Tochi's Hut

I was discussing some of my camping plans this summer with some friends. One of them asked whether I'd heard of Polar Bear Provincial Park. The park, located in the northern fringes of Ontario, definitely has a cool name, so I inquired more. After reading official description from the Provincial Parks website, this park is apparently not for the faint of heart.

Some highlights:

Remote, and accessible only by air...

Wow, inaccessible parks. Sounds a little like Lake Chelan and Stehekin. So far so good.

The land is basically flat with a few inland ridges that indicate the location of former shorelines.

Okay. The land is flat. That's okay, there must be some interesting stuff to see.

The simple plant cover decomposes into the uppermost layers of the peat soils, bogs, and muskeg that carpet the terrain .. North of this invisible limit, no trees grow. South of the line, stunted willow, spruce and tamarack masquerade as scrub...

Maybe not...

In early summer, the tundra becomes an exquisite heath of plants in delirious bloom. Adding to the spectacle, the many ponds that dot the landscape turn rust, yellow, green, turquoise, black, ivory, brown, and other colours, depending on the plant micro-organisms and minerals in the water.

Eewwwwwww. "Rust, Yellow, Black, Brown..." Not colours I'm particularly interested in.

It gets better....

There are no visitors' facilities. The only evidence of human habitation in the park is an abandoned radar station, part of a former military defence line. It consists of squat metal buildings, oil tanks, radio towers, and a few radar dishes and a landing airstrip.

It seems like the Ontario Parks Ministry wants to keep people away instead of welcoming us with open arms.

Visitors to Polar Bear should be prepared for any eventuality. They should bring at least one week's extra supplies in case their departure is delayed due to bad weather.

They couldn't have made this any more explicit, except by posting a big wooden sign saying, "PARK CLOSED." So, anyone interested in a camping trip? Maybe Polar Bear 2009? :-)