A WORTHWHILE TREK
A new trail along the shores of Lake Superior in Pukaskwa National Park is tough, but rewarding,
PUKASKWA NATIONAL PARK, ONT.— The landing craft bounces over emerald water, jet-pumps humming, waves hitting a shore of jagged granite cloaked in boreal forest, waves pouring into wild beaches littered with driftwood. Then I look out at the inland sea that fills our horizon and ask the captain what Lake Superior is capable of.
“Well, I’ve taken some four-metre waves,” Brian Gionet says from the helm. I see that all the windows and doors of the nine-metre boat can be sealed. “It gets a little sporting.” Gionet puts us in, packs and all, at Playter Harbour to begin a three-day hike on the Mdaabii Miikna Trail, a new 24-kilometre loop that forms part of the epic 60-kilometre Coastal Hiking Trail in Pukaskwa National Park, an 1,878-square-kilometre swath of wilderness that sprawls from the northeastern shore of Lake Superior.
“This is the largest undeveloped coastline in the Great Lakes region,” our Parks Canada guide, Lyn Elliott, says. “There’s something about Lake Superior and Pukaskwa that will get under your skin.”
We adjust our packs and take to the freshly cut trail with Elliott in the lead, through a rocky forest carpeted thick in moss, birches bright against the pines. We scramble up and down little slopes and the only sounds are waves, wind, birds, the scrape of my trekking poles on the rock underneath the moss, my own breathing.
Elliott tells me that First Nations people still trap and fish on this land.
“I don’t quite see it as wilderness anymore,” Elliott says of Pukaskwa. “I see it as a place where people have been living for thousands of years and they’re now sharing these places with us.”
Before we had set out, we met the park’s cultural interpreter, Joshua LeClair, at its Anishinaabe Camp.
“One of the seven teachings is wisdom and it’s represented by the beaver,” he said from a large canvas teepee. “And wisdom and knowledge is never about acquisition for oneself . . . for Indigenous culture, knowledge is about sharing.”
Abald eagle had circled overhead as we entered the area, and inside LeClair led us through a smudge. Born and raised at the adjacent Ojibways of the Pic River First Nation, LeClair says he feels like he exists in two separate worlds.
“There’s this concept of having your feet in two canoes — one canoe being the Canadian world and the other canoe being the Native world . . . And that’s been my own personal struggle — how to balance both worlds?”
We camp that night on a promontory jutting into the clear, cold lake. The night is wildly bright with stars. There’s the glowing band of the Milky Way, our driftwood fire, the lean silhouettes of balsam firs huddled under the purple night, then late, the silver shine of a waning moon.
The next morning, a languid beaver watches us breakfast and break camp.
“Today might be the longest three kilometres of your life,” Elliott warns. “This is not a beginner’s backpacking route.”
We’re soon climbing to heights of exposed igneous bedrock, the Canadian Shield, forged nearly four billion years ago; the remnants of mountains now scarred by glaciers and sparkling with quartz intrusions, its surface a kaleidoscope of lichens.
When those glaciers receded some 10,000 years ago, shaping this land, filling the inland sea, bringing its first people and animals like the caribou, Pukaskwa was tundra before the forest took root. Today, arctic plants like the tiny encrusted saxifrage still cling to its rocks.
We step over fissures that run into deep unknown darkness. Gnarled jack pines twist from the stone. Elliott leads us down again and then there’s a collapsed cavern of boulders on the trail.
“We call it tall man’s misery,” she says, looking up at me, “and short woman’s glory.”
After I squeeze myself through and we’re hiking again, I ask how much time it’ll take to reach camp. Elliott grins. “Three hours.”
We descend the rock face into forest, then skip between little coves choked with sun-bleached logs lost by faraway loggers. We balance across the wood, dip back into the forest and soon emerge at a crescent beach overlooking the rugged islets of Picture Rock Harbour. “Home sweet home,” Elliott says. “Wow,” I say. “We made it in only two hours.” Elliott laughs. “I lied about the time,” she says. “It’s a guiding trick to keep you from running out of steam.” “Then keep lying to me.” That night as we sit around the campfire, the Northern Lights faintly illuminate the horizon, as if there were a city glowing across hundreds of kilometres of water.
The next morning, the Mdaabii Miikna Trail reconnects with the Coastal Hiking Trail and we’re soon in a mossy forest, scant light barely slipping through. I hear the rumble of thunder.
Elliott had warned me that in Pukaskwa, you should always be pre- pared for anything: sun, wind, rain or cold.
We can hear the Chigamiwinigum Falls well before they’re in sight: a long, fierce cascade cutting a deep gorge along the White River. Spanning its breadth, a 30-metre suspension bridge sways 24 metres above the tumultuous water. It’s already started to rain. I carefully cross the bridge and that’s when the sky really opens up, rain in torrents, the crack of thunder, the flash of lightning. I think that had it started just a few minutes earlier, I never would have crossed that metal bridge.
I pull my rain cover over my rucksack and ask Elliott how much farther we have to hike, and when she says, “about 800 metres,” I hope this time that she’s telling the truth.
We scramble into the forest, up and down a trail of slick mud. I soon catch a glimpse of a boat’s running lights through the trees and I slide towards the shore where Gionet’s running the engine against the waves. I climb the boat’s nose ladder and dash inside. My glasses immediately fog up. “Captain Brian,” I say. “I could kiss you.” He smiles and says, “Don’t.” On the ride back, Pukaskwa disappears into a shroud of fog.
“It’s got this distinct otherworldly feel,” Elliott had said earlier of the park. “It’s unlike any place else in the country.” Daniel Otis was hosted by Parks Canada, the City of Thunder Bay and Tourism Ontario, which did not review or approve this story.