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My traveling companion and I are a couple of Ohioans who will be visiting the park for the first time this coming weekend. We're planning on a frontcountry trip with short hikes along several interpretive trails near the west gate of the park and, as a couple of tree gazers, I'm wondering if there are any notable, individual trees we may visit. I have been studying a copy of Ontario's Old-Growth Forests and there are some promising prospects for easily accessible groves, but it would be great to also visit a witness tree, or otherwise unique individual tree. Many thanks!
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There are so many great trees and groves in Algonquin, but a trail that comes to mind is Bat Lake. There's an Eastern Hemlock grove with some beautiful trees, but also scattered throughout the east section of the trail are many spectacular spruce, birch, pine, ash and others. Here's a video showing some of them, but I left out most of the pictures and video footage of the trees because it's hard to do them justice.
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Hemlock grove at the Bat lake trail, about 30 km from the west gate... photo from Bob and Diana McElroy's website... not sure if they are old growth but hemlock stands can take a long time to become established, maybe over a thousand years, with forest succession going from disturbance like fire at year zero, colonizing poplar and birch lasting 50 years, maybe pine and oak lasting one or two hundred, sugar maple and beech for several hundred more and shade-tolerant hemlocks becoming established very slowly under the maples over several hundred again.
Closer to the west gate is the Hardwood lookout trail which includes a side trail to an uncommon stand of red spruce... if you've wanted to distinguish between red and white spruce, this is the place to do it. This trail is about 14 km from the west gate.
The Big Pines trail, about 40 km from the west gate has some of the iconic large white pines the park is known for, including a huge one with a boardwalk built around it, about 120' tall and 4' in diameter. Also a unique pine, also large, with extensive roots exposed growing out of and down the side of a small cliff. IIRC, the pines were established after a fire in 1790, making them old growth but not the oldest in the park (older doesn't necessarily mean larger).
Last edited by frozentripper (3/22/2016 7:56 pm)
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Thank you for creating and sharing this video, My Self Reliance! I could just about smell the snow and the hemlocks while watching. Bat Lake Trail is definitely on our itinerary and, looking at the forecast, it appears the conditions may be similar to those you experienced in this trip.
Thanks, frozentripper, for passing along the wonderfully detailed information on Bob & Diana McElroy's site. Both the Hardwood Lookout and Big Pines trails are convenient to our route. Thanks too for the tip about the red spruce side trail. These are rare in my region and it will be exciting to see a grove. White pines aren't so rare, but we're looking forward to seeing older growth stands.
I'm very grateful for the help and am wishing this first visit to such an extraordinary place wasn't such a short one.
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i might be little late with this idea,, mew lake campground camp sites 67 and 70 on the corner near the beach has a very large white pine. i think it took three of us linking hands to hug that tree.
also swan lake access road way,,(all up hill) very large and spooky grove of black locust trees, hauntingly beautiful with nice long grass growing all around ,, pod bearing tree. one of my favs!
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I always meant to walk that road... the reason being that there were old growth white pine in the Swan lake area 300-400+ years. Also old yellow birch maybe over 300?... fuzzy memory from talking with an Algonquin forester years ago. Thanks for the reminder!
PS... rare to find black locust so far north.
Last edited by frozentripper (3/28/2016 9:29 am)
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That's the site of the old Forest Research facility. Maybe some experimental plantings were made to see how they'd do that far north?
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