On July 16, my father and I scouted an alternate canoe route to Algonquin Provincial Park, the jewel in the crown of Central Ontario's wilderness. The Hollow River-Dividing Lake access point lies close to the province's popular cottage country, along the northeast corner of Haliburton County. However, the route leads into the southern leg of the park, remote from popular launch sites like Canoe Lake, and full of long and difficult portages. But because of its proximity to my own cottage, I've always wanted to explore the area. As a further point of interest, one of the trails penetrates a stand of centuries-old white pine (Pinus strobus), a rare relic of the magnificent forests which once covered most of Southern Ontario. Mature white pines are common throughout the region, but most have grown up in the aftermath of heavy logging during the past two centuries. To my knowledge I have never seen such an ancient pine as those in Dividing Lake Nature Reserve and a few other remote parts of Algonquin Park.
Unfortunately, on this excursion we were unable to penetrate far enough to see the pines. Upon setting out, our main objective was to find and hike the most challenging portage, and decide whether we might complete the journey with a canoe in the future. The path in question is 2,745 meters long (1.7 miles) and ascends more than 120 meters (394 ft), most of the ascent in the last half, perhaps as steep a climb as can be found anywhere in this region.
Granite cliffsTo reach it, we began by driving 10 minutes from our cottage on Lake Fletcher and launching our canoe, then paddling through three scenic lakes: Livingstone, Bear and Kimball. I've passed through the first two before; they have many cottages along their shores and have considerable boat traffic, but feature the splendid pink granite cliffs so typical of this part of the Canadian Shield. Dad and I spent a few minutes perusing the one on Livingstone Lake in awe. The bare rock showed contorted, colourful intrusions which have lain embedded there since Precambrian times. Across the scarred surface cling drifts of goldenrod and other wildflowers, but also oak saplings, and mature junipers and Eastern white cedars. These last are ephemeral, sprouting, growing up and dying in the flicker of an instant by comparison with the bedrock, and yet they are ancient by our standards. Trees of the same species are known to have lived well over 1,000 years on the face of the Niagara Escarpment. I know of no research to determine the age of these more northerly ones.
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