I'm fascinated with old roads and railbeds. I also ride a mountain bike, so last fall I decided to start my own historical trails project: to ride, walk, ski, or snowshoe all the historical routes within easy reach of my home. (Parry Sound)
I began with the Nipissing Road. It's less than an hour away and I knew parts of it were still used by cars, so at least that much of it would be ridable. I enlisted my neighbour Morrissey as cameraman and spur. I can always come up with neat ideas but Morrissey is a doer-of-deeds and he spurs me on to rise to challenges I would normally let pass. Occassionally this can also lead to situations where I get hurt, as we get beyond my skill level. I always come away from a Morrissey adventure with a new wound or scar to prove I've done it.
We left home at 7:00 a.m. on a brisk fall day and drove across on Provincial Highway 124 as far as Knoepfli Falls on the Magnetawan River. We stopped there in the crisp early morning to let Morrissey take a few preliminary shots with his camera. He was using a Nikon F90X with a Monfrotto tripod. From the bridge railing I watched a blue heron spearing frogs and fish in the shallows along the edge of the rapids while he took pictures of the river and falls. Then we drove on to Provincial Road 510. Where 510 crosses 124 is where one section of the Nipissing Road begins. We turned left and parked the car on the side of the road and got ready to ride.
Morrissey rides a three year old Rocky Mountain Equipe. I ride a four year old Rocky Mountain Fusion. They are good all-around bikes. We were both outfitted with rear panniers holding lunches, extra clothes and other trip necessities. Morrissey had two water bottles; I had one double size bottle. Morrissey carried his camera in a backpack with his tripod strapped to his rear carrier. I had my two panniers and on my rack a portable folding three legged camp stool. The stool and the tripod gave us a slightly elongated appearance, as though we both had tails sticking out behind.
While we were prepping our bikes, an OPP cruiser (Ontario Provincial Police) pulled up. The officer was pleasant and polite. We asked him about the back country and he said he'd never been back there. I wondered what he was doing on an out of the way sideroad on a Saturday so early in the morning, but then again there were a few back-to-the-land types over this way, and it was harvest time...or maybe he had a girlfriend.... ofr maybe somebody had just reported some strange looking guys on bikes. Anyway, he drove on.
We chose to ride just before deer season. There's another window of opportunity for a week or two between deer and moose season but the weather is chancy that late. The road is passable any time from the May long weekend on, though it is at its prettiest in the fall (plus there are no bugs).
The weather report was good, the sky was clear and the morning was not unpleasantly cold, but the sun wasn't properly up yet, so we did dress warmly. Clothing was an odds and sods fall-weather mix featuring a lot of biking bits and generic sweat clothing.
The first five kilometres north is a wide, well graded, and frequently traveled gravel road. It ducks and dives but there are really no strenuous hills or challenging sections. It's just a pleasant country road and a nice warmup.
Between the seventh and eighth kilometre, the well traveled road takes a fairly decided turn to the left. The signs say there is a youth camp down that way at Lake of Many Islands but we were not headed that way. Our path lay straight ahead and up. The Old Nipissing Road headed up a hill and narrowed down a notch. It became a 4x4 or two-wheeled vehicle sort of road from this point on - the centre part of the road was grassy with chunks of boulders and rocks sticking up. It was a neat and smooth progression from pavement to gravel road to gravel hunting road. The old stumps of logged off trees had two inches of moss growing on top of them.
Ferns and moss grow close to the road on both sides. The trees, a mix of pine, maple, birch, and aspen or poplar are gold, red, green, yellow, and orange. Some of the pines are tall enough to have that windswept Group of Seven feel to them and, when we stopped, the wind blew through the upper branches with a melancholy, empty sound.
The day couldn't have developed better for weather - bright, breezy, warm. Including comfort stops and pictures, it was only two hours from stopping the car to Bummer's Roost at the Eagle Lake Road. We saw no large wildlife, a few ravens, a lot of chickadees and those other small birds that flit from tree to tree ahead of you as though you were chasing them. It was extremely pleasant ride. That's not to say it wasn't a bit of a workout. There are some steep pitches, some rough spots, and some soft sand. With a modicum of effort and care, all the obstacles can be easily handled by even an unskilled or novice off-road biker.
It was a relaxed enough ride that you had time to wonder what it was like to travel this road by ox-drawn wagon or on a logging sled. The road was originally meant to open up the area for settlement, but was used for lumbering and resource extraction as well. And it was really only a major commercial road for a dozen years, since the opening of the Grand Trunk Railway in 1886 put the boots to any real road development. Local people, however, still use sections of the road 123 years later, so it has had staying power of a kind in spite of not being turned into a major highway like the Muskoka Road, which is now Highway 11.
Where Nipissing Road crosses the Eagle Lake Road, the topographical map shows it changing into a bush trail. If we had turned around at this point, it would have been a pleasant morning ride of approximately 26 kilometres in total.
"We have lots of time. Want to do the next section?" asked Morrissey, looking at me innocently. I grinned. This was typical of Morrissey. "Sure," I replied. We headed up the trail.
This section of the ride was a totally different story. It began easily enough. You knew you were on a bush trail because the ruts were more pronounced, the pitches steeper, and the trail was now packed mud and dirt. It was still used by 4-wheeled vehicles, at least the first part. There were piles of trees and truck tracks until the Patterford Lake cutoff, approximately one kilometre up the road. Then the trail began to look unused. It turned into more of what an old wagon road must have looked like, two deep ruts with a hummock of heavy grasscovered mud between them. If it was really wet, the mud was the sort that could easily build up on your tires. There were a lot of leaves and deadfall on the ground. In one spot the road was cut through by a stream, which was not deep enough to deter us. In three other spots it dropped into swampy puddles.
This five kilometre stretch came somewhere between my partner's fairly accomplished skill level and my slightly-beyond-a-beginner's-but-not-yet-competitive ability. Morrissey plowed through it all with style and aplomb; I fell three times and punctured my right leg on a sharp stick in one of the falls. It was strenuous fun, but not something you would take a young family on for a Sunday afternoon ride.
Between the Eagle Lake Road and the Rye Road, we saw sign of some larger carnivore, likely a wolf. We startled four partridges or grouse just as we were coming out, about an eighth of a mile from the Rye Road. From there we took the Rye Road back to the Eagle Lake Road, Eagle Lake Road to Bummer's Roost, and retraced our path from there to the car. With a few more photo stops and time to eat, we were loaded and ready to drive home by 1:00 p.m., for a total elapsed time of four and one/half hours. Morrissey's computer said we'd ridden 36 kilometres.
The section of trail from Highway 124 to Bummer's Roost has been marked and designated as a hiking and bike route by the Forgotten Trails group. They are an interesting organization from the South River environs, a group of local people who promote use of these old trails as one of the recreational attractions of the area. They tend to steer people onto the more accessible parts of the trails. For example, their map steered riders and hikers around the five kilometre stretch Morrissey and I tagged on to the end of our ride and put them on the easier to navigate gravel roads that lead to Rye. Still, they are a group worth contacting if you are interested in riding in this area. Gail Henderson at the Eagle Lake Store was the contact we spoke to who sent us one of their maps. For riding purposes, you would still want topographical maps, but the Forgotten Trails map also features a listing of local accommodations, craft shops, places to eat, and so on.
Mr. Ken Weber, who lives at Bummer's Roost, was happy to come out and speak to us about how his farm got its name and supplied us with further names and contacts of people who knew the local history better than he did. He claimed that the hotel that used to be on his property was the local hang-out for unemployed workers hoping to find seasonal work in that part of the country. They just kind of bummed around until the work was there for them.
The weather held for the next day. Morrissey and I were dropped off in Magnetawan at 10:00 a.m. We rode out of town south on the Nipissing Road. It is paved for a couple kilometres before turning into a well kept country gravel road. Approximately eight kilometres out of town, the Midlothian Road, another historic route from the 1800s still in use locally, heads off to the east towards Burkes Falls. Nipissing Road between 124 and 518 is an easy ride. There are hills and valleys and long stretches where nobody lives anymore, but it is a well kept, fairly smooth country road and a relatively east three hours from Magnetawan. Along the way, you ride through what remains of the crossroad and way station communities that used to be along the road. Magnetawan is the only one left that could be called a community, but there a number of graveyards and clusters of homes at the other spots.
If you were to try and ride the whole road, it would break down into a fairly comfortable two day weekend. You could be dropped off at Nipissing, at the bottom of South Bay on Lake Nipissing and ride from there through to Mikisew Park at Eagle Lake. With two bush sections to it, this is the most arduous part of the ride. The next day would be long, more than 50 kilometres, but all relatively easy going, with the toughest part of the road early in the day. There'd be time to stop off and check out the lock and museum in Magnetawan before riding on to Provincial Highway 518.
One and one-half kilometres south of 518, our path crossed the abandoned railbed of the Ottawa, Arnprior, and Georgian Bay Railway. This railbed has become know as the Seguin Trail which opens up further possibilities for an extended ride.
The next section of the Nipissing Road, that runs from Seguin Falls to the Rosseau Road, runs through some of the most rugged country on the whole length of the road. It was still marked on the topographic maps based on the 1969 aerial surveys as a bush trail but has been dropped from the more recent ones. It has grown in an awful lot. I contemplated bushwhacking but Morrissey's point of view was saner. He opined that old roads sometimes die for a good reason and this one had gone back to the bush. If we were going to travel it, we should do it in the winter on ski or snowshoes. And we will someday. In the meanwhile, there are the Midlothian Road, the Seguin Trail, and a handful of others to carry on with on bikes.
It's a great area for well prepared bike touring, not well known and without a lot of facilities but full of delightful natural surprises. And it's only about three hours from Toronto-far enough to get away from all the people, but close enough for easy accessibility. Hope to see you on the trails.