2021 - Herb Lake - Middledom

Haliburton Highlands, Herb Lake, Site 87A

By staying close to access points for our canoe camping we’re more likely to end up mixed in with cottages. Here again though, like Wolf Lake, they bothered us not at all, and we never saw any motor boats.

Herb Lake is at the very top of the Frost Center Area, which has lots of remote sites if you care to really get away. It’s a good sized lake but not huge and there’s plenty to explore if you have the time.

https://hhwt.goingtocamp.com/FrostCentreArea?Map

Cut short

Since we’ve started this tradition we’ve always done our canoe camping during the five days that our daughter Jovita (who has Down Syndrome and lives with us) goes to Camp Shalom from a Sunday evening to a Friday afternoon. We get an early start on Monday and need to be back by 5:00 Friday afternoon. This generally means negotiating Toronto traffic during rush hour and the whole experience of packing up and getting there on time can be rather stressful. So sometimes we’ve chickened out and gone home on Thursday.

Mostly, the time frame for these trips has felt good. But one day shorter makes a big difference, and an extra day would be really nice. We do use coolers (ice) to keep our food good for a while, but beyond the third day we’d have to resort more to freeze dried food, or to go into town for staples and ice. So the four full day length is actually quite practical.

Herb Lake in the Haliburton Highlands was the destination for a 2021 canoe camping trip. Our four days there during the last week of July was a lovely but too short break from our routines in the city.
Haliburton Highlands Water Trails has an online reservation system and charges a very reasonable cost per person. We reserved 87A in the Frost Centre Area as soon as we could. Ten years before this we camped on Big East Lake in the Poker Lakes Area.
From the town of Dorset, shown here on the left, it’s a short drive to the Herb Lake paddle access, and then a half hour paddle to the site 87A. The narrow lake is not well oriented for viewing sunrises and sunsets.
A close up view of Herb and Cow lakes, showing two fingered peninsulas. We camped on the left one.
We left St.Catharines at 6:20, Monday morning and, after getting a bit stuck in Toronto traffic and grabbing a take-out breakfast, we pulled into Main Street in Dorset at 10:30 to take a break and see if we could get an early lunch before getting to Herb Lake, not that far away.
By 1:20 we were ready to leave the Herb Lake Access Point with our second load. We left our first load in the shade at our camp site because the two guys who had been occupying site 38b were still lazing around when we got there.
The second load always includes the food so we don’t have to leave it unattended. As explained in earlier trips, we’re really car campers adapting to canoe camping. We’re not willing to let enough go to manage with a single load, so we take full advantage of the canoe’s carrying capacity.
When we arrived for the second time at the campsite, around 2:00, the guys were just pulling out. Yes, there’s a kitchen sink in there somewhere.
We had some trouble divining a spot for our tent. Nowhere was the ground level. and the best spot had roots bumping out. But first, inspired by a few rain drops and a diminishing sun, we decided to rig our fly and give ourselves and our stuff some shelter. We went for a swim before continuing with the tent and, by 5:30, everything was set up and supper was served.
Our canoe, now relieved of its burden, sat quietly in its slip as the sun dipped towards the horizon.
The sky and the lake conspire to play tic tac toe.
The eastern shore of Herb lake takes on a familiar glow from the low sun.
Herb lake should really be called Fingers lake, for its distinctive fingers of rock scattered everywhere and all sloping gently south. Every finger disappears below the surface, and some are wholly submerged. So canoeists need to be wary. These two fingers are the most striking for their lobster clawness.
We saw very few flowers, or birds or animals this trip. But this flower was common around our site.
We spent the middle part of this beautiful day just lazing about, reading and swimming.
Our campsite is (like at Wolf Lake) on a peninsula, and the east side has a nice, level spot for sitting and overlooking the bay between ours and the neighbouring peninsula.
While Wendy reads, Henry roams with his camera. What’s not to love about this picture.
Tuesday morning, as predicted, we were beset by drizzle and were happy for our shelter, such as it was, just 14′ x 14′. Our tent always fairs well in the rain, but the fly is old and drips a bit through seams and under puddles.
We moved the table a bit more to one side so we could sit together and share our late breakfast of bacon and eggs.
Pickerell weed was common everywhere here, but not in abundance.
This finger of rock forms the crest of our peninsula and supplies a path back into the woods.
A single, large boulder sits atop the finger. You have to wonder how it got there and how long ago.
Everywhere, the pines reach out to the sky and to each other.
The rain abated by late morning but the sky remained overcast.
Our neighbours were out and about on the back of their site.
We learned later that they were daughter with her elderly father, both of whom like to fish.
We checked our rain gauge, but couldn’t come up with a useful measurement. Intuitively, I’d say not much rain, really.
By mid afternoon it was dry enough to read out in the open.
With the sun finally peaking out, and everything shipshape, Henry decides to do his stretching in the tent and take a nap.
During a late afternoon swim, Henry experiments with resting on the rock formations just below the water surface. On our first swim the day before, we had a hard time getting in and out. But this small finger of rock proved to be a perfect place to get in – a shelf at the end just below the surface, then another step down of about ten inches and then a drop enough to allow diving into the water. With confidence, this could be done hands free.
Before supper, we decided to canoe down to the bottom of the lake to see what there was to see. We poked our heads into Ernest Lake, just through this narrow channel, but then quickly headed back because the wind was picking up and the sky threatening. Another empty threat, as it turned out.
By 6:20 we were sitting down to a supper of roast beef and noodles.
The sun did come out again, off and on, so we enjoyed exploring and watching.
A view of our campsite from the west, catching some of the setting sun.
Another evening where the light and the gloom stand opposed.
Our last shot of Tuesday shows the fly and its sub-structure. From the leading edge, a rope strung between two not too distant trees, it flies back, over another rope at midpoint. This one had to rely on trees so distant that I had to tie two 100′ ropes together to get from one to the other. From there it drops down to where it gets staked to the ground. Three telescoping poles hold up the mid line. The center pole has a furniture coaster duct-taped to the end and a guy line to the ground to keep it from splaying out. The fourth pole, on the table (with an old dining canopy cap on it), because it can’t be attached to the fly, is roped to the front line and to the mid line so that when the wind catches the fly and lifts it up, the pole does not fall down. After some early tension adjustments, we had it so that rain did not collect anywhere. Even the smallest puddle on a fly like this will eventually lead to catastrophic failure.
Wednesday morning, around 6:30, Henry got up to relieve himself (again) and found his world closed in by fog. He toured a bit with camera in hand to record this and then crawled back into bed.
By 8:30 the fog had lifted, leaving behind a light mist on quiet waters.
Our food was still up in the air, but could easily be lowered by one person, so Henry could set out on the morning coffee making ritual with Wendy still in bed.
By a little after nine on Wednesday we settled in to our chairs and our coffees under the gathering sun.
Many times, Henry is with camera.
Sometimes Wendy can just be, without a book.
The water remained extraordinarily still for the first half of the morning, setting off this primordial shape against a formless void of water and sky.
The campsite is nicely sheltered from north winds, and from the sun. It did get some side winds later in the week.
After Wednesday supper, we ventured out in our canoe to visit Cow lake, a small, land-locked lake close to our site. The short portage (somewhat compromised by a fallen tree) brought us into this nature preserve augmented by two birdhouses.
On the east side of Cow lake some nice rocks were still catching the setting sun.
This particular cleft was doubly impressive in the still water.
We poked our bow into the cleft briefly before heading back to the portage.
On the way, a gothic cathedral with buttresses and a spire, appeared as if in a vision.
A the point of portage it’s clear, from the sky behind the trees, just how small the rise is between Cow lake and Herb lake.
Back in Herb lake, we still had time so we paddled into the eastern bay. A particularly grand reflection of rock and trees met us on that side – open sky hinting at the marsh that we never got to see.
When we turned back, we saw our only sunset of the trip, and Henry had but a minute to snap it before losing it again to perspective and the advance of time.
The dusk sky did offer some interesting cloud formations and a pleasant glow.
By 8:30 that evening we were within sight of our site.
Thursday dawned as promised with a bit of rain and an overcast sky. The forecast had been, and continued to be, via our contact in TB, rain with some possibilities of clearing.
We were safe enough, and the rain never got anywhere near as bad as Tuesday’s, but we felt spooked by the prospect of so much more of the same and having to leave quickly the next day to get Jovita.
The fly kept working well under Henry’s watchful eye.
So by mid morning we decided to start packing it in. Henry cleared away the food storage lines and we aimed for an early lunch.
Mid morning, Henry was so excited to see his shadow he quickly took a picture.
We passed by this fire pit abomination regularly and never used it.
There was still time to take pictures, so Henry wandered around snapping photos for a later ID.
The sky remained overcast and the lake presented its familiar, sullen self southward beyond the detailed beauty of rocks worn by repetitions of just such weather through time immemorial.
This was a particularly striking head of cauliflower.
I was sorely tempted to dig some of these ground covers up for transplanting into my waterfall garden.
By 1:30 our tent was down and we were packed for our first trip out.
We loaded our canoe, checked again to make sure we had car keys, and headed out.
By four, after returning to pack the remainders and take down the fly, our site was cleared and canoe loaded.
Only our swimsuit bag remained, for we were resolved to enjoy a final swim before departing.
At 5:20 our stuff was spread out over trailer and van, the canoe was in place and we set out for home.