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Pushing on west from Ouimet Canyon, it's around 25km on Hwy 17 to Hwy 587, which branches south to scuttle down the 42-kilometre-long Sibley Peninsula . The peninsula's entire area is given over to the dramatically scenic Sleeping Giant Provincial Park (open year-round), so named because of the recumbent form of the four mesas that constitute its backbone. Established in 1944 to protect what the logging companies had left of the red and white pines, the park covers 243 square kilometres of high, barren rocks and lowland bogs, crisscrossed with 100km of trails. Acting as a sort of catch net for animals, the peninsula is inhabited by beaver, fox, porcupine, white-tailed deer and moose. There are also wolves in the more remote areas - on a still night you can hear them howling. Highway 587 enters the park about 6km beyond the village of Pass Lake . Admission is $8.50 per vehicle. The visitor centre (May-Aug Mon-Fri 8am-4.30pm; tel 807/977-2526) is situated about 20km from the park entrance at the south end of Lake Marie Louise. Pick up maps and hiking trail details either here or at the park entrance. Also at the south end of Lake Marie Louise is the park's one and only campsite with 190 sites ($17-22; late May to early Oct); reservations are advised in high season. Backcountry camping is possible too - pick up a permit ($6) at the visitor centre. Of the park's hikes, the forty-kilometre Kaybeyun Trail is the most spectacular and the hardest. Beginning at the southern end of Hwy 587, it runs around the tip of the peninsula via the rock formation known as the Sealion to the Chimney, at the Sleeping Giant's knees, then on to Nanabijou Lookout at the chest of the Giant, and finally to the Thunder Bay Lookout. You have to be fit - the walk to the Chimney takes about nine hours of hard graft up rugged pathways, where the boulders are the size of cars. Other less ambitious trails include the Talus and the Sawyer - which leave the Kaybeyun at Sawyer Bay on the southwest side of the peninsula - and easier still are the Joe Creek Trail and the Pinewood Hill Trail , both of which are situated in the northern end of the park near Hwy 587. The latter leads to a fine viewpoint over Joeboy Lake - a favourite spot for moose escaping the flies. The brief Sibley Creek Trail , which passes a number of beaver dams, begins near Lake Louise, so you're likely to share the wilderness with a number of other hikers. At the southern tip of Hwy 587 is the curious Silver Islet , not an island at all, but the ice-blasted remains of a thriving silver town, some fifty houses in all, including a customs house, a log jail, and a weathered general store, plus a population of two. Mining magnate Alexander Sibley founded Silver Islet in 1872 and his ambitious plans involved building a wall from his new town to Burnt Island just offshore to get at a silver deposit - you can still see bits of the wall today. Over the years the town exhausted the local firewood supply and had to rely on coal for fuel - and this was to be its undoing. One winter, the coal boat got stuck in the ice and, rather than freeze to death, the miners were forced to leave; they never came back. Doubling back to the top of Hwy 587, it's 30km west on Hwy 17 to Thunder Bay
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