Silent Lake Provincial Park: My oh, My! Marvellous Mushrooms
Silent Lake Provincial Park 1589 Silent Lake Park Road Bancroft, ON K0L 1C0, Canada
Paddling along Silent Lake, Ontario Canada
Delve into over 19 km of hiking trails and 17 km of mountain biking trails before unwinding at the serene lookout over the motor boat-free Silent Lake. This park offers two sandy beaches and walk-in campsites.
Trip Report:
Silent Lake has campgrounds with walk-in sites at Pincer Bay and Granite Ridge and was the reason I chose this park. That and it’s a short drive from Toronto. Car camping gives a great opportunity to test things out so the major theme of the trip was camp food! I wanted to try some pantry-stable recipes from scratch to see if they would be viable for backpacking.
| Type | Frontcountry | |
| Toronto Drive | ||
| Duration | ||
| Campground | Pincer Bay | |
| Site | 57 | |
| Season | Summer (July 2021) |
Day 1: Settle-In
Site #57: this was a great campsite! We had heavy rainfall this trip and it had drainage with most puddling happening where the cars are parked. Neighbours aren’t too visible (one side is sloped) and you can beeline to the water tap through a direct makeshift trail.
Camping Reservations: (here)
Campsite #57, Pincer Bay campground at Silent Lake Park
Park Map: campgrounds and hiking trails
Smokey Nachos
The first meal was fully loaded nachos cooked in a cast iron dutch oven over a fire. If you need an easy meal to throw together the first night when you’re tired after the commute, this is it! Black beans, ground beef, sliced jalapeños with gooey tex-mex cheese over crispy tortilla chips.
Camp meal: campfire nachos for dinner
Testing out using a packing cube as a pillow
Day 2: Silent lake Paddle
We decided on a hearty bannock breakfast … a raging success! I prepared the dry ingredients in advance and put them in a burnable paper bag (to use as kindling later). Ghee is stable at room temperature so we used that as our oil this trip since we didn’t need to leave it in the cooler. The dough wasn’t too sticky to deal with and crisped up nicely on a pan (we used the back of the dutch oven lid).
Ingredients for the bannock breakfast: dough, tomatoes, avocados, basil and eggs
The bannock dough mixed in stainless steel food container
Campfire Bannock Recipe:Prepared just a little in advance, this simple recipe offers a warm comforting taste of fresh bread in the while camping the great outdoors. Lightweight and simple, this is backcountry-friendly! Ingredients: |
| Servings: 6 |
|---|
Instructions:
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Build your own breakfast; top the bannock with your choice of protein and veggies. Scallions make for a great topper
Paddling Silent Lake
I would describe this as a “haunting” paddle, but in a good way. Silent Lake had sparse gnarled trees juxtaposing the thickets of evergreen and black bottomless (which ended up not being that deep) water. Common Loons, Great Blue Herons, and various woodpeckers can be found here, and if you’re really lucky you can catch Bald Eagles or Ospreys hunting the fish that inhabit the waters.
Silent Lake is home to white pine trees which emit a pleasant aroma
Common lilies are grasses at Silent Lake
Never Underestimate a Home Cook
Poke bowl from Chef W - the raw fish keeps well when frozen solid and kept in a high quality insulated cooler. This is a special high protein meal that’s really fancy but a camping staple for him. Of course, it’s best prepared early into the trip! This bowl features tuna, salmon, shrimp, an assortment of vegetables on a seasoned bed of rice.
Camping meal: poke bowl with thawed sashimi and vegetables on rice
Day 3: Bonnie’s Pond Trail
So many ‘shrooms! Bonnie’s Pond is a short trail (3km), this has moderate terrain but I’d say generally easy traversing for an experienced hiker. What we thought would be a quick walk in the park ended up having an unexpected abundance of life all around us - keep your eyes peeled at the ground because we’re talking about fungi!
The trail head of Bonnie’s Pond is full of ferns
Not a fungus, this mysterious sighting is a Ghost Plant (Indian Pipe) and contain chlorophyll and cannot photosynthesize hence its white colour
A view of the pone. You can sight beavers, deer, and moose (if you’re lucky), all while peeking through tall pine and hemlock trees.
Holy moly mushrooms! Massive mushrooms. Mini mushrooms. A multitude of marvellous mushrooms! I’d never seen so many different types in such a small area in my entire life, and that really hints to how biodiverse this little trail is. This was the trip that got me to go buy a mushroom guide book.
How to Photograph a Mushroom for Identification:
The entire fungusand surroundings (substrate)
The top
The base (and stalk)
The underside
Something for scale (a ruler or reference object)
It sounds like a lot, but just envision you’re taking a 3-D scan of this fungus with your camera. A high resolution video is an great way to do this. I didn’t do photograph them properly this trip so it’s challenging to positively ID the gallery below.
Can you help identify these mushrooms?
Fleeing a thunderstorm
At the lookout point we saw the tell-tale signs of rain clouds rolling in. They were shifting and moving quickly, and rumbling could be felt so we knew it wasn’t just going to be a downpour, but a thunderstorm. And like clockwork; there were sudden gusts of wind and a temperature drop.
We legged it. We only had about 1km to get to the trailhead but thunderstorms can roll in fast, and the sky darkened the faster we ran.
We made it to the car with a nano second to spare before the rain pelted us with brute force. It was a quick drive to the campsites before we heard claps and we sheltered under the tarp we’d set up yesterday.
CInnamon Rolls After Thunderstorms
We stayed under covered for a short while; thunderstorms although menacing don’t last very long. We waited for about half an hour. I brought “The Secret World of Weather” by Tristan Gooley on this trip and skipped to the Storms chapter (of course).
“The Secret World of Weather” by Tristan Gooley
Sprouted alfalfa seeds for meal toppers. Tip: keep a mesh-style lid for easy drainage and aeration
Camp recipe experiment #2! Cinnamon rolls are one of those delectable cozy treats you dream of when camping so I gave a shot at making it from scratch. The ingredients were simple enough to prepare and transport.
Mixing the wet into the dry ingredients
Flattening the dough, adding the brown sugar filling
Baking the cinnamon rolls in a cast iron dutch oven
How did it turn out? It … wasn’t good. Well, more like, it wasn’t what we were expecting, to be put optimistically? Other than the fact that they were deformed (no problem, our tongues can’t see), there wasn’t enough filling that it mostly just tasted like well done fluffy bread. We feasted anyway driven by our calorie-deprived stomachs.
Warning: the cleaning! The dough is extremely difficult to clean so next time I’d mix and prepare everything in paper bowls and plates to burn afterwards. Scrubbing glutenous sludge off kitchenware while camping isn’t what I’d call a jolly good time.
The advantage to making dough from scratch is that you don’t need to refrigerate any of the ingredients. But I think store-bought cinnamon roll dough stored in the cooler could be better for the fuss.
Pinterest fail: campfire cinnamon rolls
Hmmm ….even our charming lantern couldn’t save this one
Day 4: Lakehead Loop
Homebound after a fern-y hike! Several signs by the Lakehead Loop (1.3km) trail taught the area is a fern haven where common species include Ostrich Fern, Lady Fern, Christmas Fern, Bracken Fern, Cinnamon Fern, and Interrupted Fern. These ferns contribute to the park's diverse plant life and can be observed in various habitats throughout the trail.
I snapped a few photos to bring home with me so I could look them up later and log them in my nature journal.
Final Thoughts
Two things I learned; 1) rain does not ruin a camping trip (if you’re prepared), and 2) campfire cinnamon rolls are harder than they look. 3-nights was plenty at Silent Lake. You would still feel satisfied with just a weekend trip but I was glad we had the extra day to experiment with so many things. Not shown, but we had brought some gear to test too (a Firebox Nano - which you’ll see often in future trips) and pocket guides. This is a great park for the curious.
For our camping gear list, click here.
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