Featured Park - The Massasauga

Ontario Parks Insider

The Massasauga Provincial Park attracts visitors from around the world to experience Canadian Shield landscape, fresh water fishing, canoeing, hiking and camping under the stars. Situated on the eastern shore of Georgian Bay, south of Parry Sound, this park takes in over 13,000 hectares of windswept islands, rocky peninsulas, forested mainland and inland lakes. It’s an idyllic Group-of-Seven landscape, made up of gnarled pines rooted to mounds of pink granite set against the ocean-like vistas of Georgian Bay, with many tranquil inland lakes including Spider Lake and Clear Lake.

The Massasauga offers a variety of different paddling experiences from the relatively calm waters of the inland lakes, to sheltered waters around the many Georgian Bay islands, to the occasional taste of big open water. The park features designated campsites that are only accessible by water. There are a small number of campsites in the northern end that are perfect for those that want to get away from it all. Getting here requires multiple portages and a higher degree of difficulty but is well worth the effort.

Count on doing some hiking while you’re at The Massasauga. The park includes a number of opportunities for hiking including the popular Wreck Island Interpretive Trail. Only 1.5km in length, this is a rugged trail that showcases the dramatic results of glaciation on the landscape. The impressive twisted and folded rocks along the trail are evidence of the incredible geological forces that have shaped this island.

The Massasauga is known not only for its impressive landscape but also for its wildlife. The park is home to Ontario’s only lizard, the five-lined skink. It’s also one of the last strongholds for the endangered Massasauga Rattlesnake.


Nearby and Natural

  • Parry Sound – home of the Bobby Orr Centre and 30,000 Island Cruises
  • Canada’s 13th Biosphere Reserve – the 30,000 islands of the eastern shore of Georgian Bay offer boating, hiking and kayaking.
  • Quaint cottage towns of Bala, Port Carling and Rosseau

Gear Up For Spring

Ontario Parks Insider

How far can I travel?
One of the biggest questions asked on a pre-trip planning process for an interior canoe trip is how far can one travel per day. It’s also the hardest question to answer. There are just too many variables. But generally speaking a canoe being paddled tandem can travel from 2 to 6 kilometres an hour or 12 to 24 kilometres per day, depending on such things as current in a river, wind on a lake and, most of all, the amount and length of portages required. When it comes to portaging, it takes on average, twenty minutes to portage about 1000 metres (1 kilometer). A single carry across the portage is obviously quicker but trippers generally need a double carry – which means you’re walking the portage length three times over. When carrying packs, one can generally suffer for at least forty minutes before stopping for a rest. But with the canoe you usually stop every twenty minutes for a five minute break before continuing on.

How much fuel do I bring along?
The amount of fuel needed has so many variables: fuel type, the air temperature, wind and design of a windscreen used, maximum heat output (BTU) of the stove, even the type of pots and pans used. Overall, however, the best way to judge your fuel consumption is to plan forty minutes of cooking time for dinner and twenty minutes for preparing a hot breakfast. Let’s say you’re going on a five-day trip. That adds up to four dinners (two hours and forty minutes of burning time) and four breakfasts (one hour and ten minutes). Now add an extra hour for a couple of hot soups for lunch or an unexpected cold weather snap that will rob you of extra fuel. So, to be on the safe side, you can say you need a little more than five hours of fuel for a five-day trip. If your stove runs on white gas, and burns quick and hot like the MSR models, with a pump/fuel bottle, it will use up a one litre bottle of fuel every three days, which means you bring two litres for five days to be on the safe side. If you have butane or propane stoves which run on pressurized canisters, then two canisters should be enough, with a little to spare.

Tour Route - Ice Out Canoe Trips

Ontario Parks Insider

One of the most magical times of the year to go canoeing, kayaking or hiking in the interior of Ontario Parks is just after the ice has left the lakes and just before black flies hatch – and start looking for a blood meal. It’s a moment of celebration, a time for campers to break free of the winter blahs; that is before we realize that bugs can make spring outings more than a bit of an annoyance. And as long as you dress for it, ice-out trips can be the ultimate time spent in the out-of-doors.

What better place to go for a spring outing than the top of Ontario. Temagami’s Ishpatina Ridge holds the record for being the highest point in the province. At first it was thought to be Tip Top Mountain in Pukaskwa National Park. Then in 1967 the place of choice was changed to Ogidaki Mountain, also found along the shores of Lake Superior. It wasn’t until 1970 that Ishpatina was crowned the top of the province, and even then a few experts claimed it was Temagami’s Maple Mountain. It’s true that Maple Mountain overtakes Ishpatina by 40 metres, but that’s according to the elevation above the nearest lake. When it comes to elevation above sea level however, Ishpatina wins by 56 metres.

So if you’re looking at the grand spring adventure of visiting Ontario’s rooftop then we suggest a trip to Lady Evelyn-Smoothwater Provincial Park. Many of the smaller rivers and streams in this 72,000 hectare natural environment park benefit from higher water levels during the spring season. The Lady Evelyn River is best paddled early if you want to run its rapids. The Makobe River, which can get shallow later on in the season, also benefits from spring runoff. So use this time of year to explore the waterways of this park that might be off limits later on in the season.

The big question of course is, how do you know when the ice is out in the north, especially if you’re living in southern Ontario. The answer is quite simple – you check on-line web sites. Countless web sites have added ice-out alerts, whether it’s a mere chat forum on sites such as www.myccr.com or www.algonquinadventures.com or live video/picture feeds showing the actual lakes you’re dreaming of paddling on, like www.ottertooth.com http://algonquinoutfitters.blogspot.com There’s even “ice-out” contests held by sites such as www.canoelake.ca/iceout/ or www.cottagelife.com. Why not join the fun and see if you can claim to be first to go camping in the new season.

Inside Ontario Parks: We Brake for Snakes

Ontario Parks Insider

“One of the unique aspects of the job as a park naturalist at Killbear is responding to snake calls,” says Kenton Otterbein, park naturalist at Killbear Provincial Park.

Since 1995, research has been conducted in the park to tag and record the locations of Killbear’s Massasauga Rattlesnake population. Park visitors are an important part of the research since all campers and staff are instructed to immediately contact park naturalists if they see a rattlesnake on a park road or campsite. When this happens a group of naturalists respond to the call armed with a snake stick and a pillowcase. If the snake is still around they will capture it, implant a microchip, take a photo, measurement, and paint part of the snake’s rattle - pink was the colour of choice in 2008. The naturalists’ goal is not to make the snakes look pretty, but to record their behaviours and protect them from humans. This information helps to determine the sections of road where rattlesnakes are most likely to be run over. Between 2007 and 2008, the park installed 668 metres of fence along the main road to try and prevent snakes from crossing. So far this strategy seems to be working, as fewer snakes have been killed along the fenced portion of the road during the past two years.

Kenton concluded “We get lots of support and interest from park visitors and neighbours for our efforts and the rattlesnake’s image has definitely improved over the past twenty years thanks to the efforts of the Massasauga Recovery Team.” To further support the rattlesnakes, The Friends of Killbear have started a campaign to raise $50,000 to build an eco-passage to allow snakes to safely cross the Day Use road.

Snake Bite Facts
Kenton has answered his fare share of snake bite questions. He has provided the following quick facts to help demystify rattlesnakes:

  • The Massasauga is the only venomous snake in Ontario and it has a fairly limited range. The Bruce Peninsula and the eastern shore of Georgian Bay are the two main areas where people are most likely to run across a rattlesnake.
  • The average number of bites in all of Ontario is about 3 per year with a range between 0 and 9.
  • Only two people have ever died from rattlesnakes in Ontario and the last one was almost 50 years ago. Neither of these two people sought proper medical attention.
  • With modern antivenin the chances of a fatal bite from a Massasauga are almost negligible.
  • Rattlesnakes can only strike 1/3 of their body length and since they are rarely over 90 cm long, as long as you give them a bit of space, (1 or 2 metres) you will be fine.
  • Their main prey is mice and they don’t have very large fangs. The venom works as an anticoagulant which kills mice quite quickly but since humans are hundreds of times larger than a mouse, the venom gets diffused.
  • Since Killbear opened in 1960 there has only been one documented case of a rattlesnake biting a visitor. After a 24 hour stay in hospital the lady was released with no ill-effects. Thousands of people enjoy a safe visit to the park annually.

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Supported by The Strategic Tourism Development and Marketing Alliance For Northern Ontario