Stony Lake is a grasslands pond that lies in a hollow below a steep hill on the edge of the upper grasslands.   When the area was occupied by homesteaders between 1900 and 1925, they named it Stony Lake.   M. Scott built a homestead on the shores of the lake in 1914 but was gone by 1919.   Some of the walls of the old cabin were still there in the 1990’s but now there are only a few scattered logs.   On the grassland slopes above, sometimes called the “Thousand Acre Lease” was farmed (rye, oats, and wheat) by successive homesteaders and ranchers from 1890 through to recent times.    It was transferred from the Frolek Ranch to the Nature Conservancy of Canada in 2008.  Am old wagon track/road connects the grassland slopes from the forest edge on the north side to the fenceline on the south side.   We hiked up the track, then climbed an open slope to a fine viewpoint, looping back through open grasslands.

 

 

Along the old track are a series of ponds, now frozen over.   In the spring there were fields of wildflowers and ducks on the ponds.    We will return to snowshoe through here mid-winter.

 

 

Piles of stones were field markers for the homesteaders who farmed and ranched the grassland pastures.

 

 

From the slopes of the viewpoint hill, Stony Lake lay below the hill.   Beyond the lake looking northwest is Opax Mountain.

 

 

The area to the south is a wrinkled grassland shaped by glaciation.   Long Lake sits at the bottom of the trench between the hills.

 

 

Across the grassland slopes of Sagittata Hill, we can see beyond to the North Batchelor Range with Strawberry Hill across the valley and Tod Mountain in the distance.

 

On the edge of the hill at the top was an erratic, a boulder left behind by a glacier that covered the hills.   The erratic has been split by 10 thousand of years of the freeze-thaw cycle.

 

We hiked to enjoy the grasslands and the views of the area, then returned on a circuitous path, viewing more ponds along the way.

 

On the south side of this area is the Lac du Bois Protected Area and on the north side is the Nature Conservancy of Canada.   There are still some legacy fences to work around since grazing rights remain in place for the area, but this is a reasonable partnership to preserve the lands in their (mostly) natural state (and the fences block motorcycles, ATVs, and snowmobiles too).   The Nature Conservancy supports responsible recreational access (walking, hiking,birding, on-trail bike riding and other low-impact activities (which does not include dogs off-leash, motorized use, bonfires, etc.).

We will return in the winter for some low-impact snowshoeing once the snow is deep enough.

 

More Information:

• Lac du Bois Conservancy
• Stony Lake Tour
• Stony Lake Wildflowers
• Stony Lake, Close-Up
• Stony Lake Loop Snowshoe