Ontario white pines   Paul Jost
  Jul 31, 2003 17:47 PDT 

ENTS,

While it rained, I was searching on the web for old growth white pine, I
stumbled onto http://www.ancientforest.org and found the claims of the
largest old growth white pine stands in the world to be extremely appealing.
So, instantly, I thought that I should visit someplace new like those
described on that site. They are in Ontario northwest of Algonquin
Provincial Park and northeast of Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. This is only
one long days ride from my home. The stands are preserved in relatively new
provincial parks in regions called Mississagi - Bark Lake, Obabika,
Temagami, Spanish River, and Algoma Highlands, among others. The stands are
hundreds of hectares each, mostly 120-140 years old, but in some of the
stands, like the first two that I mentioned, ages reach 400 years. Island
shore cedars have been cored to 500 years to the point of decomposition.
Has anyone been there? I believe that Lee mentioned them to me a couple of
times. The better sites are on remote rivers or islands and were best
canoed to. Many now have logging roads to their edges that might make
access to the preserved areas easier. I was just wondering what if anything
that others may have heard of these areas.

Regards,

Paul Jost
Re: Ontario white pines   Lee E. Frelich
  Aug 01, 2003 08:54 PDT 

Paul:

Studies from these forests have been in the scientific literature, and I
have been reading about them for years. I did get to see a few of them at
an old growth conference during October 2001, at Sault Ste. Marie, but I
was on a bus tour, and so didn't pay attention to the driving directions to
get there. Alan Gordon and Bill Cole who are at the Sault Ste. Marie
Forestry Center could help us find them. The trees are old, and have high
H;D ratios, characteristic of white pine near the northern edge of the
range. One researcher at Sault Ste. Marie reported a white pine log with
550 rings in the area. They are very similar to the 25,000 acre stand of
virgin white pine in the Vento Unit of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area.

Lee
Re: Ontario white pines   paul-@direcway.com
  Aug 01, 2003 09:26 PDT 

Lee,

I was particularly interested in the Bark Lake old growth on the Mississaga Provincial Waterway Park. I think it was around 700-1200 hectare, if I recall correctly. It is claimed to have one of the highest densities of old pines (red and white) in the region and happens to be one of the nearest stands to our homes in Wisconsin and Minnesota. It does suffer from being just under 47 degrees in latitude. I think it is at roughly 82.5W 46.9N. On online maps, there appears to be a road going most of the way to it. Many of the other stands must be canoed to for quite a distance. The terrain on the online topographic maps is very similar to the Quetico/BWCAW from my memory. It looks like a lot of rocky areas with lots of various sized bodies of water between them, although most are creeks or puddles. It appears that a maze of dry land connects the drier, high areas. A GPS would definitely aid one in retracing their steps out of these labyrinths. The extreme amount of wate
r obstacles may be responsible for protecting the pines from logging. The online aerial photos show lots of fairly recent logging roads and clear-cuts in the vicinity of these stands. At least a decent amount of them have been preserved.

Paul Jost