Western Trent-Severn - Big Chute

I had never been to Big Chute in all my years of driving around Ontario. The interest there is that its not a lock per se, its what is called a "marine railway". Again, Parks Canada:

"Big Chute Marine Railway is a short drive from Coldwater. It is the only marine railway of its kind in North America. Big Chute has large grounds for picnicking and boater camping."

The concept here is that you navigate your boat up to one of the ends of the railway, wait for the structure to submerge into the water, navigate INTO the structure, the structure then LIFTS your boat out of the water on some straps, either climbs or descends the hill, goes OVER the road, and puts your boat back into the water. Wild stuff!

This is what it looks like up close - the spillway, the railway, the structure, me in the picture for scale.

The trailfinding to get there was less than successful. I planned out a route that would follow some power lines and end up just a few meters away from the railway but it was not to be on that day. It started OK with some shots just off the road on some "slickrock":

Thats my "ode to Moab", however, there isn't enough continuous exposed rock for any kind of decent trail, just outcroppings here and there. Shortly after this point is where the problem came up.

In doing my research, I got conflicting information. Google maps, on the hi-def satellite shot, clearly shows a trail continuing north along the power lines, meandering around lakes and bogs. My topographic maps however show the trail broken at a lake just about half way. My thoughts were that the satellite shot would be more recent and more accurate.

But when I got to a turn-off point I saw a sign that said "snowmobiles only". Usually this means that the trail will be crossing water somewhere and that its only passable in winter (frozen). So being late in the day I turned around.

What I'm going to do is go back there an upcoming weekend and try the trail going south from Big Chute to see if its broken. I did some more research and will be trying to find a second trail that is north of Big Chute and makes its way south.