Niagara Escarpment - Crawford Lake

Hi Blog! Sorry we have been away so long.  We have been helping our son's family relocate to Toronto, Canada. We've been doing a lot of grandbaby sitting in the big city while the parents went out apartment hunting. However, on Wednesday, May 28, 2014, we took a break from going downtown and finally got a chance to explore our campground neighborhood. We are staying near Campbellville, Ontario, which is about 40 miles Northwest from Toronto in an area of Canada referred to as Escarpment Country.

By way of background, the Niagara Escarpment is 450 miles long and runs predominantly east/west from New York State through Ontario.  It began to take shape over 450 million years ago as the bed of a tropical sea. During the millions of years that followed, the sediments were compressed into rock, mainly magnesium-rich limestone (dolostone) and shale. The progressive action of glaciers, water flows and the elements caused the more resilient dolostone to weather at different rates than the shale, resulting in the very dramatic land forms that we see today: sea stacks, karst formation caves, deep valleys, scenic waterfalls, rugged hills, and perhaps most remarkable, the spectacular cliffs along the Niagara Escarpment itself.

There are hundreds of parks and conservation areas all along the escarpment. There are six in our neighborhood. We are going to try and visit them all while we are here. Today we visited Crawford Lake. We stopped in the Visitor's Center to get more information. The ranger suggested that we start off by hiking and then come back to the Center for a 2:15 p.m. film and tour. There were several school groups visiting and it was a bit loud, they would leave at 2:00 p.m., so off we went. The first part of the trail to Crawford Lake is paved and is home to several wood sculptures.

Here is Kathy getting up close and personal with one of the residents.

Here's Dave taking a break on a beautiful sculpted bench.

Crawford Lake is meromictic, which means it has sequentially-deposited seasonal sediment laminations called varves at the bottom; these allow for accurate dating of sediment cores and makes Crawford Lake a prime site for archeological and geochemical studies. Using pollen analysis, reconstruction of the history of the area over several hundred years was possible. The pollen analysis revealed the agricultural history of the native Iroquoian Indians and the presence of a pre-European contact village. The lake itself is also very pretty.

The woods around the lake are very dense.  Some of the trees grow in spirals to give them more strength against wind and snow.

The protect the fragile wetlands around the lake, a boardwalk was constructed. Here is Dave demonstrating his Jedi light saber technique with his trekking poles.

After a quick loop around the Crawford Lake, we headed out on the Woodland Trail to look over the Nassagaweya Canyon. On the way, we hiked through a forest of ancient Eastern White Cedars. A tree with circumference of a few centimeters could be hundreds of years old. The 400 to 1000 year-old trees can be found growing right out of the rock of the Escarpment. The tough living conditions keeps them small and Yoda-like.

As we look across to the Milton Outlier, we can see several turkey vultures circling up and down the Nassagaweya Valley. Glacial melt waters cut a 4.5 mile channel in the escarpment leaving a large island emerging from the surrounding lowlands.  The island is called the Mount Nemo Plateau.

For part of our hike, we followed the historic Bruce Trail, Canada's oldest and longest marked footpath, which provides the only continuous public access to the magnificent Niagara Escarpment, a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve. Running along the Escarpment from Niagara to Tobermory, it spans more than 500 miles of main Trail and over 250 miles of associated side trails. The Bruce Trail is white blazed, just like the Appalachian Trail back home.

As we finished our three mile loop and headed back toward the Visitor's Center, we could see evidence of past farming and logging activities in the area.  These large boulders were piled up to make corrals and foundations for buildings.

Back at the Visitor Center, we started our tour of the Wendat-Huron village with a brief video. We then walked over to the site of the original village. A new village has been reconstructed based on many years of work by archaeologists, historical references, and First Nations oral traditions. Our guide shows us the basic framework of a longhouse. Each pole was placed in the exact spot where evidence showed a pole had been before.

Here is what the long house looks like when the construction is completed.  It is as close to historically accurate as they can make it, but the roof material is modern to protect the structure.

The inside is set up the way a traditional long house is, but without the over two years of supplies and personal belongings of the clan. Each of these long houses belonged to a particular family, with the oldest woman being in charge. Wendat women will live in the same long house their whole lives.  If they marry, their husband will come and live with them. If more generations are born, they just keep adding onto the long house. Each house in this village probably held about 30 people and there are five houses they found so far.

The site, which is administered by Conservation Halton (a nonprofit conservancy), has been well researched and documented and, because it is not commercialized, was very interesting.  The guide admitted that the conservancy made some mistakes early on in interpreting features of the long houses and village, but by working with local First Nations representatives, they are slowly correcting interpretive errors.  The trails are very well maintained and marked, but extensive efforts have been made to preserve and protect the wetlands and other wilderness areas and the flora and fauna in them.  We are looking forward to exploring more of the parks in the Niagara Escarpment.  There are several of them, and each features and protects a different feature unique to the Niagara Escarpment.