The dramatic Death Valley segment of the Casque Isles Trail, which snakes along the Canadian north shore of Lake Superior, gets its name from a time when Ojibwe hunters perched on the surrounding hills to shoot moose and caribou below. Pictographs grace a rock face near Worthington Bay.
Despite the distracting beauty, be sure to watch your step. The segment features “some serious ravine climbs,” says Doug Stefurak, president of the Casque Isles Voyageur Trail Club. You will also navigate a shoreline trek on bedrock riddled with deep crevasses only 2-3 feet wide on the surface. “You have to be particularly careful if you have your dog along with you.”
A pedestrian-only trail, the Casque Isles Trail stretches for 53 km along the Canadian north shore of Lake Superior, beginning in Rossport and ending at Terrace Bay. The groomed trail welcomes hikers, backpackers, snowshoers and backcountry skiers, depending upon the season. It is divided into five segments, each with its own access point and varying in length, difficulty and terrain.
“Some people do one or two segments in their first visit and come back the following year to do another segment,” says Stefurak.
The Casque Isles Trail is part of Ontario’s Voyageur Trail system, which is 600 km long and runs from Thunder Bay east to Manitoulin Island. It parallels the route of early fur-trade voyageurs along the shores of Lake Superior and Lake Huron.
The name “Casque Isles” comes from a 1823 description of “tall, casque-shaped islands’’ (helmet-shaped) by geologist-physician Dr. John Bigsby as he observed from Pic Island.
Every segment has outstanding wilderness highlights, from pictographs and raised beaches to lookouts at varying elevation. The highest is Mount Gwynne Lookout at 260 metres above Lake Superior. On some segments, like McLean and Lyda Bay, hikers will come upon boulder fields the size of a football stadium.
“They look like waves of rock, rounded smooth boulders covered with grey lichen,” Stefurak says. “A few boulder fields are near Lake Superior—one with a cobblestone beach—while others are a few kilometres north of the lake.”
While trekking in the cobbled beaches near the lake, you will come across a few of the mysterious Pukaskwa Pits, dug between 5,000 and 10,000 years ago. Who dug the pits, and why, is still unknown.
The shortest trail segments are the photogenic Lyda Bay and Mount Gwynne, each 6 kilometres long with estimated hiking time of 3-4 hours. The longest are Schreiber Channel (13 km, 5-6 hours), McLeans (12 km, 4-5 hours) and Death Valley (10 km, 6-7 hours). For those on multi-day hikes, there are plenty of coves with campsite beach areas.
