Length: 19 km
Elevation: 221 m
Time: 8 hours 6 minutes
Map of Day 1
I've already covered this section of trail from the South Trail Head to Marion lake, but its definitely worth an update given that we knew what to expect and made far better time. The weather helped with this a lot as it was much cooler than during the July Long trip. I would recommend waiting to do this hike until September Long weekend if you can, but it entirely depends on the year.
This section of trail is getting very familiar to us, which is a good part of our improved time. The trail conditions were also great, with very little water and not a lot of over growth. A volunteer group must have gone through the week before because all the dead fall was cut away and there were fresh piles of saw dust every where. I just want to give a huge thanks to all the Trail Angels our there helping maintain everything in the park, without them our trips wouldn't be possible.
The three of us at the start of the trail
Some beautiful leaves
Us having lunch at the tower
Purple flower
Field of some kind of pink plant
Lots of blueberries along the trail
Ferns along the trail
One of the major differences for us this time was getting into Marion Lake campsite early in the day. We actually arrived around 3:15 pm so we had a nice relaxing evening. This was good because I managed to step on a hornets next about 150 m from the camping area. I managed to sprint the entire way to the camp site, and luckily Tyler and Roslyn didn't get stung. After counting, I ended up with about 10 sting marks on my right calf.
The rest of the evening was spent relaxing and talking to some people around camp. Each new group was announced by their screams as they too passed the hornets nest. Out of the 7 to 8 groups that showed up, only one got through with no stings.
Beautiful sky at Marion Lake
A great sunset after a great day
By bed time, about 20 to 25 people were happily setup around the campsite, with everyone except us planning to do a 3 day hike. We knew our limits though and planned to do a 4 day hike, with the first two days being 20ish kilometers and the last two being 10ish each. We figured it would be a much more enjoyable pace.
All in all, the first day was nice, easy going and a perfect start to our goal of completing the Mantario.
We finally did it! We finally got our throughike of the Mantario Trail in the Whiteshell Provincial Park. Yay!
Preparing for a throughike has definitely gotten easier since our first one. We still print out our list and check the boxes but there is less “am I forgetting something?”. For this trip we decided to spend the night before (Thursday night) at Keystone resort, only 20 min from the trailhead. This made it easy to get trekking by 7am. I would definitely recommend this if you wanna get on the trail nice and early.
The first section of trail has become familiar, yet has stayed anything but boring. It is always a new challenge of improving your pace, or picking out something that has changed since last time. We made great improvements on our pace this round and made it to camp by 4pm. As you have probably heard from Connor’s side of the story, there was a very unfortunately placed hornet nest (right on the trail before camp) whose inhabitants were no fans of Connor. Lets just say we ran very fast to the camp.
Marion Lake campsite is by far my favorite by far (spoiler alert). The water is crystal clear and I was able to go for a little swim. Next time I will definitely bring a small pair of swimming goggles to look around. With lots of pitch sites, two picnic tables and a privy, you really can't go wrong.
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