Killarney Provincial Park, May 2005
Like for my previous trip to Killarney, we left Waterloo late at night the day
before we started hiking in the park. We arrived in the park around 1:30am and
spent a wonderful night under the open sky. We had planned to hike the Killarney
loop in counter-clockwise direction in 5 days. This would mean about 20km in
rugged terrain every day – should be doable, we thought.
On the first day, we made it to campsite 47. Unfortunately, Alex got severe
problems with his knees, so he decided not to do the full trip but return to the
park office instead. First, it was not clear at all what this would mean for our
trip, because we did not want to let him go back alone. Fortunately, female kindness
saved the trip for Brett and me: Beth and Dalia decided to go back with Alex. So,
we split up. Brett and me continued hiking the trail, while the others went back.
Before going to the park, we had done a web search on how long it usually takes people
to hike the trail. We had found a website on which a couple from BC describes how they
did the hike in 4 days
(link).
We had also seen a page on which a completely insane person talks about how he and
his dog did the loop in 2 days (link).
Since we were not completely crazy, but also did not want to be outpaced by 2 random
people from BC, Brett and me decided to speed up a bit and do the thing in 4 days. This
turned out to be very feasible, since on both the eastern and the western part of the
trail, you mainly hike in flatlands. Our second night, we spent on the northern side of
the park, at campsite 23 (?). The third and last night, we camped at campsite 17, around
6 hours from the park office.