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THE CAMPING STORY So when @astridadventure told me our tour..
🕑 Added 2023-08-18 15:19:19 +0000 UTC THE CAMPING STORYSo when @astridadventure told me our tour would be her first time in Canada and she wanted to explore - I was excited to show her some of my favourite things. Such as, the very Canadian stereotypical canoe camping - you rent a canoe, throw all your gear in it, find an island on crown land and set up camp - repeat each day til you're bored!
I chose to take us to the north end of the Georgian bay - absolutely picturesque full of rolling rocks typical to the Canadian Shield landscape. Rocks jutted out of the water and at random depths, covered in colourful lichen and the odd evergreen tree. We invited two photographers and another model to join us.
The first night, we camped out in the backyard of the canoe rental place and woke up to a message that the third model wouldn't make it - I think a mixture of cold feet + a sore back. The two photographers arrived, and as we went to get our canoes, we were told the wind was too high to ethically give us the canoes, so we spent the day hiking around and enjoying the area. One photographer sprained his calf earlier that week, so we took things easy.
This area has been getting extreme weather recently with the increase of climate change. Also, being on a "neck" between two large lake systems, the weather changes often and unpredictably. I knew this going in, as I had camped there two years before. Wind/ rain storms would appear out of nowhere, give us about 10 minute warnings to secure our stuff and hide in our tents. The storms would last 5-10 minutes, and we'd come out to blue skies and sun - as if it never happened.
That didn't happen this trip.
On the second day, we checked the weather and it was all blue skies. The canoe outfitters gave us our canoe, and the 4 of us headed out. Due to being a day short and weather predicting the wind to pick up at 5pm, we decided to just canoe for 2-3 hours and set up camp. As we arrived, the wind warning disappeared and we enjoyed the sun and photographed each other in the golden light of sunset. The camp ground was just mounds of rock, most of them were not flat but we found the flattest areas we could - mine didn't have much wind protection and was just on the edge of a slope, but it was flat and comfortable! We were checking the weather every couple of hours to keep updated with the changing weather. It said possibly a wind storm the next day at 5pm, we made plans to leave the site at 11am to be sure we missed it, cutting our trip 2 days short but happy with the photos we've already taken.
We woke up and saw that the storm had completely dissipated, and we only were expecting an hour of rain around 3pm. Cool - we can handle that. We decided to stick around and shot sunrise and smoked a lot of marijuanna in the high noon sun. The first raindrops came exactly on time, we checked the weather again and saw it would only last 15 mins, so we jumped into our tents and waited til it was clear. We got out and enjoyed the sun. With the rain, I started to have a paranoia that the rock my tent was on would get slippery and a gust of wind would roll me down the ledge and into the water. So I moved my tent to more of a slanted crack between two round rocks, and on top of some moss with some tree protection. It meant I might sleep in a puddle and not flat, but at least not rolling into the lake and drowning! I lit another joint, and joined the crew at the centre of the island for some snacks. We looked up and saw a dark cloud had appeared in the distance with what looked like heavy rain. We checked the radar...
3 giant storm systems had appeared and was heading our way, with winds up to 80-100km. We started to gather our things, I put a bunch of heavy rocks in my tent. I finished my joint and looked up - the cloud had gotten MUCH closer in just that ten minutes, and now had an ominous ring of clouds around it - something I had only seen twice before in my life, and both times it led to tornados, something a tent on an island can do little to protect from, and a canoe in a water would not outrun. My body went into a full body shake as myself and the photographer read the new weather, we looked at the others and instructed them to put everything they could in their tents, a storm was coming, good luck and we love you.
In hind site, I could and should have given them much more warning about the potential survival situation we were entering, but I was too scared and wanted to close my eyes in my tent and wish to be somewhere else. Luckily, I had a fold out flexible tent, so I was able to grab the top, and bend it to be completely flat on me with me laying on my back. I maybe was half a foot tall with this set up, and held on for dear life - worried that if I let my tent be erect, it would carry me away like a sale.
The darkness and rain hit first, and within seconds from the start, it felt like nighttime despite being 4pm. The wind started picking up.. and never settled or slowed down. I had never heard such a wind before, my hands cramped from holding my tent down as I heard the wind absolutely howl across our island and our lake. The adrenaline poured out of me but I insisted on staying still and flat. I kept listening for screams - knowing maybe I could hear Astrid and Adrian, but knowing Brian was too far (maybe 30 feet away) to hear him scream over the wind. My tent filled with water, and I just made sure my book was above water, but I was soaked. I worried that hypothermia might be a thing, but knew the storm system would only last 30-45 minutes, so I'd survive the cold and wet, but probably not if I moved. So I stayed and listened to the wind hoping I didn't hear a scream. The only light was that of lightning that cracked so hard, I jumped each time - and heard it only echo away, not towards us. Adrian had said he stuck his head out of the tent for a second to see the lightning not strike the ground, but come out of the clouds just by our island/ water, to then reenter the cloud.
After possibly the longest 30-45 mins of my life, the wind started to die down, and I poked my head out to see the storm had passed and those blue skies had reappeared, as if nothing happened. I ran out to check on Brian - the person I wouldn't hear scream and found his tent flattened. I screamed his name and heard a shaken response "I'm okay". His tent supports had snapped, and he grabbed all of them to hold to his body so he wouldn't get impaled by the wind, which then made him a tangled mess in the tent fabrics - but he was okay. I didn't stop to untangle him, I ran to Astrid and Adrian. Adrian was okay - and so was Astrid, though her tent had clearly lifted and moved two feet, despite her having the best wind protection. After seeing they were safe, I ran back to untangle Brian.
Once he was out, I ran to check on our canoes - immediately I saw at least one had fallen off the island and sank in the water - luckily the water was clear enough to say that. Knowing it probably had some damage to it from being picked up and thrown across the island into another part of water, I knew we wouldn't be able to take it out to return back.
Adrian checked the weather again....another storm system of the same size appeared and was heading our way, expecting to hit in 3 hours. It became clear that we either buckled down for another one and then called emergency in the morning, or we called it now and hope to be rescued before that. I called both emergency and our canoe rental place for advise. They asked triage questions - how much food we had, if we had risk of hypothermia - basically how long can we stay there if needed, as we began to hear flare guns going off of the other campers who just got fucked, we recognized with zero injuries, we probably were very well off and the last to be rescued.
With 13% battery, I danced between the two lines as I packed up my gear. The others followed suit - high on the adrenaline and fear of what just happened and what may happen again soon. We still hadn't located the 2nd canoe, so I went around the island, rock climbing and bush wacking to try and find it - with no luck. At some point Brian saw a boat heading towards us - thankfully he was wearing a bright life jacket - so the boat saw us quickly. It was the canoe rental place! They had taken their family boat to rescue us personally, knowing emergency would take a long time! Turns out, the head of the family was also a fire fighter, and was ironically in a stress management lecture when he got out call. Bonus - they had found a canoe in another bay and it was our second one!! It had been thrown way past our island, but somehow stayed afloat (probably hit more water than rock, unlike the one we found). We heard the radio going the entire boat ride back of other stories of stranded campers, but we got into our car and drove to the nearest hotel, and took a long day offline and out of touch, before our tour started again, full of photographers complaining we weren't replying to them fast enough.
We have the photos - and I plan to post some here, but man what a ride!!
