Silver Peak
Sunday, October 5
We were up early the next morning, pre-sunrise, to get ready for the day. Our objective: a climb of Silver Peak, the park's highest mountain. To achieve our goal as a day-outing, we needed to first travel by water from a car-accessible access point to a trailhead on the western shore of Bell Lake, located just east of where the mountainous ridges started. From that trailhead, we would walk a further six kilometres and up about a thousand vertical feet to reach the summit. There are other ways to reach Silver Peak, but all of them are much longer and would require an extremely long day hike, if not multiple days.
One of Killarney's two major outfitters was located on the shores of Bell Lake, and our goal was to rent canoes from them for the day, and use them to paddle to the trailhead. They opened at 8am, and our early morning rise and departure from our George Lake campsite was in service of arriving at the outfitters right when they opened.
courtesy JInnes
Bell Lake Access Road
To get to the Bell Lake access point, one must drive for about 9 kilometres along the Bell Lake road. In our research leading up to our trip, we had read reports of this road as being "VERY rough" and that a high-clearance vehicle was recommended. This sort of thing. There's no street view of this side road nor are there really any photos from along it, so there was no way to directly confirm or dismiss this description. However, I tend to find that the most dramatic route descriptions online tend (not always, but tend) to be from people who are for whatever reason.... coming from a place of inexperience or irrational fear. I suspected in the back of my mind that this road was not going to be that bad. After all, the outfitter at the end of the road was obviously using it to transport huge racks of canoes on trailers back and forth on a daily basis. That alone implied that it wasn't a sketchy high-clearance road.
As we turned onto Bell Lake road and drove a short ways along it, my suspicions were vindicated. It was... a road. a normal gravel road. Perhaps a bit narrow in spots, but generally smooth, with a few potholes and undulations in only a few places. In fact, there were places where it was even paved - a remnant of an earlier time when the whole road was paved. Don't trust everything you read online! A regular passenger car can indeed travel this road.
Parking area Bell Lake
With Bell Lake Road being easy to traverse, we arrived at the Bell Lake access parking lot about 20 minutes before the outfitters' opening time, and we used that to prep our gear and our packs. We were also waiting for the final two members of our journey today - Chris and Gillian Hatko, who had chosen to spend the previous night in a Sudbury Motel. They were also en-route to this same parking lot. And soon enough, there they were. With them were two inflatable packrafts - packrafts that they had made themselves from scratch. They would be using them for the paddling portion of our journey to Silver Peak.
courtesy JInnes
The Hatkos split off and headed to the nearby lakeshore to start pumping up their inflatable packrafts. The rest of us: myself, Nick, Jenn and Rowan - headed over to the nearby outfitters - Killarney Kanoes - in order to initiate our canoe rentals.
Honk for Service
Even though it was 8am, there was no one about. The door to the main building was locked. A smaller building near a dock on the shore had signs on it, which read: "Welcome to Blue Mountain Lodge. For Service, Turn On Lights and Blow Horn. Killarney Kanoes."
Blow horn? What horn? I had a hiking whistle, but surely they didn't mean that. And couldn't we just knock on the door of the building? I did just that. There was no answer.
Peering across the lake, I could see a cluster of buildings. Ah... that must be the Blue Mountain Lodge referenced on the sign. And ... well, maybe that meant that the outfitter staff lived over there. And... ah yes, that must mean they wanted a loud horn, like a car horn, to signal across the water to staff. Nic offered to run back to the parking lot and bring his car over for a flash and a blow.
Service Incoming
HOOOOOONK! The air horn of Nick's EV6 blew loud and clear, echoing off of the trees and cliffs ringing the lake. And then, we listened and looked. And sure enough, seemingly within five seconds, we heard the sound of a motorboat engine. Indeed, a single person in a small metal dingy was now powering across the still water from a dock near the far building, headed directly toward us. Amazing response time!
In a few short moments, the aluminum dinghy powered smoothly up to the dock and a backwards-capped outfitter staff member hopped onto the deck. He quickly sized us up and recommended we rent two of their smallest kevlar canoes. We followed him back up to the larger of the two buildings and waited as he unlocked us and let us in.
Once inside, it was all friendly banter as he drew up the paperwork for us. Being in the off-season of October, we hadn't had to book in advance, and they had plenty of stock from which to rent. From his comments, we quickly learned that our outfiiter was a Canadian Forces veteran. He had a quick, wisecracking-but-friendly sort of demeanor.
Once paid up, we headed back outside, where he and another outfitter (who had arrived while we were inside) set about prepping two canoes and the necessary supporting gear. Out on the lake, the Hatkos had completed inflating their packrafts and were now paddling towards us. Almost ready to head off on our day's adventure to Silver Peak!
Readying our Rentals
By 8:50 a.m. - admittedly a bit later than our planned departure time - we were ready to push off. Nick and I took one canoe, and Jenn and Rowan the other. I had placed all of my sensitive camera gear into water bags and had secured my gopro into the bright floaty orange thing that Gino had purchased for me with bet money on the
Utah packrafting trip where my last gopro had been ripped off my helmet during a run down some rapids and lost to the waters of the Escalante river. Not chancing the loss of another Gopro today, no sir!
Setting off
We pushed off from the dock and glided out onto the waters of Bell Lake. It was nearly perfectly smooth this morning, with nary a breath of wind. It was going to be another warm - even hot - day today. Perfect and unthreatening conditions for our journey.
The Bell Lake access point sits on the southernmost point of Bell Lake. The access trail leading towards Silver Peak started at the end of the long, curving western arm of the lake. That meant all we needed to do was head north around a small headland and then turn west and follow the long western arm to its end. By our reckoning and from route descriptions, it would be a roughly 3 kilometre paddle. Easy Peasy.
Our paddle was most enjoyable. With room-temperature air and no wind, our canoes glided easily through the water. Those of us in canoes were clearly faster than the stubbier, wider packrafts. We could see Chris and Gillian straining and splashing a bit harder than we were.
From the map, it was apparent that at some point, the curving arm of western Bell Lake would afford us a view of Silver Peak, and soon enough, there it was, directly ahead of us - a broad, low shape with clearly visible patches of white near and on its top. The uninitiated may have naively thought this was from an early snowfall. But we knew better - this was not snow; rather, it was the amazing white quartize of the Lorrain formation.
courtesy JInnes
After about forty minutes of paddling (where we were passed by another faster 4-person party all stuffed into a large canoe), the end of the western arm of the lake was visible in the distance. At the end, clearly visible, was a fairly large, sturdy dock. This was pretty deluxe for a backcountry trailhead, but I suppose the popularity of Silver Peak meant having a good landing area was important.
Landing at Access Trailhead
Disembarcation was easy with such a good dock, and soon, we were hauling our gear up into the trees, where another nice amenity awaited us - multiple sets of modern canoe racks. Clearly this route is set up to handle a lot of volume. Fortunately, today the racks were mostly empty, and there was plenty of space for our canoes and gear.
Immediately beyond the racks, a large blue sign indicated the direction and distance to Silver Peak: 5.6km. Beyond the sign, a leaf-strewn trail led off to the west. Time to start the land portion of our Silver Peak quest.
The trail curved here and there but generally maintained a fairly direct heading westward. It was smooth, free of roots and rocks, and offered very easy walking. Being in October in a location fairly far north, we had worried that we may have missed the peak of the fall foliage season. But, as we walked, it seemed pretty much in full force. Although it was clearly not a max-vibrancy, max-saturation sort of fall season, the forest was still filled with all sorts of reds, oranges, yellows and russetts. And even though we were nearly mid-October, there were several occasions where groves of trees were still largely green.
Our wise-cracking outfitter had given us a short spiel on the Silver Peak climb, talking about what to see at the summit and giving us tips on the route in and back. He clearly was speaking a bunch of well-rehearsed lines, the general intent of which was to give advice to the more inexperienced visitors about how not to get lost. He recalled one anecdote about a group who had missed a key turn on the way back from the peak and had ended up in the dark far down a remote backpacking trail, calling in and asking for help.
I knew we were not that sort, and I was completely confident that we weren't going to get lost. However, as we hiked west towards the base of Silver Peak, we passed a number of blue park signs at various junctions and began to realize that the messaging and the distances marked on these signs were often inconsistent or flat-out wrong. For someone new, perhaps without navigation aids, I could see them getting turned around.
Warning to the inexperienced
As mentioned, we passed several junctions as we hiked west. Some were trails to portage access points. There was a junction with the main La Cloche-Silhouette backpacking loop, which led left, in the clockwise direction. We did not want to go that way and maintained our westward course, now briefly on the loop.
Main Loop Junction (clockwise)
After about four kilometres and roughly an hour of easy, smooth hiking, we came to the junction we cared about: the junction with the start of the Silver Peak trail itself. From here the La Cloche-Silhouette trail turned right and continued on its way to the north. The trail to the peak led left.
To this point, the terrain had varied very little in elevation, but that was now about to change; We would now be starting our thousand-foot climb to the top of Silver Peak.
Almost immediately, the trail started to angle uphill. It was still smooth and easy, but soon that changed. The trail in places crossed over sections of loose, angular rocks. The trail made a large, lazy hairpin to the east and began a traversing rise up a low-angled maple-forested slope. It then zig-zagged back and forth a couple more times before levelling out and following along the base of a dark, high cliff. I could see from my GPS map that the trail was not heading directly for the summit, but rather angling up to the southeast, following the general grain of the terrain.
The trail got rockier as it ascended, and often we crossed over stretches of rounded boulders where rock-to-rock hopping was the best mode of travel. In these parts, the trail felt very Adirondack-like. In other places we encountered smooth bits of exposed bedrock which were - with today's warm and humid air - often a little damp. These sections turned out to be very slick and we had to take care to choose lines with irregularities and protuberences, lest we completely wipe out.
With the fairly steep climbing and with the warmth of this summer-like October day now upon us, we were pretty sweaty at this point. Fortunately, though, the fall season meant no bugs!
We soon entered an open upper forest full of small maple and oak trees, nicely adorned with brilliant orange leaves. I could see the trail was staying on a rising ridge, keeping away from a gully off to our right. Presumably once that gully petered out, we'd make a hard right and begin a final beeline towards the summit area.
courtesy JInnes
Indeed the gully to our right petered out, and indeed the trail made a hairpin turn and headed directly for the summit, now climbing a little more steeply.
And then, at about forty minutes after beginning our ascent, we caught a glimpse of white off to our right, and open air and a distant horizon beyond. A lookout! The first real lookout, in fact.
We climbed a bit higher and emerged onto a fantastically smooth dome of bedrock, brilliantly white. Our group-of-four canoe rivals were just finishing up their break at this point, and graciously vacated it so that we could have our own glorious lookout break.
First Quartzite Sighting
Because Silver Peak is positioned at the eastern end of the La Cloche range and our viewpoint was to the north, we didn't see other mountains or mountainous terrain from here: instead, the mountain dropped away steeply to the beginning of flat wilderness that stretched away to north until the terrain faded into the warm haze. In the near distance, many lakes could be seen, the largest of which was David Lake - one of the park's largest inland bodies of water and home to many backcountry campsites. Everywhere was a patchwork of fall colors. It was an amazing, wonderful view.
We got out our hiking snacks and lounged about on the warm, smooth rock, trying to dry ourselves out a bit from the sweaty climb.
After everyone was well-satiated and mostly dried out, we got up and continued our journey to the summit. Immediately above the lookout we came to a sign essentially stating "This is the end of the Silver Peak Trail. To return to your vehicle please return the same way you came in". Clearly this wasn't yet the summit (I could see higher ground both to the left and right) but it felt like they were implying that you should stop here.
We continued on, choosing the higher of the two highpoints we could see ahead of us. A small but followable path led through dwarf oak to a set of scrambly bits, which we ascended fairly easily (although again, care was needed to avoid stepping on any smooth bedrock that was not completely dry). And, minutes later, a crest of smooth white quartzite was visible ahead. Four little trapezoids of concrete circled this little crest - the remnants of what was once the Silver Peak Fire Tower.
This was it - the summit of Silver Peak, and the highpoint of Killarney Provincial Park!
Although the elevation was only 1750 feet (533metres) above sea level, the view was still commanding, in all directions. We could now see west, and the long undulating ridge of the Blue Ridge of the southern La Cloche range stretched off into the distance. Barely, barely visible through the haze to the west was the inner sea that is Lake Huron. On a day with more clarity, it would be a prominent blue line separating the surface of the earth from the sky.
View down Blue Ridge
We took a good long break here - essentially our lunch break. Lying about on the warm, smooth rock, a light warm breeze would easily lull you into a nap, if you let it. I think a few of us may have actually succumbed. Other hiker traffic was blessedly light today, and for our time there, we had the peak to ourselves.
We lounged on the summit for a good half hour, maybe forty minutes. It was only the promise of a hand-built gourmet pizza supper that got us moving, intent on returning to camp at a reasonable hour so that Chris could cook up said gourmet supper in daylight.
Before heading down, we wanted to check out one final spot - the open terrain on the top of the Eastern subsummit, which we could see maybe 75 metres away from us, separated by a shallow depression filled with small oak trees. I got the rest of the group to head over without me, directing them to climb the open rib of quartzite so I could remain on the main summit and get some nice zoomed-in hiker-against-landscape shots.
After the zoom shots, I headed over to check out the east subsummit myself, and to set up and take a group selfie.
