Lake names are important. The minute you see that name on the map you start to form a mental picture of the lake, whether you mean to or not. Sometimes, that mental picture is mundane or exceedingly accurate (or both! Hi Wet Lake!). Sometimes that mental picture is nowhere near reality (There are like zero big cats on Panther Lake. Not even an overfed housecat). Sometimes that mental picture might put you off visiting a spot you absolutely should be visiting (Clamshell is about as uninteresting a name as I can think of, which is too bad because it’s attached to a very interesting lake). And sometimes, well sometimes that mental picture is just too good to pass up.
So let’s talk about Mudville Lake.
The Route
Mudville is a small, dead-end spot just east of the Shall Lake access point. I’ve been past there once before, in the spring of 2017, but that time around we were racing the rain over to Mcaskill Lake (and, as it turned out, the snow) and we didn’t have time for a detour up to Mudville to check it out. This past August, with much less snow on the horizon, that detour became more appealing.In fact, this time around, it wasn’t a detour at all. It was the destination.
My chance to check out Mudville came thanks to what is becoming an annual trip with family and friends. Last year, a group of us settled on Booth Lake out of the Shall Lake access point for two nights. This year that same group decided to revisit the Shall Lake access, but instead of heading west to Booth we went east (and north) to Shirley. Despite the new direction, the goal was the same: to find a decent spot to set up a base camp for a couple of nights and see how many marshmallows we could send to their final destination before we finished.
Day One
We arrived at the Shall Lake access point (#17) around midday. This was a Friday, and already the lower parking lot was packed. That’s not the end of the world, there is an upper overflow lot, but the lower lot is right on the water whereas the upper lot is a bit of a hike. Weirdly, for someone who spends a good chunk of their summer hiking through the woods with a canoe on his shoulders, I am very much opposed to hiking through the woods with absolutely nothing on my shoulders when parking is involved. Fortunately, and thanks mostly to my wife’s diligence in monitoring the comings and goings of various trippers, we managed to grab a lower lot spot and all was right with the world.
The Shall Lake access sits, as you might imagine, directly in between Crotch Lake and Farm Lake. My understanding is that the access used to be on Shall Lake itself, which is just south of Crotch Lake, but then someone at the Park office said to themselves “you know, I really want to make Drew write the words “Crotch Lake” a couple dozen times in his trip reports” and the office was moved (or maybe they just realized that the narrows in between Farm and Crotch is way more convenient for launching your trip, who knows?). You can access Farm Lake from the parking lot and Crotch Lake from the permit office across the road. We were starting on the Crotch side, so we got our boats and gear down to the narrow, weedy beach there, took the obligatory group photo in the 3/4 of a second where people weren’t looking anywhere but at the camera, and set off.
Crotch Lake
Crotch to the start of the Shirley Lake portage is not a long paddle. We weren’t trying to set any speed records, and I still think we were only on the water for about 20 minutes before arriving at the portage. But just because Crotch is a short paddle, doesn’t mean it’s not a nice one! I really like the look of Crotch Lake. It’s a shallow lake, that winds from basin to basin with a narrows at the midpoint and islands dotting the landscape. There are a few campsites scattered along the shoreline in the north part of the lake, and more than a few on the east side in the south part. If I was looking for a spot to get in some quasi car-camping, I’d consider one of these paddle-in sites. I don’t now how great the swimming would be, the shoreline wasn’t not weedy, but otherwise it would be a nice little spot to spend a night or two.
But not for us. Our destination was still ahead, with a not insignificant p1050 in between us and it.
As far as kilometer-plus carries go, the portage between Crotch and Shirley is actually quite nice. It’s very well maintained, easy to follow and more or less flat (there’s a slight rise from Crotch to Shirley, but it’s barely noticeable). You know how I can be so sure? I walked the damn thing six times that trip.
Sigh.
First things first, the kids were rockstars on this carry. My son had a pack that was almost as tall as he was, my older daughter had a converted MEC suitcase strapped to her back and my younger daughter handled her own backpack and our kitchen bag. Unfortunately, even after I’d loaded them down like pack mules, we still had too much gear to make it across in one trip. On the plus side, this gave me the opportunity to really appreciate the scenery along the portage as I went back for our residual gear. That said, there’s only so much scenery appreciation the Crotch to Shirley portage requires, and it’s not six trips worth (huge thanks to the group we passed going the other way on the portage who helped some of the kids get their gear across on the way back for their own double carry).
Shirley Lake
Once we’d finished getting to know every root and rock along the portage, it was time to check out Shirley Lake. Shirley is a big lake. At its most narrow its probably ½ a kilometer wide, and it’s about 4 kilometres from top to bottom. It’s also very pretty. The southeast part is home to a moderate cliff area and the western shore rises quickly and steeply away from the water. The shoreline is heavily forested to the west, and a mix of sand and shallows to the east. It seems to offer a little bit of everything; all we needed it to offer was a decent sized campsite.
And herein lay our first problem.
For such a big lake, there aren’t that many campsites. According to my map, there were 8 in total, scattered around the shoreline. There were meant to be three in the south basin where we had entered Shirley and five more towards the north end of the lake. As we paddled out from the portage we saw the signs for all three sites on the far shore. The best looking of the bunch was already taken. The other two didn’t seem all that appealing; even from a distance they looked small and closed off. In case you’re wondering, when you’re travelling with a large group, small and closed off is not ideal. There was a fourth spot along the shore that my wife spotted, just north of the portage over to Ryan Lake, that wasn’t listed as a site on my map but that looked like it would be decent thanks to a combination of a beach-y shoreline and seemingly large footprint. As I said as we pushed off from the portage and headed north to check out the sites at the top of Shirley, too bad it wasn’t listed as an official site, because it would have been great (remember this, because I promise you my wife does).
We had heard from the folks we passed on the portage that Shirley’s sole island site, located towards the top of the lake, wasn’t half bad. We set that as our destination and began paddling up the west shore. This side of the lake is walled off by a very tall, very steep hill, with no campsites or really any features at all to break the rather dense tree line. The monotony made for a longer seeming paddle, and it felt like a while before we were pulling up to the island site and discovering that it was, at best, aggressively meh.
Look, it’s not like this is a terrible site. It’s got a cool stone bench and, uh ,it’s on an island? Otherwise, it really wouldn’t have worked for our group. There are a couple of tent spots, but only one that would be remotely big enough for one of our two massive circus family tents. It’s also a pretty enclosed site, which is not my favourite. The view out to the water was obstructed at best and the entire thing felt kind of dank. Anyways, we were looking for a home for the next two days, and this wasn’t it.
So we got back in the canoes.
Now we had a choice. We could head north to check out the three sites in Ancona Bay at the top of Shirley, or we could double back and grab the awesome looking beach site we’d passed on our way up to the island.
Right, the beach site. AKA, the site we should have stopped at on our way up Shirley.
There is a beautiful beach site on the east shore about halfway up Shirley. Even from across the lake you could tell it would probably be great for kids. In retrospect, we should have just stopped there on our way up to the island, but we didn’t, and now we had another kilometer and a half or so of paddling in front of us to double back.
And the wind was picking up.
You know what’s fun? Tacking on a few bonus kilometers in increasingly choppy conditions. You know what’s even more fun? Arriving at the awesome beach site, that had been empty when you passed it on the way north, and discovering that someone else has arrived to claim it in the half hour since you went by.
That’s fun.
So now we had another choice. The group who had beat us to the beach site had just come from the north end the lake and told us that the sites up there were large and free (and buggy!). But that meant turning around and paddling almost three kilometers into a rapidly strengthening headwind. Or, we could ride the wind back down to the south part of the lake and settle for one of the uninspiring sites down there.
We took a group temperature check and decided that settling wasn’t just for the people of Catan. No one had much appetite for turning around yet again, and we figured we could make do for a night with whatever the southern sites threw at us. We kept our bows pointed south and left the beach behind.
I was out in front with my older daughter and her friend. As we approached the Ryan Lake portage we passed by the clearing in the shoreline that my wife had pointed out an hour and a half ago as we were loading our boats at the Crotch Lake portage. You know, the one she thought might be a good campsite but that I pointed out wasn’t on the map so must just be part of a portage? The one we didn’t bother to check out because I was so sure it couldn’t work? The one that had a great beach area, tons of flat ground, a, wait, is that a fire pit? and a … (oh crap she’s going to kill me) … a campsite sign?
Yeah, that one.
Here’s the thing. Remember how that site wasn’t on my map? Well, here’s an incomplete list of other things that wouldn’t be on that map: The Apple Watch, Tiktok, Donald Trump’s Presidency, Jose’s bat flip, Star Wars episodes VII – IX (that’s not such a bad thing), two of my three kids (that’s a bad thing) … why aren’t these things on the map? Because they didn’t exist yet. Because the map I was using was last updated in June 2014. And a lot has changed since 2014. Including the establishment of a very much official campsite right beside the portage over to Ryan Lake.
So, yeah, here’s an idea, if the map you’re using is a decade out of date, maybe take a couple minutes to check out the up-to-date official Park map before you head out to see if anything has changed. You might save yourself (and your spouse) some aggravation.
It turns out that spot was pretty much ideal for our needs. It’s big, it’s flat and there’s plenty of room for a gaggle of kids to run around. It accommodated our two massive tents easily, along with a third smaller tent for our daughter and her friend. (It also accommodated a few deposits of dog poop from whoever had used the site before us, which was less ideal). It was a short walk from the site to the Ryan Lake portage, which was perfect because our day trip plan the next day took us to Ryan (and beyond). In other words, it was great. If only someone had said something earlier.
Once we were out of the boats and set up, the collective mood improved quickly. The rest of the evening passed in a pleasant glow of firelight, marshmallows and kids’ laughter. The site was big enough and clear enough that the kids could play tag and various games without running into each other (well, without running into each other by accident) or tripping over roots and rocks. And, it was a good thing that the ground rocks weren’t a hazard, because the airborne ones certainly were.
Maybe I should explain.
After dinner, but before the sun went down, we got to the business of tidying up the site and setting up a bear hang for the evening. In case you’re unfamiliar, a bear hang is where you hang your food to keep it out of reach of bears (and other critters) not where you hang bears. (Usually). Whatever it is you’re hanging, you’re going to need to find a convenient tree and get a rope up and over a sturdy looking branch. I find that this part of the process, the getting the rope up and over the branch part, usually provides me with a stellar opportunity to look tremendously uncoordinated while I fling one end of the rope as high as I can and invariably miss the branch, and probably the entire tree, because the rope isn’t heavy enough to do what I want (sure, blame it on the rope Drew).
The good news is that there’s a simple fix to this unweighted end of the rope problem, and it’s to make that end of the rope weighted. Tie a rock or a stick to the rope and odds are it’s going to fly a lot better. Which is exactly what our group did when we went to prepare the bear hang. First one of us tied a stick to the end of the rope and fired it up there. Where it got kind of stuck. Then another one of us tried throwing the stick the other way to get it unstuck, which only stuck it further. Finally, a rock was tied to what was left of the rope in the hopes that the extra weight would bring everything down. It did not bring everything down. What it did do was leave a decent sized rock hanging juuuuuust out of reach from the ground, dangling over the site like the world’s concussion-iest pinata.
And with six kids tearing around the site we couldn’t leave a random rock some place where it might remember gravity at any minute and land on someone’s head.
The rock had to come down, but no one could reach the rock (or the rope). Enter my buddy, a shaky looking log round and a soon to be ex-paddle.
I took a wilderness first aid course this past spring. It was a good course. They crammed a whole lot into a single weekend. I came out of the course feeling both slightly more confident in my ability to help out in case of an emergency on trip, and much more aware of how little I actually know about first aid. I thought back to that course while I watched my buddy balancing on that wobbly stump, swinging his paddle back and forth at a baseball sized rock. Mostly, I what I was thinking about was if it would be the section on splints that would be more useful some time in the next five minutes, or the one on head wounds. Fortunately, it was neither! Turns out I would have been better off at a paddle making retreat, as my buddy’s paddle blade snapped in half after one particularly solid connection with the rock.
You know what? I just spent about five hundred words on this story and I don’t even remember if we ever got that rock down. I do know that no more paddles were broken, and no one got smacked by a falling rock, so everything must have worked out in the end.
Once that bit of fun was past, my wife and I paddled out on the now still water to watch the sun set over the western shore. The three girls followed in another canoe, and it was awesome watching them paddle around the lake on their own.
You know what else was awesome? The massive, and massively ambitious, spider that built its web across the path leading to the portage that night (for reference, that path is wide enough to drive a car along). I nearly stumbled into its web as I was getting ready to hit the tent for the night, but fortunately whatever material it was using to spin that net was super reflective and it lit up in my headlamp’s light.
As I stood there watching the spider circling round and round, edging ever closer to the center of its net, I could tell you I was thinking about how beautiful that web looked in flashlight’s beam. The strands shone like diamonds and glittered with the first hints of evening dew. I could tell you about the creeping sense of wonder I felt as I thought about how delicate and yet strong that web was. How this small being was building something so intricate, so precise, and doing it by instinct. I could tell you I was thinking about all those things, but mostly I was thinking about this.
Day Two
It was a misty start to day two. The sky was uniformly grey, the air damp. Isolated columns of not-quite-rain not-quite-mist drifted across the water, moving listlessly like the last stragglers at the back of a zombie horde (All of Algonquin! Come for the camping stories, stay for the zombie references). Despite the damp start, it didn’t have the feel of a gloomy day. The mist was light, the clouds more like cotton candy than concrete. It looked like it was going to clear up at some point, so we went ahead with our plan for the day, an out and back trip to check out Mudville Lake.
To get to Mudville we had to pass through Ryan, Big Red and Shrew lakes. This meant three portages, three paddles and, although we didn’t know it at the time, a couple of liftovers. We ate breakfast, packed our day bags, found our Casey jerseys and set off for Mudville.
The portage between Shirley and Ryan is just over half a kilometer long and is basically a road. It’s wide, it’s clear and it’s level. The only slight curveball it throws at you is a fork in the path right before the portage crosses an access road where you need to hang a left rather than continue straight. Don’t worry too much about this one. There’s a yellow marker showing the way to go, and you’d have to be pretty oblivious to miss it.
I missed it.
Fortunately, it’s not like the righthand path drops you off a cliff or into an alligator pit (or into an alligator pit at the bottom of a cliff). It crosses that access road a little further along and you can get back on track there.
Ryan Lake
Once we had all made it across the portage (I was the only one who went the wrong way), it was time to start paddling. Ryan Lake is a mid-sized lake with a high concentration of campsites along its shoreline. To put it in perspective, Ryan’s about ¼ Shirley’s size, but it’s got almost 40% more campsites (40% is a much more impressive number than 3, which is the actual number of extra campsites compared to Shirley). I like Ryan Lake and I could see staying there on another trip. There are a few decent spots available, and the only real drawback would be if all the permits were booked it would feel crowded. Granted, that’s a significant drawback, but for a shoulder season trip, or even mid-week mid-summer, Ryan would be a decent option.
Big Red Lake
The sun started to poke through the grey while we paddled, and by the time we arrived at the Big Red portage there were strips of blue in between the clouds. The p230 over to Big Red was fine. I dunno. It had more climbing than I expected given the height of land on the portage is only 8 meters above Ryan’s elevation, but other than that it wasn’t all that memorable. Also not all that memorable? Big Red Lake. I don’t know if it was ironic naming week for the Algonquin Park Lake Naming Committee’s when they came up with that name, but Big Red Lake is neither big nor red. If it were accurately named it would probably be Small Grey Lake, That Is Also Kinda Weedy. Regardless, it wasn’t long before we were across Big Red and tackling the p545 over to Shrew.
Unlike the other two carries on this route, this portage was a bit of a challenge. It’s narrower than the others, overgrown and rocky in places, and ends with a few muddy/mushy spots at the Shrew end that would have to dry out a bit before you could call them soft. The put-in at the Shrew end was cramped, certainly not big enough for all three of our boats to load at the same time, and windy. I got a good core workout trying to hold the canoes steady while the others channeled their inner tightrope walkers and clambered along a very slippery log and into their seats.
Shrew Lake
Once everyone was settled, our reward was a paddle across Shrew Lake into the teeth of an out of nowhere headwind. Shrew isn’t all that big, but the wind wasn’t going to let that stop it from getting a full head of steam. It was particularly tough coming out of the portage put-in. It got better as we got closer to the north shore, dying almost completely by the time we reached the narrows that connects to Mudville. We took a quick break, had a floating snack, then headed on towards Mudville.
We had one final obstacle to overcome before we made it to Mudville. There’s a thin spit of land in between Mudville and Shrew that has to be lifted over. On the plus side, the liftover is less than a canoe length, so it’s not like you’re adding another portage. On the negative side, that liftover is home to some very pokey bushes just waiting to take a swipe at your legs as you’re manhandling the canoe across. But, eventually, all three boats made it across and soon we were paddling triumphantly through a lily pad choked narrows and into Mudville Lake.
Mudville Lake
Our plan was to find Mudville’s campsite and stop for lunch. While the stop for lunch part of that plan was easy enough, the finding Mudville’s campsite part was not. Why? Well, once again my out of date map maybe wasn’t the best thing on which to build a trip plan. Turns out the Mudville campsite was taken out of service years ago. There’s no marker on any of the current maps, no campsite sign on the lake and you can’t book a permit for Mudville. Not on the map, not signed and not bookable? This was probably all information that would have been useful as we were planning our day.
While the girls and I did eventually track down the spot where we think the Mudville site once stood, it wasn’t a very appealing place for lunch. There were trees down all over the place and not much in the way of views or even nice spots to sit and eat. We decided to head back to Shrew and stop on the site there which a) we knew existed because we’d seen it on the way through and b) seemed to have less of a “post tornado apocalypse” vibe than the Mudville one did.
While I was slightly concerned that we’d have a repeat of the day before and discover the site taken in the short time we’d been gone, we got luckier this time around. The site was still empty, and it had some decent spots to both prepare lunch and then eat it. We took about an hour to relax and enjoy the site, then headed back the way we came.
Ryan Lake (Again)
By the time we started back, the sun had come out and the day had warmed up. Once we were back on Ryan Lake, the day was legitimately hot. The older girls and I decided to check out Ryan’s campsites as we paddled through, while the other two boats carried on with the goal of getting a swim in sooner rather than later. Of the sites we saw (and we saw all of them except two), there were a couple that were good, a couple that were decent, and a couple that I wouldn’t bother with unless I was trying to convince the people I was with that camping is terrible.
My favourite of the ones we visited was site 9. It’s towards the east end of Ryan, at the top of a short hill on the north shore. It’s got tons of space, a nice view, and feels a bit more private than some of the others on the lake. At the other end of the spectrum was site 10, site 9’s neighbour to the east and the campsite equivalent of a term paper that someone started writing at 11 pm the night before. It’s there, it counts, but it’s a mess. The site is overgrown, and while it’s got a decent sized footprint, most of that footprint is uneven. The firepit is just a loose collection of rocks gathered in a haphazard circle reminiscing about that one time someone lit a fire in them a few years back. The tent spots weren’t obvious, and the shoreline was overgrown and weedy. I dunno. You could stay here, but you could also coat yourself in honey and set up your tent in a garbage dump. I don’t know why you’d want to do either, but they seem like equivalent options to me.
After we were done with Ryan, we headed back to the campsite on Shirley and joined the others in an afternoon swim. The kids spent the rest of the afternoon playing on the site, swimming and paddling around in front of the beach. Dinner that night was a treat. I don’t usually talk about the food I eat on trip because I’ve got about the most boring meal plan you’re ever going to come across. My entire goal when it comes to food on trip is to minimize dishes. I hate doing dishes. This usually means granola (dry, of course) for breakfast, PB and honey wraps for lunch and some kind of dehydrated bagged meal for dinner. Then hit repeat for the rest of the trip. My wife, fortunately, is a much more imaginative cook than I am, and she had decided that we were going to try burritos for our night two.
To quote Janice: Oh. My. God.
This may have been the best meal I’ve had on trip. We used precooked rice, peppers, refried beans, salsa and shredded cheese all wrapped in a tortilla and heated in the pan. I know for most people the idea of cooking food on trip isn’t revolutionary, but this was the culinary equivalent of my stomach storming the Bastille. It turns out dinner on trip doesn’t have to taste like salt with added salt, who knew? (I didn’t even mind the dishes! Much).
Fog Lake
With a belly full of burrito and a few minutes of daylight still ahead of us, I convinced the two oldest girls to hike up to Fog Lake with me before sunset. Fog is a very small lake just west of Shirley. And when I say we hiked up to it, I mean up. Fog is almost 60 meters above Shirley, but the portage to get there is only 300 meters long. I think the technical term for the angle you have to hike at to go up 60 meters while travelling 300 meters laterally is “ugh”. We didn’t take a single step that wasn’t above the one that came before. We weren’t quite scrambling on all fours, but it was close. Fog Lake, when we arrived breathless and sweatier than a 300 meter portage should warrant, was pretty enough. There’s a tangle of downed logs where the portage ends, and a nice view to the (not that) far shore, and that’s about it. I’m fine with the fact that we went there to check it out. I’m also fine with the fact that I’ll likely never go there again. Fog Lake everyone!
After the Fog Lake Odyssey people started to wind down. Once the sun disappeared, the tents beckoned. My buddy and I stayed up a bit chatting by the fire, but before long I was crawling into my sleeping bag. The next day was our last, and I was hoping for an early morning so I could get a bit more exploring in around Shirley before we left.
Day Three
I woke early to a perfectly calm morning. The sky was clear, the water was flat and the southeast corner of Shirley Lake was calling my name (but not in a horror movie ghostly voices from the woods kind of way). There were three campsites and a set of cliffs all bunched together down there, and I wanted to check them out. I paddled south, the ripples behind my canoe the only disturbance on the glass smooth water.
The first campsite was only a couple of minutes paddle from our site, just on the other side of the Ryan Lake portage. This was one of the campsites I thought we were going to end up on that first day after striking out at the beach site. I’m glad we didn’t. It’s a small, closed in spot. There was barely room for one tent, let alone three. If it had been the only option I think there’s a good chance some of us would have ended up camping on the portage (and there’s a good chance my wife would have ended up in a hotel somewhere). The next campsite south was better. Bigger, with nice views and a good footprint. It would have worked for our group, apart from the minor fact that there was already someone camped on it that day. The final campsite, at first blush, seemed to take a page out of the first’s book in that it was relatively small and relatively enclosed. However, what this campsite had that the first one didn’t, was its very own set of cliffs, and they were awesome.
There was a path leading out the side of the site, rising a short distance to what almost seemed like a secondary site at the top of the cliffs. There was room up here for a couple more tents, and some great views north on Shirley. I wandered around the top of the hill for a while, picking my way down to various ledges and lookouts to see which had the best view. I finally decided that they all did, and plunked myself down on one to watch the water for a while.
Sadly, I couldn’t stay there forever. I could see activity starting up on our site, and I knew I had a lot of packing up to do before we could head out (packing five people for two days is so much more work than packing one person for ten days). By the time I was back at the site everything was in full swing, and the next couple of hours passed in a blur of packing, re-packing, then re-packing some more (while we were packing up the kids were out in the canoes again, paddling around and having a great time. I swear their paddling improved a ton in only two days. Makes me excited for how good they’ll be after our week-long trip next summer (that was a test to see if my wife is still reading this)).
The Return Trip
Finally, it was time to head back. The return trip to Crotch and the access point was uneventful. The portage went smoothly (I mean, we were experts at it by now), and the paddle south on Crotch was easy. We stopped just before the access point bay for a floating snack and to enjoy being on the water for a few more minutes before it was back to reality. But, eventually, reality won (it always does). The pepperettes were gone and our cars were waiting. We paddled the rest of the way to the access point, going under the bridge in between Crotch and Farm so we could pull our boats out at the parking lot instead of the permit office, and that was it. Trip over. We packed up our cars, at some much-needed post trip Doritos, and started back to civilization.
OR DID WE?
P.S. Billy Lake
Hey, look, it’s a bonus lake!
Billy Lake is a standalone lake just south of the Shall Lake access point. It’s the Shall Lake equivalent of Solo in the Star Wars universe, except Billy Lake isn’t terrible so the analogy kind of breaks down there. Billy has its own parking lot and access area, so we drove the short distance from the Shall Lake lot to the Billy lot and the kids and I wandered down to check it out. The path from the parking lot is short, and it ends at a muddy area that’s mostly covered by a boardwalk. I say mostly covered, because my son managed to find a spot that was very much not covered by the boardwalk and ended up with a very heavy outer layer of mud all over his foot to go alone with a very wet inner layer. I don’t think Billy Lake was a winner for him. For the rest of us, it was quite nice! There are a few campsites on Billy, and I imagine it would be a good destination if you were looking for a backcountry campsite with front country access.
Billy Lake appreciated (or unappreciated for the mud covered among us) it was now really time to head home. We got back in the car, ate some more post trip Doritos, and started back to Civilization.
OR DID WE?
We did.
Stats
New Lakes: 3
Total Lakes: 13
Total Portages: 9
Total Portage Distance: 4.98 KM
Total Travel Distance: 27.4 KM
*A huge thank you to Jeff from Unlostify Maps for letting me use screenshots from his new Algonquin map in these trip reports. I can’t tell you how excited I am for people to see this map. The level of detail is incredible and some of the innovations they have come up are going to have a huge impact on the way people plan trips. Can’t wait to see the final copy.