Firlapalooza

This post formerly titled ”Getting High on My Image 5″.  

I have received some complaints about the on-going saga of my trip to Ishpatina Ridge which I’ve been posting.  Not because of the unintended lengthiness of the posts, but due to the fact that some individuals feel that I haven’t exactly completed the entire tale of the trek.  Originally, the story’s intent was to explain the treeful image bannering this website; nothing more, nothing less.  I finally was able to wind up the explanation at the end of part 4.  To my surprise, some of you want to hear not just up to the three-quarter point of the journey (when the photograph was taken), but all the way to the end?  Well, I don’t think describing that should require all that much more of your time.  Just keep reading.

Here’s the map with our route to keep track of our path from the top of the mountain.  When we left off, it was the afternoon of Labour Day Monday, September 6th, 2004.  Matt and I had decided that the best way to return along Scarecrow Lake from the base of the mountain path was not through the all-too-dense and unfriendly bush lining the shore, but to walk through the lake itself, to the southwest.  With our bathing suits and shoes on, we slung our packs across ourselves once again, and then strode confidentally in the shallow waters abutting the sandy shore, despite the grey temperment of the skies apparent in the photograph.

Since we were wearing our shoes, we were now purposefully giving ourselves soakers, but we were unequivocally beyond the point of caring about that (if anything, this whole adventure had made us quite used to wet footwear); we simply wanted to traverse as much distance in as little time as possible to ensure we returned back to the truck before darkness felll.  Or at least to an actual path.  It was amazing how swiftly our water-walking progress was; we could now quickly cut directly across the diameter of the many little bays and inlets that previously forced us to inch along the shorelines.  As well, there was no more scratchy and obstructive vegetation in the lake, but the soothingly-cool water upon our worn and aching legs instead.  The bottom was mostly sandy or pebbly, but at times, it would suddenly switch to being muddy or boggy.  Before sinking down too far, and perhaps losing a shoe, we would back up, step up onto the land, and continue for a short while on the shore until the swampy section once again gave way to benthic layer with better traction.  When we originally came in towards Ishpatina Ridge, we had scratched up our arms, but our pants had protected our legs quite well; now, in the absence of a protective layer of trousers, our lower limbs were getting cuts and scrapes upon the wild underbrush populating the shore-line.  Concerns over the minor injuries arising from these bush forays gave way to the more overarching urgency of returning to the vehicle, which made our movement slightly more wreckless than it had been before.

There was a slight role-reversal, compared to the arduous trip we had previously made up towards the top of Ishpatina Ridge.  Back during our ascent, my energy stores had become depleted for whatever reason, and I would call for frequent breaks, which would have been interminable had not Matt encouraged me to get up and keep on moving.  Along the water-walking route we were currently on, Matt had to hold up one of our packs (specifically the tent bag) above his head in order to ensure that it did not get wet.  It was pretty heavy, and required much extra exertion; consequently, it was he who more often needed a little extra time to rest here and there as we went along.  At this point I ended up being the guy to motivate him (and myself) to arise and continue onward.  It was great that we were each fully capable of helping each other out whenever one of us was slightly lagging. 

Progress was very visible, as we quickly approached, passed, and then left behind the various islands out on Scarecrow Lake.  It took us a mere third of the time it did to go along this lake via the bush.  This fact in itself was a huge morale booster, particuarly when we saw that we were passing our Saturday evening campsite.  In the end, it took us a little over an hour to get from the base of Ishpatina Ridge to the small channel connecting Scarecrow and Woods lakes together.  Keeping in mind that this particular post of mine sought to explain in length the entire ordeal of this portion of the trip on the incoming portion, you can see that there was a very clear distinction in ease of movement.

At Woods Lake, the terrain of the lake-bed changed.  Instead of sandy and gravelly bottoms, larger boulders and jumbled rocks now lined the shores, which made things a lot more dangerous for our ankles.  We pushed for a short time through the woods, hoping that the shoreline conditions would improve so we could keep walking through the water, but to no avail.  In the interests of avoiding both a show-stopping sprain, and additional scratches on our legs, we changed back into our long pants, and prepared to carry on through the bush; it was okay, since we were quite experienced with this.  We also know we would likely not have to be in the woods too long.

However, before we got ready to continue, we noticed that we had lost several things along the way.  I won the prize for size, as my sleeping bag was gone, having likely fallen off without our noticing (you can actually see it strapped to my knapsack in the photograph I linked to above; the last known surviving image which shows it), along with my small aerosol can of bear-spray repellant.  Additionally, Matt realized he had lost both his own large bear-spray aerosol can, as well as his bear-bell, which was no longer jingling away from the strap of his ruck sack.  Ishpatina Ridge is a harsh mistress.

Well, we saddled up our bags once again despite these losses (the sleeping bag’s absence made it clear that we would have to push ourselves not to spend an additional night out in the woods), and carried on through the familiar task of pushing through seemingly unyielding bush, southwards along the shore of Woods Lake.  The tricky part was coming, however.  When we came in, all we had to do through the unmarked terrain was go directly east through the forest from where the old ATV trail ended, and we would eventually hit Woods Lake.  This lake would be very difficult to miss, since it is a skinny north-south body of water.  Due to lack of foresight, we did not think to mark where exactly we had come out on Woods Lake originally, so that we would know where to go and start heading directly west from.  The craggy shoreline looked the same wherever we progressed along it.  I knew we would not have to go too far, likely only about a kilometer.  At a certain point, based almost purely on gut instinct and looking out at where we were positioned on Woods Lake, I decided that we should head west into the deep of the wilderness.

Once again, we had to climb over a rocky hill that was in the way.  Once we got away from the water, the bush looked the same wherever one gazed.  Using a small compass we had, and trying to avoid getting turned around by constantly moving around trees (which was actually quite difficult at times), we kept the line straight to the west as much as we could, with myself convinced that we would very shortly find our trail before us.  After more than half an hour of not encountering any evidence of our path, our unspoken worry of being off-course was voiced by Matt; he suggested that we should return back to the lake and then follow its shoreline, since it would eventually hit the gravel path again anyway, albeit along a much longer, more difficult, route.  I confidentally (on the outside, not on the inside) stated that I was certain the swampy path we had originally came in on was a short distance ahead, and recommended that we continue on a mere fifteen minutes more; if we did not find it by then, we would return to Woods Lake and take the alternate course shown on the map.

With frustration mounting at numerous things, including the ever-impeding bushes, the irritating bugs, our waning time, and the possibility that we may have lost our way, we continued west.  Walking along a shoreline was a much different experience in comparison, since the surface of the water would continue to be quite close and apparent.  In this case, we were in an endless sea of trees and rocks and bush, with no geographic landmarks to depend on.  It was simply a matter of winding along our way in the direction of the letter ’W’ on our compass, and praying for the best.

Suddenly, we pushed through the bush onto a fairly straight dirt path in between dense thickets of trees.  We were excited at stumbling upon this, though the trail did not look overly familiar to us.  The strange thing was, even after we followed this trail eventually in both of its directions, it still winded off and disappeared indiscernably into the trees.  It was a very odd little section of trail out here in the middle of nowhere, as the dirt was fairly well compacted over where we stumbled upon it.  We gave up looking for additional leads from this trail, and pushed on further west through the surrounding interminable growth.

The disappointment of finding this red herring of a path was in short order nullified.  Moving on a negligible distance more, we emerged into a wide open swampy area, which Matt delightedly realized, was familiar to him.  Was this the excitement of a man realizing that the actual road home was at hand?  He eagerly led the way onward, and then I myself, no longer skeptical, witnessed the very same light tracks left from whichever ATV vehicle had ended its movement in the marshy muck at some point in the past.  Once again, soakers and aching leg-muscles were unheeded as we tramped on ahead eagerly.  We turned the corner, into the bushes, and there before us was a very reconizable wide dirt pathway. 

Our morale suddenly soared with a vengeance.  There was no doubt now that we were in the clear.  Bush-whacking, shore-walking, steep mountain trails… they were now finally behind us.  We would simply follow this wide gravel-lined route a mere seven more kilometers, and our waiting vehicle parked next to the Sturgeon River would bring us home at long last.  We sat down and happily consumed the last portions of our food.  Matt is usually not too keen on apples, but he was too elated to care.  After a brief rest, we stood up and marched onward on the route home.  Compared to our entire journey that day, we were now getting much more talkative, as our minds had been urgently occupied with whether we would find this trail or not.  Now, we relaxingly chattered away about all manner of things, perambulating with careless abandon down this thin, gravelly strip of road. 

We did not meet a single person for the rest of our expedition as we ranged forth.  Neither did the loss of our arsenal of bear-frightening equipment bring all manner of hungy mammals upon us.  We crossed the river between Little Scarecrow and Hamlow Lakes again, and kept going, growing weary with every passing step, but not caring so much, with the imminence of the completion of this adventure.  We had certainly avoided a lot of walking (about 3.5 kilometers, I estimate) when we had been given a ride by those kids on their quad on the way in, and we were feeling the aches strongly, especially given the amount of physical movement we had done over the previous 52 hours or so.

We still had a decent amount of daylight left, though it was showing the early edges of waning.  We began to take note of rocky larger mountains surrounding us, and shortly, winding between them, saw the road end at the crossing of the wide Sturgeon River, the last major obstacle we had to make before the lengthy drive back home.  We removed our shoes, rolled up our pants legs, and carefully crossed through the icy cold waters.  We each made it across the river without incident.  It was after 6:00pm.

We walked up to the truck we had rented.  The Envoy was without blemish, the keys were safely stowed in my bag where I had left them, and the engine started perfectly.  We were both relieved that none of the internalized fearful scenarios that neither of us dared to voice (about vandalism, a non-functioning battery, a patiently-awaiting group of bears, etc.) came to fruition.  At last, we were on our way back to civilization.  At that point, I believe that we were more happy that we had successfully made it back to our vehicle, than the fact that we managed to get to Ontario’s tallest point.

It still took about four hours for us to arrive in Sudbury.  It was very slow going at times, with all the washed-out sections of road and jutting rocks.  However, there were so many wonderful coincidences.  First of all, it only started raining after we began driving; the overcast skies we had observed all weekend only decided to spit once we were safely inside a car. As well, it seemed to get dark only after we had passed through the most rugged sections of road. 

Now that you know we finished our adventure and arrived at our respective homes without any further unhappy incident, I look forward to shortly concluding this whole epic with an epilogue, to reflect on the whole Ishpatina Ridge ordeal.

Explore posts in the same categories: Ishpatina Ridge, Story of My Life

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 7th, 2006, and is filed under Ishpatina Ridge, Story of My Life. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. I reserve the right to delete inappropriate comments.