ShawnD wrote:

I’m in Barrie and I don’t remember a winter like this...

Woo-hoo. April 21st.
 

Local (Toronto) weather radar suggested some squalls moving across (west to east) this evening, roughly north of Huntsville as the crow flies.

Ok, fast forward to like a year later - fall 2023. I have not been for a while so here's a few questions

- I am interested in transportation. Ride share programs? I doubt I can score a driving license any time soon My bad luck!

- has anyone tried park bus dot ca ? I'm thinking maybe I could take the bus one day, and stay at a lodge for one or two nights, and then bus back?
- any comments about motels in the area?
- it's been a while since I've taken a cab in from Huntsville; I assume that type of service is still available
- I will look up what the local BTC is up to. Ditto Craigslist

Thanks for any and all replies.

I did not know that 'official' designated fire locations were prepped. Learn something every day.

Great pics, very atmospheric trip rundown.

Woah. Nice. It's just started to snow in Toronto.

Heh heh... I bought and watched that again recently "Cast Away". I was surprised that I almost completely missed the significance of the female welder at the beginning.

At 67, I probably have more "alone time" than the average person but nothing recent. I probably wouldn't recommend it due to the safety factor; also not to get really creepy but the Park has changed and (I am sure) so have the animals. In my case too many falls, fires, explosions and freeze-ups like when you try to get some water in the morning (it used to be possible to do this) and your pot literally goes CLUNK on the invisible, glass-like sheet of ice that has formed overnight.

There is nothing like having the midnight beavers shift come on duty in the middle of what you thought would be a nice place to camp.

I used to carry some powdered magnesium and birch bark in case of bears and of course in my day there were no cell phones, GPS or "SPOT" devices.

Watching some of these new-fangled trail cams that reveal night-time activity is a good idea. There's lots of video on-line.

I'll repeat that I have a book called Wildlife Trails Across Canada by Hugh M. Halliday. It contains a nice account of hiking and sleeping out under the stars alone in the Smoke Lake area IIRC, in the 1950's. This link contains a small image. Good luck finding a copy... I know I have it but I'm not sure where it is right-now-this-minute. One of these days I'll probably scan a couple of the pages about A.P.
 

I suppose the least they could have done was supply some free beer with their apology... oops, can and bottle ban, I forgot.

After a few days in the woods you quickly forget the outside world.

Does beer come in recyclable Tetra-Paks? I think wine does.

I had a "noise" experience once at Provoking Lake. It was... early 1980's maybe, back when the air force was doing low-level flights in the NWT and possibly Labrador, and the natives were quite unhappy about it. I didn't give it much thought until it happened to me.

It was a cloudy, cold day in early May and the water was choppy. I was just standing on some large rocks next to the water, when all of a sudden there this concentrated (like) rising sound of wind coming, source unknown. The sound volume rose really fast and then built to a crescendo, a roar like nothing I have ever experienced, and it kept increasing. Expecting a tornado or hurricane (or something!) I turned my head thinking mostly about shelter. At that moment a large, twin engined, gray-green camouflaged military aircraft buzzed the lake directly overhead in a roughly NE > SW direction. I was 100% motivated to hit the deck, it was so low! It looked like a vaguely like a Hercules (they make the ground shake too, at the moment of take-off) but it was obviously smaller. I tell you, I wanted to eat dirt except I was standing on large rocks.

I've been buzzed by the RAF Vulcan and I spent 3 weeks at CFB Bagotville when I was a kid - Voodoo interceptors were on 24/7 alert with multiple daily sorties on full afterburner, and the runway was next to the barracks. Whatever it was that I saw in A.P. that day was worse.
 

Apparently this story still had legs as of early summer 2021.