Pefferlaw Brook – Port Bolster

Saturday, October 18, 2008

Sufficiently close to home to count as a short run.

80 km – about 1 hour 10 minutes, from Yonge/Finch subway station via Finch to Highway 404, then by Highway 48 to Quinns Marina, Pefferlaw .

Maps

It is a little over an hour, but not much.

From Highway 48, east of Sutton, turn south onto Pefferlaw Road, and immediately turn left, “No Exit”, to the end of Quinns Road.

Pay the nice lady $10, launch and go!

We paddled from the marina, upstream to the shoals at the railway bridge, then back, past the marina and out to the end of the breakwater, and back.

Paddled. All the way. No motor!

Here’s a shot of the little boat ramp at Quinns. That’s the bridge for Highway 48 heading further east.

Here’s a view from the ramp looking down Pefferlaw Brook towards Lake Simcoe

The two roads signs say “blur” and “blurrier”. If I’d had a steadier hand they’d both say “Riverside Drive”.

A view upstream at 9:45 a.m. into the low October morning sun. Millions of bright ripples on the foam-flecked water.

We know what foam means!

This sign puzzled me. I guess if you are a fisherman you can easily spot the difference between spotted, banded, tiger etc pike or muskie. But to me, when a fish is hauled out of the water it is brownish, sort of, and flapping around an awful lot. Not that I catch fish anyway. When I used to ....

And we’re off. Which way to go? I want to check out the lake, downstream, so I say “Up Stream”, and shock! horror! outrage! Fred agrees. We swing to the right. I try to sulk, but find that I cannot.

Cottages that look awfully like houses dot each bank near the launch.

The brook is dead calm, an easy paddle.

And while we are never quite out of sight of cottages, pretty soon they are few and reasonably far between. Notice the calm water ....

The tree-lined banks are reminiscent of Oxtongue Lake, but it is not the same, somehow.

Weedy looking grass creeps down to the water. The water is muddy, not at all clear.

Fred spots several blue herons, but mostly by the time I’ve quietly stowed my paddle, found the camera, powered it on etc The Bird Has Flown.

Castle-like structures greet us, banked by the fall colors. Or autumn colours as we say in English.

Beautiful colors, despite the overall shabbiness of the banks.

I should have brought my gloves, then I could have looked like a professional outfitter.

Memo to self: Must buy gloves for the winter.

There’s a short story here. Fred spotted a fox, behind the little lighthouse, but again, he got away while I was unshipping the camera. The fox, I mean, not Fred.

Here’s a close-up view of the heron sculpture

The hydro easement crosses the brook just as the brook ends its first southward leg and bends to the east.

Fewer cottages, more foam. What can this mean?

It means either rapids or a waterfall. In this case, very shallow rapids.

They are too shallow for us to go upstream in a burst of middle-aged energy, and no apparent bank up which we could portage, should we want to.

That’s the railway bridge, just north of Johnson Street.

Here's a Google Maps view of the shoals. We turned around at the shoals. Even had we portaged, we would be faced with more rapids a few hundred yards upstream of the railway bridge.

The shoals are pretty to the eye and to the ear.

Sigh! We turn around and shoot downstream quickly, for the current is fairly strong here.

North of the marina, we pass a couple of waterside restaurants.

And we head for Lake Simcoe.

Up ahead we spot a flock of seagulls floating on the water. Don’t go there! They are actually standing on a mudflat.

Ice fishing season can’t be far from here. Here are the huts.

The entrance channel looms ahead, with a large white triangular marker. To the right of the breakwater is the mudflat. Too shallow for us.

I think that this is a duck blind. It is made of some sort of fiber or scrub, and perfectly sited for shotgun shots at birds on the mudflats.

Here is the end of the breakwater.

And here we are on Lake Simcoe. Is that Thorah island away in the distance?

As we return I notice the staining on the breakwater rocks

It seems that, at times, Lake Simcoe is eighteen inches higher than this.

Back at the boat ramp, one last look upstream ....

OK. Two last looks.

And one last look downstream.

What a delightful day!

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