Featured Park- Frontenac
The Stepping Stone
For the timid adventurer, Frontenac Provincial Park provides the
perfect place to try wilderness camping.
By Bob Harvey
Frontenac Provincial Park is an ideal location for beginning canoe
trippers to learn wilderness skills.
It is almost impossible to get lost in Frontenac because the park
is deceptively small and the canoe routes and the 160 kilometres
of hiking trails are well-marked.
"It is a nice stepping stone," say the park's assistant
superintendent Bert Korporaal.
"Those people who are not really sure whether they want to
take the step up from car camping to wilderness camping can rent
a canoe and some equipment for a weekend, and try it out. If they
can canoe and portage here without too much difficulty, they should
be able to do it in the further reaches of northern Ontario."
The park, north of Kingston, seems larger than it is because it
is possible to spend days hiking and paddling the many canoe routes
that weave through easy portages and 22 large and small lakes. Yet
Frontenac is just a speck of a park compared to Algonquin. It extends
about nine kilometres from north to south, and less than eight kilometres
from east to west. It took me just a dawdling five hours to paddle
and portage back from the southeast corner of the park to the trail
centre at the opposite corner.
My first trip to Frontenac six years ago was a five-day family trip
that turned out to be overly ambitious for children as young as
five. Five of us took just one canoe, and took turns walking and
paddling to the four of the park's 13 campsites, including a ledge
overlooking Big Clear Lake and a sandy beach at Birch Lake.
A week ago, I returned for what became a truly Zen-like experience:
my first solo canoe trip, three days along in the wilderness of
Frontenac. On my second night, I probably had the entire park to
myself.
Because I was travelling so quietly and observing instead of talking
to companions, I felt one with nature in a way I have seldom experienced.
I took time to examine the wild irises growing along the banks of
the lakes, paddled close enough to look into the flickering eyes
of a nesting loon, and managed to walk within a few metres to two
deer and surprise them feeding along a hiking trail at dusk. Not
to mention being lulled to sleep by the unmistakable call of a whip-poor-will,
and hearing a wolf's howl echo across the lake.
I began to see the point of a vision quest alone in the wilderness.
Few of us have the opportunity for such thinking space, or the chance
to test ourselves by travelling alone through the bush, as so many
trappers and others did in the past. It strengthens the spirit,
just as carrying that 33-kilogram canoe strengthens the body.
The one drawback of travelling in Frontenac in that you must either
take bottled water, boil the lake water for 10 minutes or filter
it to eliminate giardia, the nasty parasite that causes the diarrhea
sometimes called "beaver fever." The filter pumps most
canoe trippers use range in price from $55 to about $160, and differ
mainly in how fast they pump, and how many litres they can pump
before the filters have to be changed.
Last year, more than 28,000 people enjoyed Frontenac Park, including
the many who participated in the year-round seminars on canoeing,
winter camping and other wilderness skills. The park was the first
in the province, 18 years ago, to offer wilderness seminars.
The park sits on the Frontenac Axis, the southernmost projection
of the Canadian Shield, where the rocks, cliffs and pine tress of
the Shield overlap with marshes and mature stands of maple, birch
and beech trees. The wildlife is also varied. Deer, wolves and bear
co-habit with species like the black rat snake that are normally
associated with southern Canada.
The Ontario Provincial Police search and rescue team uses the park
as a training facility because it offers such varied terrain.
And every year a few campers do get lost because they neglect to
take maps, and ignore the signs or try to take shortcuts. They don't
stay lost for long, however, because the park is so small that searchers
can find them easily.
How to get there
What may look on the road map to be the shortest route to Frontenac
Park is long, dusty and confusing. Here are two easy routes that
will you from Ottawa to the park in about two hours:
? Highway 7 west to Carleton Place, left on Highway 15 to Crosby.
Turn right on to Highway 42 then left on County Road 10 (Perth Road
at Westport). Go south to County Road 5, turn right through the
village of Sydenham, right at the high school, right a County Road
19 (Bedford Road), then left on Salmon Lake Road to the park office.
? Highway 7 west to Sharbot Lake, left on Highway 38, left at Verona
on Desert Lake Road east to county Road 19 (Bedford Road), left
on Salmon Lake Road.
This article first appeared in The Ottawa Citizen on Friday,
June 29, 2001. It is reprinted with permission of The Ottawa
Citizen.
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