Date: June 30, 2018
Length: 20.4 km
Elevation: 227 m
Time: 10 hours 59 minutes
Mantario Trail, Day 1
Roslyn, Tyler, and I were pretty excited to get out to do a trial run on the Mantario. After our aborted attempt on May long weekend we had been looking forward to it for an extra five weeks. We were packed up and ready to go the Friday night, picked up Tyler around 6:30 am and were on the trail at 9 am.
Getting ready in the parking lot
Right at the trailhead
View of the burn parking lot
Just up the hill behind the parking lot
Just up the hill behind the parking lot
At the turn off onto the trail proper
The evidence of the fire on May long weekend was everywhere at the start of the trail, and made the trail look very different from last September. The burn area only extended about a 500 to 700 meters along the trail though, so we were quickly through it and hiking in the woods again.
View from a point about 3 km into the trail
Roslyn has a strong affinity to sparkly rocks
Blue berries starting to ripen
One of the many wild flowers on the trail
One of the many wild flowers on the trail
One of the many wild flowers on the trail
The trail had plenty of small wonders to look at. From wild flowers, to special rock cut out, to views going far off into the distance. We also saw plenty of wild life on day one, including a bear and a handsome white-tailed buck.
We stopped for lunch at "the tower", which is the base of an old fire watch tower. A few other people trickled through while we ate, but there weren't many people around us for most of the day. After lunch we headed towards our next stopping point, Caribou Lake East campground. One point on the trip there deserves special mention for two reasons. The first is that it is beautiful. The second reason is that it is the biggest tease of the trail.
At the end of Caribou Lake a small creek flows out of it. The trail leads around the lake and the crosses the creek before continuing onward. At the point where it descends you can see the tents in the campground (top picture of the series below, in the top left corner). You can actually talk to people too if you yell. The teasing part of this is that to skirt the edge of the lake that's out of view from here takes an additional 40 minutes of hiking!
View of the lake from the top before crossing the stream
View of the crossing from the top before crossing the stream
View upstream from the crossing
View downstream from the crossing
Once we arrived at Caribou Lake, we stopped for about an hour to rest and soak our feet in the water. According to our map we had ~5 km left and it was only about 2:45 pm when we left the campsite, so we figured it would be an easy afternoon. Unfortunately, north of Caribou Lake the trail becomes hard to walk through as regrowth from forest fires covers it and its a constant bushwacking experience, which alternates with crossing bogs for about 2 km. Tyler ended up knee deep in a bog so we had to stop for an hour to let his boot dry out some.
We also found out that Marion Lake was actually 7 km past Caribou Lake and not 5 km. That realization happened when the GPS told us we had walked 18 km for the day. The though having to continue on another 2 km drained us at this point (it was about 6:30 pm, we were a bit grumpy from the bushwacking and expected to be at camp already). We ended up getting to camp around 8 pm.
Despite some of the grumpiness, one of the more interesting things we noticed during the day was all the different stages of a forest fire. through out he day we progressed through fresh burn, to low regrowth, a furn forest, 6-8 foot tall regrowth, forest that was 20 years old and cluttered, and some sections of forest that were easily 50+ years old and open with a view.
Low regrowth
Fern Forest
In Roslyn's words:
Things do not always go as planned on trail, but isn’t part of the fun on a hike improvising, getting creative with what you have, or proving you can overcome an unforeseen obstacle? We had a small taste of this on our first day of our 3 day Mantario trip, and looking back at this first day, even as soon as the second day of the hike, really put into perspective how your attitude can determine a day. The first section of our hike started as expected, because we knew what to expect, we had done it before, no big deal. The change of landscape after the wildfires was an interesting change and made keeping to the trail a bit of a challenge, but our trip to the old tower base, our lunch spot, was quite successful. The hike to the caribou campsite was exciting and new with a challenging rock scramble, amazing views, and a rewarding foot soak in the lake. Now thinking we only had ~5 Km to the next site, we were not at all worried about getting there at a decent time so off we went at 2:45. After encountering seemingly endless heavy undergrowth, Tyler plunging knee deep into a bog, and having walked another 4 hours, we were very miserable. I was in the mindset of “one step at a time, focus on just getting to camp” and we finally strolled into the Marion Lake campsite at 8pm, miserable, grumpy, and tired. What we realised the next day had us shaking our heads, but that will have to wait till next time.
All in all, the section of the Mantario from the south trail head to Marion Lake was pretty great. The next posts in the series will go into more detail about the sections of it as we make our way back to the trail head. I will make a note here though that the trail is well kept and easy to follow up until Caribou lake. Between Caribou lake and Marion lake we got lost twice because the markers are misleading and there is a significant amount of bushwacking and having to walk through bogs, so make sure you are prepared for it!
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