Related Post: Paddling From Flindt Landing To Collins –  Info, Maps  and Pix

A Rough Sketch  of The Route in Red

 

The Trip Takes On a Serious Tone:

Unlike the previous year, we did not get tent-bound because of wind or rain. All in all, the weather gods were very kind to us. In fact, on more than one occasion we hoped for a massive rainfall to drench Wabakimi but good!  And why?  Perhaps you will recall that the summer of 2011 in Ontario was the summer of bushfires- at least in the region that we were headed to.  The Red Lake area to the NW of Wabakimi Park seemed especially hard-hit.

Somehow the park itself was exempt from the fires that were springing up – well, at least until a few days before we left.  That is when we noticed a new fire right near Burntrock Lake, ironically the halfway point of our original route. It even had a name – Thunder Bay 50.  (We had planned to paddle up the Palisade River to Burntrock Lake, take a look at the lake, and then paddle back down the Palisade to Whitewater Lake via the Grayson River and Arril Lake.)  What to do?  Wabakimi – yes or no?

Note: the Global Forest Change website now covers up to the 2022 fire season. Zoom in or out for more views of Wabakimi Park and its surroundings. The 2011 fires appear in orange.

Phone calls to the park warden John Thomson and to the Ministry of Natural Resources officials up in Thunder Bay convinced us that our trip was still a go and that we weren’t mad for persisting in the face of a danger that everyone but us could see clearly.   However, the park warden wishing us a great trip was not carrying a lot of weight with our significant others.

So I turned to the collected wisdom of the paddlers at the Canadian Canoe Routes forum. It was littleredcanoe’s take on things that kind of reassured me that we were not heading for an adventure we did not want.  You can read the thread here–

Promises of extreme caution on our part and the addition of a Spot Connect so that our progress and whereabouts could be monitored were what we left as we headed to the train station with our gear. Ideally, we should have added a satellite phone but it was not possible to come up with one in the 24 hours we had.  We did promise to stop at the various lodges and camps along the way on the assumption that the folks there would have sat phones and the latest info about the fire situation.

See the end of this post for more info and a map showing the extent of the 2011 fires in Wabakimi country.

The Wabakimi Fires of 2011:

For the first three days – the time it took us to get from Flindt Landing to Lake Wabakimi – we did not see or smell any evidence of the fires that the media down south made sound as if they were gobbling up square miles of bush each hour.

Our luck would change as we paddled across Kenoji Lake and started up the Palisade River.

The day before as we entered River Bay from Wabakimi Lake we met an MNR (Ministry of Natural Resources) ranger whose floatplane we approached while he was checking the fishing licences of some other boaters.  He suggested that given the fire situation the Ogoki River into Whitewater might be the best option for us.

When we got to Kenoki Lake, we decided to paddle up the mouth of the Palisade River a bit.  As we went up we passed a campsite that a couple of canoe trippers from Toronto were just leaving.   They had just come back down the Palisade the night before due to the fire, named Thunder Bay 50.  It was obviously alive and burning and getting bigger.  We decided to paddle up the river to see the dramatic rock face along a stretch of the Palisade which some had compared to a canyon; we’d also paddle to the point on the Palisade where the turn-off to Slim Lake was and see what was going on.

We camped that night at the campsite just vacated by the two paddlers from Toronto we had spoken to earlier.  Looking down on the rock by our cookstoves I noticed the metal marker pictured below.  We were definitely in the presence of a bit of history!

But it was the smoke from Thunder Bay 50 that was most on our minds.

We had a couple of options open to us-

• 1. we could go back down to Lake Kenoji and paddle east to Whitewater Lake;
• 2. we could paddle back up the Palisade River, turn east on to Slim Lake, and find a campsite on Arril Lake after paddling the first bit of the Grayson River.

Given that the smoke had died down the previous evening, we went with option #2.  The fact that we had already paddled the route from option #1 the previous summer undoubtedly factored in.  We got up at 6:00 to a golden sky with the intent of putting some distance between us and Fire Thunder Bay 50 before mid-morning.  By 3:00 we’d be at Arril Lake and all would be good.

Paddling through Slim Lake and doing a couple of portages,  we were soon in Scrag Lake.

And then came the Grayson River.  Given the lack of water, it would prove to be a bit of work.

That is when we spotted our first smouldering fire – a small one just off on the west side of the river.

Some tough slogging down the Grayson itself or on some semblance of what we took to be a portage trail and we were at Arril Lake by 3:00.  The tent went up quickly and we about to throw the sleeping stuff inside when my brother said something like – “Holy moly- would you look at that!”

As we watched in amazement at the size and ferocity of the smoky spectacle in front of us, we were thinking only one thing – get out of there quick!   This meant crossing Arril Lake and getting into Grayson Lake to the east.  We figured we’d paddle until we got to Whitewater Lake and had put fifteen kilometres between us and the fire.  It was now 3:25 p.m. Here is what motivated us for the next while-

After maybe forty-five minutes of sitting on the beach and taking in the incredible scene, we left Arril Lake and headed towards the much bigger Grayson Lake. The winds were still quite strong and were whipping up the fire but it was great to put some distance from it.

An hour and a half later and we were entering the main channel of Lake Grayson. Now all we had to do was paddle down the southern channel and we’d feel a lot better.

Two things happened in the next 45 minutes:

• first, there was one hell of a downpour that went on for at least 35 minutes. It was such a relief to see that water come down and drenching the boreal forest that was being eaten up by Thunder Bay 50.
• Second, our chat with the Parks Canada official flying with the helicopter crew taking care of the lodge also filled us in on what the Parks people thought about the fire.

Naïve that we were, it was a bit of a shock to hear that they were just going to let the fire burn itself out.  He told us that this corner of the park actually needed a good fire to get rid of all the deadwood that had been accumulating for years.  And there we had been, looking into the sky for the water bombers to fly by and put an end to the fires!  We gave the Parks Canada guy our personal info and were reassured to hear that we were headed in the right (i.e. south) direction. The sky was now filled with the smoke of the doused fires.

It was like a fog had settled down on the area but it did make for some dramatic photos.

The epic day was almost done.  We had started at about 6:45 from the bottom of the Palisade River and now we were leaving Grayson Lake for the last 7-km. stretch of the Grayson River before you hit Whitewater Lake. We hit the portage trail and walked through this-

It felt like we were in a scene from the Lord of the Rings movies – there was something eerie about being there.  It was also getting late and we had been on the move for almost fourteen hours.  One more impossible-to-find portage trail and we headed for the tent site indicated on the Wabakimi Project map.  We were so beat that we didn’t even bother with supper that night.

The next morning we got up later than usual and had a leisurely breakfast while all of our wet gear was spread out in the sun.  We were feeling better now that we had turned the corner on Thunder Bay 50 and were heading into territory we had paddled the year before.

The goal for the day was a modest one – we planned to tent on one of the small islands just to the west of Porter Island as you leave the Grayson River and enter Whitewater Lake.  A look back north confirmed that the fire was still smouldering but we were heading in the right direction.

We found a nice tucked-away-from-the-wind campsite on the east side of a small island.

The next morning we paddled past Porter Island and down the channel on the west side of Grange Island that leads right to the Ogoki Lodge.  Then it was down into Secret Lake and back east into Whitewater Lake again. We were heading over to Best Island to see the Beckwith cabins.  We had been close the year before but weather conditions and our ignorance of the cabins’ exact location resulted in our missing them. Not this time!  We spent over an hour walking around the grounds, feeling like pilgrims visiting a shrine.

(See the following post for more pix and information:

Ogoki Lodge and the Beckwith Cabins

Also on our minds, however, was something troubling that we had noticed in the bush about five kilometres west of  Best Island- another fire! More smoke!  (We would later learn that it was given the name Thunder Bay 57.)

We ended up paddling to the south end of Best Island, lured by the great stretch of beach and the fact that there was a Mattice Lake Outfitters’ Lodge just across the water from where we would tent.  Given the concentration of property in this corner of Whitewater Lake, we figured it was a safe place to be.

The sand flies, however, would make the half-day we spent here our #1 worst campsite in thirty years. It took over this ranking from the previous #1, our tent spot at the start of the portage trail going from the Missinaibi River to Brunswick Lake.  We wore our rain gear to protect most of our bodies; my cheeks were numb for the next day thanks to all the bites!

The air was thick with smoke and ash from the fire was falling onto our tent.  Seeing a helicopter land at the outfitters’  lodge across the water, we went over and chatted with the crew foreman about the situation.  They were there to set up the hoses to create a water sprinkler perimeter and get the water pump motors running.  He said we should have no problem paddling south into Lonebreast Bay the next morning.

We got up at 5:00 the next morning and were into McKinley Bay by 6 a.m., intent on paddling away from the new fire and into Lonebreast Bay to the south by 11:00.

We had a later-than-usual breakfast on a flat rock in the middle of one of the lakes leading to Lonebreast Bay from Whitewater Lake; then it was time for a portage.  Just as we got to the end it started to rain – not the torrential downpour we had seen on Grayson Lake but still a nice rainfall which was sure to cool down the bush around us.

The rest of our trip – the next six days – would be free of the kind of drama that we had paddled into when we went up the Palisade River towards Burntrock Lake.  While there were times when we could smell smoke in the air, we never did see what we had seen during the four-day stretch from the Palisade to Whitewater.

If you want a day-by-day account of the trip, complete with detailed maps and more pix, take a peek at  2011 Wabakimi Itinerary and Pictures. Among other things, you’ll find out what we ended up doing with the 15+ liters of blueberries that we picked during the last two days!

Some Ontario WildFire Stats

To put some historical perspective on the Ontario forest fire situation of 2011, check out these stats.  The 2011 fire season really stands out!

                        Note:  100 hectares = 1 square kilometer or about .4 sq. mile

The map below very graphically illustrates the areas affected by fire over the past decade or so – with the red areas being the most recent (i.e. 2011 or 2012). Clearly visible are Thunder Bay 50 and 57 as well as a smaller fire zone just east of the top of Smoothrock Lake whose smoke we smelled the night we camped on an island there.

See here for the website where I got the image and zoom in to northwestern Ontario –

http://earthenginepartners.appspot.com/science-2013-global-forest

The Ontario Government’s Ministry of Natural Resources has a fire map online which shows the current fire situation in the province.  You can access it here.

If you want to see more specific info on rapids, portages, and campsites of our two-week ramble around Wabakimi Park, check out the following posts:

Wabakimi Canoe Trip: From Flindt Landing to Collins Via The Flindt, Ogoki, Palisade, Grayson, and Boiling Sand Rivers- Logistics, Maps, Related Info

Wabakimi Canoe Trip: Flindt Landing To Collins – Days 1 and 2 – The Flindt River

Wabakimi Canoe Trip: Flindt Landing To Collins – Days 3 and 4 – The Flindt and Ogoki Rivers

Wabakimi Canoe Trip: Flindt Landing To Collins – Days 5 and 6 – The Ogoki, Palisade and Grayson Rivers

Wabakimi Canoe Trip: Flindt Landing To Collins – Days 7 and 8 – The Grayson River and Whitewater Lake

Wabakimi Canoe Trip: Flindt Landing To Collins – Days 9 and 10 – From Whitewater Lake to McKinley Lake to Smoothrock Lake (Lonebreast Bay)

Wabakimi Canoe Trip: Flindt Landing To Collins – Days 11 to 15 – From Smoothrock L. to the Boiling Sand River to Tamarack L. to Collins L.