The road to Barron Canyon is open in the winter, mainly for the logging trucks. Yes, you may not know this, but Algonquin Park is still actively logged! Drive carefully and with prudent speed along this road. It is sanded but there are icy sections.

It's a loooong way down. In the winter you have to be extra careful due to snow and ice along the top - all too easy to slip and fall to the bottom.

After exploring the rim of the Canyon I drove back along the road to Squirrel Rapids, where one can access the Barron River. From here I hiked back upstream along the frozen river to the mouth of the Canyon.

This photo shows the snowshoe and ski trail I followed - I didn't have to use snowshoes because the trail had frozen hard.

The numerous tracks to the right are from a wolf pack that I ended up backtracking (following their tracks back towards where they came from) right into Barron Canyon. I estimated there to have been 6-7 wolves in this pack.

Open part of the river near a portage. This is the kind of area you want to stay well away from when hiking frozen lakes and rivers in winter.

Wolf tracks in the ski trail across the packed snow.

Wolf scent markings on a small mound of snow. There were plenty of other wolf sign along the way, but you can browse the rest of this website to see more photos of wolf scent markings, scat, and so on.

The mouth of Barron Canyon. I had to turn around here due to time constraints. I could have continued on but I had about 6 kilometers to walk back already, and sunset was fast approaching.

This photograph illustrates very well the challenges of winter photography. Digital media has a hard time handling situations such as snow with a forested background, especially when overcast. I have post-processed many of these photos to bring out the details, but even so, it is still difficult to render the entire picture properly.

Another view of the mouth of the Canyon. Ditto the comment above about digital photos! Note the canyon and trees are fairly well shown, at the expense of washing out the snow.

As I mentioned above, evening was fast approaching. But I got back to my vehicle without incident.

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