Rain, rain... we went away

Well, if I wanted some rain for the hike on Kirby Road and didn't get it, I got it in spades this Saturday. It would have been nice if we could have averaged out the two.

My friend Larry, who also likes to hike lost places, got in touch with me and said he was game to explore this weekend. As it turned out, the unseen but world champion of finding lost places, Bassmentbeats, had sent me a new assignment just days earlier. It was in Halton, north of Milton, just up on the escarpment in the vicinity of a quarry. In fact, from the looks of things, the reason the place has been so extensively abandoned in recent years is that the quarry plans to devour the place. Exploring it in the short term looks to be the only option... soon, it won't be there to explore, it seems to me.

Bassmentbeats said he'd traveled the road before, back when people were still living in the homes at the southern end. Today, half the road's blocked off and the houses that once were there are gone (there are still some nice ones being lived in at the north end of the road, however). We parked the car and set out, in what was initially a light rain, to explore what BB figures was probably a campgrounds.

The temperature was in the mid-teens; comfortable enough, even with the light rain. The uncomfortable element, really, was the wind. If it hadn't been for that, we probably could have persisted longer, even when the rain really kicked in. But at least initially, it wasn't so bad. We turned off the road and onto the driveway leading into the grounds. We noticed some fresh truck tracks entering from a south turn, and assumed they must have been affiliated with the quarry since there's no other way to get to that end of the road. We followed them along, leaving tracks of our own in the mud as we explored.

It wasn't long before we came to some hints of what had been... some plastic chairs, a desk, and a ruined canoe. The former items were neither here nor there, but the canoe strongly suggested some kind of camping activity. There were no rivers or major lakes handy, just a couple of ponds BB had seen and shown us using GoogleMaps.

We came to a fork in the road and followed the left fork down to a concrete-bottomed artificial lake. It was full of algae blooms and its central drainage system had seen better days. The place has probably been abandoned for 15 or 20 years at this point. As we stood looking it over, Larry spotted headlights through the trees. It was the truck coming back from whatever mission it had been on. We were either hidden by the copse of trees or they just didn't care; they drove on without stopping.

It was right around then, though, that the rain began to pick up. I usually carry an old outer shower curtain with me for times I want to sit back for a while in the forest without getting all covered in leaves and dirt. We found a couple of trees and attached the curtain to the branches and stood under it. It was fine at first, but the rain quickly became semi-torrential, and eventually soaked through the fabric. It wasn't doing us any good just standing there, so we elected to do an Apollo 13 and abandon the mission to get back to base. It pretty much rained on us the whole twenty minute walk back to the car. We both remarked to one another that it really wasn't the rain, or even the saturated clothes, that bothered us. Even the ground water and the mud were comfortably warm enough as we made our way through them. No, it was the wind, blowing over our sodden shirts that was the downer. Larry even said that, had there been no wind, he probably would have be in favour of continuing exploring in the rain. But it was just unpleasant enough to chase us back to shelter.

We had to sit naked in the car for about half an hour while things dried out, at least a little. We listened to the radio tell us about the rain and watched a couple of other lost cars come to the end of the road and turn around. Eventually, we got back into our clammy things and headed into town to get something to eat.

Above is a beautiful Anglican church in Milton. Larry liked the church so I took the shot for him.

Incredibly, we found Breyden's in Milton. Breyden's is a place I've been a number of times with P-Doug down at Jane and Bloor. I had no idea it was a chain. We ordered the nachos and a couple of sandwiches; it was more than enough to satisfy us. I did manage to dump my pop on the table and partly onto Larry at one point, which only added insult to injury, but we both found the irony pretty humourous. The young waitress must have wondered what she'd done to have a couple of wet, bumbling assholes visited upon her. We tipped apologetically.

And that was it. Come more favourable weather, we're intending to go back and extend the mission.

Adventures on the Humber

Over on Flickr, a fellow got interested in my shots of the abandoned stretch of Second Line in Mississauga. He contacted me and asked some questions about some of what I'd seen. In return, he sent me (and ultimately, my buddy P-Doug) on an intriguing expedition last Saturday to what appears to be an abandoned camp site on the Humber River, just the York side of the York-Peel border.



We parked up on Cold Creek Road and trekked down the the narrow gravel road into the valley. The gravel was rounded and at one point P-Doug slipped on it and scraped his left knee and shin. But it didn't seem to hold him back any as we started our explorations...



The first thing we encounted was a large swimming pool. You can see from the trees growing out of it that it's been abandoned now for decades. The side weren't straight; they sloped inwards. P-Doug noticed the pool had no liner, so must have been an early, leaky model inground pool. He also noticed it was trimmed in a colour of sea green popular in the late 50s and early 60s. There was a lifeguard tower dumped into the pool, as well as, of all things, an oven.


We came across a badly ruined car. P-Doug guessed it to be an AMC model of some kind, probably from the 1970s. It was a hideous metallic green — the parts of it that were still painted, that is.


A bridge once crossed the Humber here. It was probably a farmer's bridge, continued in use by the campgrounds (assuming that's what this place was). In this shot, I'm standing on one abutment, looking across at the other.


This is an infrared panorama of the Humber River. The bridge abutments are at centre-right.


We're not quite sure what these are. They're firmly cemented into the ground. P-Doug took a guess that they were the anchors for some sort of cable suspension bridge on the Humber. Given how close it is to the other bridge, I have my doubts, but I'm hard-pressed to guess, just based on this, what they might have been for if not that.


Following along the path, we came to fork. We headed up the left branch. As it turns out, we came back via the right.


At the top of the hill, we found this large wooden structure that had utterly collapsed. It even had pointed palisades. What was this? It reminded us both of The Forest Rangers, a popular show on Canadian TV in the 60s and 70s. As a matter of fact, the show was filmed somewhere quite nearby, just north of Kleinburg, in the Humber River valley.


To the north was a large open field. P-Doug felt pretty sure it had once been a farmer's field, and he felt for the farm family that had to clear it; he remarked that he was glad they weren't around to see nature reclaiming all their hard work.


By the time we were at the farmer's field, we'd been at it about an hour and a half. P-Doug's knee was beginning to scab over, and he indulged me in this sensationalist shot.


Heading back, we found ourselves at the top of a rise. Looking down, we saw this beautiful vision of the Humber below us. That was pretty much we we decided most of the balance of the afternoon would be devoted to soaking in the river. So, we doubled back and crept along the bank, which on our side was cut sharp and deep, till we found a managable approach.


This is a shot of my shadow as I stand in the Humber. Actually, this is well over an hour after we started swimming. I suddenly got the urge to take some shots of the location, though it was risky to the cameras involved. But I'm glad I did!


P-Doug in the distance, sat in the Humber near the bend where we just sat back in the beautiful water, chatting across the river from opposite banks.


Me, standing in the shallows.


Me, standing in the deepest part; came right up to my nipples. P-Doug was wondering how deep it was, so in spite of the fact I was carrying my Rebel XT, I waded in to show him. I quoted George Armstrong Custer, who once rode his horse into a river to answer the same question: "This is how deep it is, general."


The sunbeam marks the spot where I sat chest-deep in the water on smooth rocks for over an hour, feeling the cool water rush by and the warm summer sun on my back.


P-Doug suggested I take a 360-degree panorama and put it together with AutoStitch when I got home. I did, and here it is. I suggest you click on this one to actually see it.


After a bit, I took my XT back to where we'd stripped; I asked P-Doug if he wanted his DC4800. He did, so I brought that back to him. Then I realized I should have brought my G1 too, to take infrared shots. So, back I went for a third time. This is an infrared shot of me about to step back into the Humber from the landing where we left our clothes.


Looking downstream from the landing, taken from a few yards out in the river.


Who will watch the watcher? Well, me. Here's P-Doug in infrared, shooting the north bank in colour.


Looking upstream to the bend; a huge heron came out of the trees and glided along the river earlier, when, unfortunately, I was not armed with my camera. Oddly enough, I believe I accidentally filmed the same bird upstream a couple of hours later with my S80.


Overhanging tree. Looks like a great place to dive from. I didn't try. :)


On our way back, we crossed a little stream where this poor butterfly was upside down. Its wings were damaged. P-Doug lifted it from the water and put it on a tall blade of grass. I don't know what became of it, but hopefully it was better than slowly drowning.


We got in the car and drove a five minutes into Bolton, where we bought something to drink and tried to use what seemed to be the on payphone in town... which was inside the locked door of a closed donut shop. After that, we decided to investigate one more location — a missing bridge at the end of the 11th Concession, which is in a straight line with Cold Creek Road, where we parked earlier and where the trail we took begins. This view looks south where the traffic-accessible part of the 11th Concession ends.


A bit further down and around a curve, you find yourself back at the Humber. Off to our right, we spotted the abutments of an old, now demolished, bridge. I stepped into the river and left P-Doug on the north bank, wading in to get a better look. This is the abutment on the south side.


This is the abutment on the north side, the side from which we'd come. The water here was fairly deep; it was dampening the cuffs of my shorts.


I forded the river and climbed the hill on the south side to the south abutment, where I made this panorama of the view over the south abutment, looking north across the Humber.


Just downstream, east from the abutment, was this abandoned piece of farm equipment.


Crossing back, I stepped into the river and immediately sank about 6" into the mud. I was glad I was barefoot; sneakers would never have come clean, and even my sandals have deep grooves in them that would have drank the silt and been a bugger to clean. As it was, the mud was completely off my skin before I was done fording to the north side.


A 180-degree panorama of the Humber, north at centre, with P-Doug waiting for me on the far side. I was standing a couple of yards out int ot the river when I took this. At this part of the river, the water's only about a foot deep, but it's strewn with rocks.

There are other things I still want to see, and I wouldn't mind setting back in the Humber again here. I hope we'll return.