spend nearly as much time on preparation, but I did have the route we took before on my GPSr. I was trying to avoid repeating the mistakes from the previous trip, but I think I may have actually made worse decisions this time. In the end we did end up avoiding unnecessary up and down and travelled relatively directly towards our destination, but at the time it felt like I was making things harder for us than it needed to be.
We had followed a swale cut into the hill by a small creek the last time we made this trip. Following creeks is a great way to find the ‘easy’ way up the hill. The water often cuts the gentlest path through the contour lines up the hill. Unfortunately it also drags down plenty of logs and rocks making the valleys harder to follow. The last time we followed the north wall of the valley, but we ended up making a detour around an obstruction I could no longer recall. In an effort to avoid that detour I decided to try following the south side of the valley this time.
We were still going uphill, but I was worried that if we kept going up we’d just have to drop back down again to cross the valley so I directed Mike to turn into it. We were already quite far above the floor of the swale and so we started to cut a trail into the side of the hill, travelling horizontally. There were some dramatic rocks on our sides, and it felt a little strange to be walking across the side of the hill almost halfway up, but we had good footing and it was much easier than climbing up or down. The snow was still very deep and we sank in at every step, but it felt like we were finally making progress even if we weren’t really going up.
The valley finally narrowed to a small neck, and by now the floor had risen almost to our level, so I decided that this was a good time to cross. We had to descend a bit and the we passed through the neck and entered a tiny canyon. We could hear a waterfall at the far end, but it was obscured by by all of the trees and debris that had washed down this small chamber. It was a really nice spot, which is a good thing, because we ended up spending quite a bit of time in there.
Crossing the creek was easy, we just clambered around a few fallen logs and then stepped across some of the thick snow that covered the water. We could hear it running beneath us, but the snow held. But both sides of the canyon were almost vertical cliffs. This was another area where it took us more than thirty minutes to travel less than 100 meters. Maybe our slow progress was because I was breaking trail again, or maybe it was because we had to climb 25 meters in snow that felt like quicksand. Going straight up the hill wasn’t an option, we had to cut a diagonal path. At one point I felt like I was completely stuck. Every step I took left me in the same spot. I finally lunged at some nearby trees and pulled myself out the hole that I’d dug, but now I was just travelling horizontally. I kept trying to turn uphill, but after every slippery step I’d find myself pointing back downhill.
About two thirds of the way up Mike took over breaking trail and his energy helped us to progress faster, but it was still very slow going. I felt a bit guilty, since I hadn’t been breaking trail for very long at this point, but I was also pretty exhausted.
When we finally got out of the valley we took a well needed break to catch our breath while Mike shot a YouTube segment. I had a to adjust the bindings on one of my snowshoes because it had pulled almost completely off while we climbed out of the valley.
After that, there was a brief section that was almost level but we soon turned back up the hill. We came to a long clearing that followed our trail up the hill. This gave us our first view of the countryside. We could see George Lake below us, some of the nearby peaks, and off in the distance Georgian Bay. This was the first time since we started climbing the hill that we crossed our track from our previous trip and visited a place that we’d been before.
Our path up the hill crossed through a large bowl of dead trees. I surveyed the surroundings while Mike explained to his YouTube audience how we’d have to descend into the bowl and climb out the other side. The ridge we had been following continued up past the bowl and wrapped around the far side. I couldn’t see the furthest section, but it was possible that we could avoid having to climb down and then back up if we just followed the ridge.
Mike had been breaking trail a lot so I forged on ahead. If my hunch was wrong and this ridge didn’t wrap around the bowl I could warn Mike and save him the effort of climbing up the ridge and then back down. Once I reached the top there was a brief moment where the snow covered mounds of rock in front of me looked like they did just drop off, but it was an illusion, and the ridge did continue on to the mountain ahead of us.
From here we had an even better view of the landscape below, but also the hill we were climbing. To the west was a large valley that separates the hill we were climbing from Gulch Hill. This valley is where Teardrop drains down into George Lake, and is how we ascended last time we were here. To the north was the peak of the hill. I could see exposed ridges winding back and forth towards the peak. I plotted a route up and we headed back into the trees.
We soon found ourselves in a very small gulley following a well worn set of animal tracks. I had hoped that the trail would be easier to walk, but we still kept sinking deep into the snow at every step. The gulley was rising, and soon the walls drew closer and turned into small rocky cliffs. We continued through a small pass and found ourselves a few meters from a drop into the valley where Teardrop drains. The animal tracks continued over the edge into the valley. Continuing that way would have meant that we would have to descend considerably, so we turned and started to head uphill again.
I had been leading, so when we turned around Mike was breaking trail again. He was climbing over a round boulder when I saw him drop suddenly into the snow. He was buried almost to his crotch, and struggling to pull his foot out. Deep under the snow his shoe had slipped under another rock or a branch and it was trapped. The quicksand snow was preventing him from getting the purchase he needed with his other foot. I reached out to offer a hand but he waved me off and leapt out of the hole onto the more solid snow nearby. The ordeal had worked his boot out of the binding of his snowshoe and he had to re-adjust it before we could continue uphill.
We only had 40 minutes until sunset, but we were also less than 400 meters from the top of the hill. Both Mike and I were pretty sure that we could make it at this point, we just had to slog through the last climb. The rest of the climb was an optical illusion. We were in the trees and the hill curved away ahead of us. It always looked like the next ridge would lead us to a plateau at the top, but there was always another ridge beyond that one. I tried to get us on top of a ridge that was heading uphill instead of across, and we followed that for a while, but the terrain was always changing. The snow didn’t seem as bad, and there were no more gullies to cross, but there were also no ‘short cuts’ at this point. The only way up was to climb.
The Peak
The sun set eight minutes before we got to the peak. It wasn’t a great loss, the sky had been dull and hazy all day, but it meant we couldn’t afford to hang out for very long up there.
We’ve visited many of the peaks in Killarney since this one, but this was the first. It’s funny how your memory plays tricks with you. I’ve looked at the pictures I took that day many times since, and I remembered a more panoramic view. And we’ve visited other peaks where we couldn’t see anything at all because of the trees. I know that we stood in the same place on both of our trips here, but we could barely see anything this time! We did see OSA and Killarney lakes, so we got our glimpse of the ‘interior’ of the park, but it was fleeting. We couldn’t even see Teardrop Lake from the top, we had to climb down to another vantage point before we could see a bit of the frozen lake nestled high up in the hills.
We decided not to climb down to the lake. It was already getting dark, but more importantly we’d loose our trail. Originally I’d intended to hike back to George along a different path than we’d come in, but the snow was so bad we didn’t want to break a new trail and decided to retrace our steps. If we climbed down to the lake it would take us a while to rejoin the path we made on the way in.
The Return
The trip down is always easier than the trip up. Not only did we follow the trail we made on the way in, we had gravity on our side. The hardest part of going up had been fighting the snow that slid out from beneath our shoes. On the way down we could just slide with it. It took us over four hours to climb up from George Lake, but barely two to climb back down. We got moving so fast that I started to hear my heart pounding in my ears. My cardio was obviously my weakest link, but we’d had to move so slowly on the way in that I wasn’t hitting that wall. On the way out I had to ask Mike to slow down several times so I could catch my breath.
Often when we’d take a break we’d turn off our flashlights. It was very dark now, with just a couple of pools of lights on the clouds from Sudbury to the north and the town of Killarney to the south. The wind had picked up and was blowing the snow out of the trees. Once my breathing had settled down I could listen to the wind in the trees and the snow falling. There’s an amazing stillness in the wilderness after dark, particularly in the winter. Being exhausted and alone only helps to remind me that we are not visiting nature, we are a part of nature.
The valley that had taken so long to climb on the way in was still a challenge to climb down, but it took us only a fraction of the time it had to climb up. I got a bit of a scare as we exited the tiny gorge that held the waterfall. On the way in we’d ducked under a fallen log. It was leaning against the side of the cliff and formed a triangular passage. There had been no issues on the way in, and Mike made the the return trip easily, but as I was crouched under the log the snow under both of my feet gave way and I dropped.
I had thought we were over the shore of the creek here, but we were actually standing on a mound of snow that was suspended over the water. I didn’t get my feet wet, but I panicked a bit as I heard the water running beneath me. I called out and struggled forward, but more snow started to collapse. Mike held out a hand and pulled me up. I was struggling to get my feet underneath myself on something solid. I though I had it and told him it was ok when the next mound of snow gave way. With Mike pulling me I managed to crawl over it and finally get onto something solid.
George Lake
After that it was a relatively easy walk along the wall of the valley and back down to George Lake. It was immediately easier to walk once we were on the lake, and it didn’t take us long to find the hard packed snowshoe trail. Mike really got moving here and I had to ask him to stop several times to catch my breath. As we neared the campground more and more trails joined up with the one we were following. We were alone on a frozen lake in the dark, but it already felt like we were at the fringes of civilization.
There’s some sketchy ice sometimes in the channel that leads back to the campground so we tried to follow tracks that were in the centre of the channel. It wasn’t long before we were climbing up from the beach to the parking lot.
The weather forecast had called for a storm late in the evening, and there was even a small chance of rain. This had been an additional incentive to get back out before it was too late, because being caught in the rain would not have been pleasant. The only hint we had of this storm all day was light sprinkling of of sleet in the trees above us as we entered the campground.
Conclusion
Driving back and forth to Killarney from southern Ontario in a day means a lot of time spent in the car. As Mike and I drove north to Killarney we were talking about goals. The importance of having them, but also the importance of not being dominated by them. We need goals in order to have direction, but life often doesn’t go as planned, so we can’t become overwhelmed if we don’t achieve our goals. And the most important lesson is that the important part of any trip is the journey, and not the destination.
Climbing a mountain is a pretty common metaphor for life goals, and today it was more than a metaphor, it was a literal goal. I’ve written up a lot of trips like this, and a pretty common theme is dealing with the fact that things didn’t go as planned. We did get to the top of the mountain this time, but we didn’t technically make it to Teardrop Lake. I wasn’t that disappointed by not making it to the lake itself. We saw it from above, so we could have easily descended to the surface, we just didn’t really have much time. I must admit that I was more focused on reaching the peak of the hill than the lake and that was likely a large part of the reason we didn’t bother with it.
My biggest goal was just to see if I could still do this, because that will dictate what other trips I can try. It wasn’t easy, but I did make it. These trips are never easy, but I did acutely feel how out of condition I was. It’s pretty clear that I need to work more on my cardio.
One thing that Mike and I have noticed on these trips is that we’re not as destroyed at the end as we used to be. I was in much better shape the first time we did this trip. But at the end of that day we could barely move once we returned to George Lake, and our hips were killing us. I certainly wasn’t moving quickly on the lake this time, but I was able to keep going. And while my body was incredibly sore the next day, I never experienced the pain in my hips that I remember from our earlier trips. It’s as if our bodies have adapted over time, or perhaps we’ve learned a better gait to assume with the snowshoes.
We also both had artistic goals for the trip. Mike wanted to shoot a YouTube video, and I had hoped to get some nice pictures and write this blog post. I also had a video camera on my sunglasses, but I wasn’t really that interested in making a video this time out. I don’t think any of these endeavours worked as well as we’d hoped. We were short on time, and we missed the sunset. We had bad light all day which made the photos and videos dreary rather than spectacular.
I was struggling with a sub-par camera because my old one is broken. Not only does it have a poor sensor, it kept changing modes and shifting the exposure in unfortunate ways. I’ve long contended that photography (or any skill) isn’t about the tools, but it’s about the skill of the artist. Suffice it to say that on this trip I didn’t have the skill to eke reasonable photos out of this camera.
Our first trip to Teardrop was so spectacular that we were buoyed on an energy high for days afterwards. Comparing the photos from this trip to the previous one it’s easy to see why we were so elated afterwards. That experience fuelled our desire to return time after time. Climbing a mountain is about the climb and not about the view from the top, but the reward at the end does energize us. Killarney is always spectacular, but some days more so than others.