real adventure – Wolf Lake Mountain

Saturday, July 21 st, 2012

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What’s is an adventure?

We would say that it’s being crazy and enjoy every bit of it…

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Saturday morning we were supposed to meet our friend who’s also act as our tour guide around 7.30. He’s the one that tell us about this Wolf Lake Mountain,  which is the highest point within the boundaries of the City of Greater Sudbury. But, after waited couple of minutes, his girlfriend called us and told us that he’s sick and cannot come that very morning.

After thought about it for a while, we decided to carry on with the plan. But, since we had no idea of how to get there, we went back to our hotel first for a while, browsed the internet, searched for that place, and printed it. Luckily we found this website, http://www.ontariohighpoints.com/wolf-lake-mountain/, which we printed out, along with a direction from a google maps too. Now, we’re ready to go.

It was easy to follow the instructions in both print out that we had. In almost one and a half hour, we were already in the intersection between Kukagami Lk. Rd and Matagamasi Lk Rd.

Kukagami and Matagamasi intersection

Then we kept driving along Matagamasi Rd until we found another intersection and took left onto Bushy Bay Road.

As the writer of the website said, the road indeed gets rough and he suggested to park the car. But, we didn’t follow that one and kept continue using our “small car” until something happened. We got quite a big stone stuck beneath our car and we had to stop because of it.

what is that stone doing there ??

Being in the middle of nowhere, without phone signal to call or GPS to know our current position, we decided to work fast to remove that unwanted thing. Plus there was lots of bugs around us that time that made us very eager to get out of that place.

hand size saw, rock that we had to remove, and a piece of wood that we use

After removed that stone, we were rethinking about this way that we’ve taken, whether it’s still the right way or not. Lucky for us, not long after that there was a car that got closer and stopped near us (actually that car stopped because one of my friend kind of ask them to stop with his hand). They opened their window and we can saw there were 5 people in there.

” We’re looking for a way to go to Wolf Lake Mountain”, one of my friend told them.

Then, after a little chit chat and a little background check, they asked us to follow them because they’re going in the same direction with us. And then we started the engine again and tried to catch up with their car which is designed for this kind of field…

After half an hour (or more) we finally stopped at another intersection. They got out of their car and so did we. One of the man from their group then showed us the map of that place and the mountain (summit) that we want to see.

“You should walk started from there, ” he said, pointed to the left side of that intersection.

they called us “brothers engineers”

After said goodbye, they continued their journey and left us alone there. I was sure they might think that we’re crazy. Why not ? We have no map, no GPS, no proper equipments that can protect us from rain or from wild animals, especially because there are still bears in that area. 🙂

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After walked for almost an hour, we reached the top of a steep but well made trail for hiking.

hurry up guys…

And not long after that, we arrived at a flat and spacious area where you can see far away down. There was a remain of a bonfire up there and the view was good. But, we didn’t know whether this was the summit/peak of the Wolf Lake Mountain or not. If only we had GPS, we would have known that for sure.

view from the place that we assumed as the summit (© Agus)

After rested for a while, we then walked again through the only way that we can found there. Deeper we go, more pine trees that we saw. We kept moving while the sky in front of us was getting darker, as if storm is going to come. It’s too late to retreat now for us. We’ve been walking this far and we decided to keep walking to the end of the road.

To make things more exciting, on our trail way we saw a footprint.

what footprint is that ?

I have no idea what footprint that was or was it just a random mark on the mud/ground. But, there are bears around that area and there were four marks on the grounds which means it could be caused by something that walked with four legs, and bear is walking with four legs for sure. Then, trying to be a track reader, we predicted that it was not new anymore so whatever that put those marks there could not be near us by now.

Still lead by our curiosity to find the highest point of that mountain, we continued our journey. Now we’re getting deeper into the forest.  The deeper we go, the more we saw that it was still wild right there. Then, at one point, we hit a dead end. It was a forest that blocked our way and we didn’t want to continue it further. If this was the right way to the peak, we would have seen something by now, but we didn’t.

At the end we decided to take another picture there, in the end of our journey.

this is the end of the trail guys..

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Being in the wild means that you need to watch your steps. You’re the visitor there. This was because on our way back, my friend walked quite close to a bush and suddenly he heard a hissing sound from near his foot. There was a snake there and it was already it it’s “attack position”. We moved away from that location and leave that snake which then started to move away too.

watch out for snakes

So, was this a real adventure or just some crazy engineers that filled their weekend with unprepared journey…

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Agus Praditya T