Pukaskwa - Backpacking the Coastal Trail - Day 3

It was very cold when we woke up in the morning. It was 9:30 a.m. and the sun was up but the air was not warm. It had been a cold night all night and I hadn't slept the best.  What we didn't know until a few days later was that it had dipped down to about 2 degrees Celcius that night.  We had said the night before that we weren't going to light a fire this morning but we changed our mind and lit one anyways just to get a bit of warmth.
    We packed up and left at about 10:55 a.m. and said good-bye to our neighbours as we passed through their campsite to get to the portage trail. We only had only 1 km to hike to Hooks Falls. 
   The portage hill that we were dreading having to climb back up was not nearly as bad as it was going down. I still wouldn't want to have to take a canoe over it though. 

When we got in to the trees where we were shielded from the wind started to warm up a bit and we could enjoy the sites. There were some colourful mushrooms nestled within the moss and leaves of the forest floor. 

Back at the top of the portage hill we came to the mail box again. This time I decided to write something in it since I hadn't the day before. There had been a song going through my head for the past few days so I wrote that down. 
"This is my Father's World
And through my listening ears
All nature sings 
And 'round me rings
The beauty of the Earth" 

We went back down the other side of the hill and past the portage that we had sat at the previous day. 

We came to a bridge with no railings on it. At least not yet. Off to the side were some brand new railings waiting to be put into place. One thing I was particularly impressed with in this park is just how well they take care of the trail and all the bridges on it. They do a very good job of keeping things in good condition here. 

I think the trail between the portage and the Hooks Falls campsite is one of my favourite legs of the trail (although I still really like the marsh boardwalk). This section changes frequently and it's all very beautiful. Some places have flat open spaces under the cedar trees where you could sit and do some bird watching easily for hours.

Other spots were your typical rocky hills.

Then it turned into a sea bed of drift wood. The entire path was a bunch of drift wood that you had to pick your way and navigate through. I have never seen anything like it on a hiking trail before. 

We came to a large rock where the park staff had been kind enough to build a set of stairs. I am sure that without these stairs there was no way I would have gotten up that rock with my pack on. So I was grateful that they were there. 

Off in the distance we could see some misty spray from the rapids. Hooks Falls! we thought. The campsite must be close now. 

The spray from the water looked beautiful against the green of the trees. 

But it wasn't Hooks Falls. At least not the part of Hooks Falls where our campsite was. Instead it was just where another portage was. 

We continued on past some large old trees. 

We walked under some interesting old cedars that were leaning over like a canopy over the trail. The trees in this section really had some character to them. 

Just like the days previous there were sections where the trees lined the sides of the trail like walls. 

And again we had a carpet of green on the forest floor. 

At about noon we found the sign to our campsite at Hooks Falls. 

But more importantly we found the sign for the bathroom. Heather had drank a lot of coffee before we left and she really had to go. 

The outhouse was half way down the hill between the main trail and the campsite. Heather dropped her pack and ran inside. 

AS I waited for her I could hear her chuckling. She called out to me and said  "There is a smiling face on the toilet lid!"  Sure enough there was. The outhouse was pretty dirty with leaves on the floor and a layer of dirt on the seat. Someone had written Smile and drew a happy face on the lid. I said to her "That's because you are happy that you made it on time". Later on I added "You made it!" to the writing on the toilet lid.

As I waited for Heather I noticed that there were people already on our site. I thought that they were the occupants from the previous night. In most places you don't have to leave a site until 2 p.m. and it was only about noon so we didn't want to rush them. They looked like they were packing up anyways. Turns out it was a family who had only just stopped there for lunch on their way through. We told them to take their time and we were going to go and explore the falls for awhile. We could see a jut of rocks over where the water was moving fast and we wanted to see if we could go rock hopping over to it. 

So we left our packs off to the side and started picking our way around the rocky edge of the shore towards the point. 

There was a nice flat area that made for a good place to swim. But we knew that the water was too cold for our liking and we had no intentions of swimming. 

We scrambled along the rocks and almost made it all the way over until we hit a section where there were just too many trees and too steep of a cliff to be able to keep going without ducking back into the trees for a bit. 

So we made a quick detour through the trees and came out on the other side right where we wanted to be. We were right at the edge of the falls where the water was running the fastest. 

Heather went to explore one end of the point while I went to explore the other. 

At my end there was a little mini water fall trickling down the sides of the rocks. 

There were different types of flowers and plants trying desperately to grow in an area barren of soil. We also saw quite a few dead crayfish parts. I wondered what was eating them since there are no raccoons in the park and we didn't see any large birds that would normally eat them either. 

We decided not to go over the rocks on the way back and instead we chose to go back through the trees and up to the main trail. Along the way we came across what used to be an old camp site. I guess they move them from time to time in order to let the area regenerate itself. 

And not far away from the old site was one that clearly was still being used. We assumed that this other site was HF2 (we were staying on HF1).  This was a pretty nice spot for a tent too. 

We followed the main trail back towards our campsite. At the lowest dip between two hills we came across a log bridge. It was one of the few bridges we had seen so far that was not made of store bought lumber. I chuckled because it seemed more out of place than the other bridges when it's usually the other way around. 

When we got back to our campsite the family had left and we were able to start setting up camp. 

We set up the tent on the little platform area that was provided. It's not really a platform; just some logs in a square around a dirt area. It was up on a rock ledge though so it was higher up than the campfire area. The website said that this site was only big enough for about 2 people. But I am sure that you could squeeze a second tent on the site if you were to put the tent somewhere other than on this platform. There was some more space in the direction of the bear bin. You could probably get away with two small tents about the size of ours. Or even hammocks if that is the gear that you use. 

Only one door of this bear bin would open for us and the latches wouldn't close properly for us. But the doors did stay shut so we still used it. 

After we set up camp we went to gather some wood. Almost stepped on a little toad. I made sure to move him away from where I would be walking. 

At about 4:30 p.m., since I hadn't slept well the night before and  was a bit tired,  I decided to take a nap for a bit while Heather went exploring the area. The site was nice and quiet with nothing more than the sounds of chickadees and the rushing water. It was a great place to take a nap. 

I woke up around 6 p.m. to hear Heather starting the fire for supper. I knew it would be a bit before the fire got hot enough to boil water so I took the opportunity to go down to the shoreline and look at the flowers. Overall it had been a cloudy day with brief periods of sun. While I was down by the shore the sun decided to come out from hiding for a little bit.  ​

I wasn't the only one hanging around the shoreline. A couple of Daddy Long Legs were hanging out down there too.

After supper we sat by the fire talking. We discussed where we were going to camp for the night tomorrow night. There really weren't too many places between here and the marsh that were suitable for putting up a tent. There were some closer to the falls but we wanted to get some distance tomorrow as we headed back towards Hattie's Cove. We decided that the best place to make a makeshift camp would be on the flat, open rocky area that we stopped for a break at on the first day on the trail. We knew there would be no water there so we planned to make sure we had enough water with us for that night. 
   With a plan in mind we sat around the fire and talked about other things until about 9:30 p.m. Then we headed into the tent and played cribbage until we finally went to sleep at about 11 p.m.