The holidays are over and were back! I realized I forgot to continue the Mantario Thru Hike series, so here's the next one!
Date: September 1, 2018
Length: 22.8 km
Elevation: 349 m
Time: 10 hours 50 minutes
Day 2 saw us up bright and early, before most of the others at the Marion Lake camping site. We seemed to hike slow so we were getting up early to make up for it. There was a nice mist on Marion Lake and dew covering pretty much everything. With that in mind we actually bundled up in our rain gear and headed out at about 7 am.
After about 45 minutes into the hike we stopped at an overhead powerline right of way for breakfast. It was just granola bars and a water, but it tasted pretty good and was definitely faster than spending the time back at camp to cook food for a meal. The early morning air and the cool temperatures woke us up and had us full of energy so we were making good time.
After another couple kilometers we came across a low marshy area. We had to wind down the slope on one side then cross an old beaver dam (the dam is in the picture below on the right hand side.. Using beaver dams in a pretty common part of hiking in the white shell. About half way across the beaver dam I looked up and saw a bear running through the marsh parallel to us, near the far end of the hill. It didn't seem interested in us so we kept going, but started making a lot of noise to keep it away. At the top of the hill on the far side of the dam we found a high spot to take a quick 10 minute break and get out of our rain gear. We were also hoping it would give the bear plenty of time to move on away from us.
By lunch time, we have hiked to Moosehead lake, where we stopped for about an hour. Between the bear siting and Moosehead, we say a really tall cairn and stopped at Peggy Lake for a break, where Roslyn took a bunch of pictures of lily pads on the water. The whole day (up till noon at this point) had been pretty wonderful.
When we arrived at Moosehead, there was a south bound "hiker" just leaving. I put hiker in quotes because he was jogging/running the Mantario. He had started at the north end earlier in the morning and had made it to Moosehead, which is about the halfway mark, by noon. His plan was to finish the south bound trip in one day, then take 2 days to go north again. Roslyn, Tyler and I were just happy with the idea of completing the trip one way in 4 days.
After about an hour at lunch, we packed up and headed onward again to Mantario lake. The section between Mossehead Lake and Mantario Lake is pretty hilly, with some of the highest points of the Mantario Trail on it. We finished out the day by 6 pm, but didn't take too many more pictures, we were just lost in the hike! Below is our last picture of the day, its just before the last 50 m into the Mantario lake campsite.
The second day of the hike was pretty awesome, we weren't too sore or tired at the end of the day, and the plan was to do two smaller days next to keep us from becoming too fatigued. Before we went to sleep around 9 there were probably about 40 to 50 people setup around the camping area. It was pretty crowded but everyone fit. There was even a pair of people doing a canoe route that stay on the island out in the lake. We didn't talk to too many people, but everyone was friendly and the atmosphere was great!
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