Algonquin’s ice headed north for the summer early this year. Ice out was officially declared as of April 10th. For those keeping track (which I assume is everyone because if you’re not keeping track of Algonquin’s historic ice out dates than what are you keeping track of?), that ties the third earliest ice out date since the Park started monitoring this back in 1964. That’s good news for people who have been staring longingly at their paddles since they hung them up back in November, probably less good news for anyone who is at all concerned that all three of the record ice out dates for Algonquin have come in the last ten years and who are wondering what that means about our climate going forward (probably nothing good). If, like me, you sit somewhere in the middle of that Venn Diagram, the early ice out means it’s time to strap the canoe on the car, throw just a touch of existential dread into your overpacked trip bag, and start camping.
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The Route
Joining me on this first trip of the year was my buddy Gordon, who you may recall from many previous trips. As far as trips go, this was going to be a simple one. We only had one night, and we decided we were going to take it easy. It was mid-April, the temperatures were on the right side of freezing, but only barely, and our forty-something bodies hadn’t sat in a canoe in six months. Why push it?
After spending some time poring over the (fantastic) new Algonquin map from Maps by Jeff, we decided on Kingscote Lake as our destination. Why? well, for the same reason that George Mallory wanted to climb Everest (which is obviously an equivalent feat of outdoor adventuring), because it’s there.
Kingscote Access
The final few kilometers of winding gravel road leading into the Kingscote access point were, for the most part decent. There were the usual bumps and ruts, but nothing too exciting. Well, almost nothing too exciting. There was one spot where an overflowing roadside pond was doing its best to wash out the road. The road was putting up a fight, but if you ask my vehicle’s alignment after I hit the first washout area without realizing just how deep the puddle was going to be, the road was losing that battle. I wouldn’t want to be heading through there after a hard rain, but fortunately our forecast for the day had nothing but blue skies and just a touch of potential frostbite.
Kingscote and Algonquin
Kingscote Lake is a newer addition to Algonquin, The area was rolled into the Park in 1961. You wouldn’t typically call something older than the Leaf’s Cup drought “new”, but relative to the parts of the Park that were founded in 1893, it’s a pretty good description.
As part of the act that added Kingscote and area to the Park (The Algonquin Park Extension Act), hunting and trapping in Bruton and Clyde townships (which are the townships that cover this part of South Algonquin) was grandfathered in. In other words, this area is one of the parts of the Park where you might want to leave your deer antler helmet in the car at certain times of year.
We arrived at Kingscote Lake just after noon. The sun was out, the sky was clear and the water rippled with just the slightest hint of a breeze. It was pretty much exactly what I’d been imagining since Gordon and I started talking about this trip, and the lake was just begging us to get the canoe off the car and start paddling.
Of course, paddling meant switching out of my usual trip stuff in favour of enough neoprene to carpet The Skydome. Why? Because as inviting as the water looked, it also looked cold. Really cold.
Here’s the part where I remind everyone, including myself, that the ice going out doesn’t mean the water has warmed up all that much. This time of year the average temperature of the lakes in the Park is going to be in the mid single digits. At those temperatures a person will start to lose dexterity after less than five minutes in the water. You’ve got somewhere between half an hour and an hour before you lose consciousness and your expected survival time is under three hours (and that’s being generous). Dumping in the middle of an Algonquin lake in the middle of April can be deadly. Which is why you should never find yourself in the middle of an Algonquin lake in April! That doesn’t mean no paddling, but if you do go out, be smart about it. Hug the shoreline. Make sure you’ve got a dry bag with a complete change of clothes and an emergency blanket with you. Have a way to start a fire. Be aware of the conditions and don’t challenge Mother Nature. If the wind is up, even if it’s the kind of wind you wouldn’t think twice about in July, save the paddling for another day and go for a hike.
Okay. Enough of that. Let’s get to the good stuff.
Kingscote has 15 paddle-in campsites scattered around its shores (along with a handful of cottages). It also has a mini-campground with six walk-in sites. I’d booked us one of the walk-in sites for this trip on the basis that the weather for the next morning looked a bit iffy. As nice as it would have been to set up more than 100 feet from a parking lot, I didn’t want to risk having to paddle out in sketchy conditions. Also, I had packed so many sleeping bags and superfluous jackets that I wasn’t convinced I could fit everything into the canoe.
We decided to get set up on a site before heading out on the water. The walk-in campsites are all clustered along a short path to the west of the boat launch. There are three on the south side of the path and three on the north side. The south side sites, numbers 1, 3 and 4, have no water access. The north side sites, 2, 5 and 6, are all on the lake. That said, site 6 is the only one with a decent view. So site 6 is where we set up shop. (You’d have thought we’d have our pick of sites but, somewhat surprisingly, we weren’t the only people camping at the access point. There was another group already there. They’d taken site 1, which … I dunno, you can back your truck right up to that site, but that’s the only thing I can see that it has going for it).
Once we had the tent up and I’d crafted a large and excessive nest out of blue foam and sleeping bags, it was time to get on the water!
Kingscote Lake
We paddled north from the access point, hugging the western shore. The paddling conditions were perfect. There was a slight breeze, but just enough to ripple the water. Rather than being any kind of challenge, the wind felt like a welcome complement to the day. Everything from the lap of the waves to the warmth of the sun to the freshness of the air fit together to remind me that I was back on the water with a paddle in my hands and a new route in front of me. That newfound appreciation for the wind wasn’t going to last long, but for the moment everything was right with the world.
Kingscote is a coolly laid out lake (congrats Algonquin Park Lake Design Committee!). It’s got a wide southern basin connected to a not-quite-as-wide-but-still-wide-enough northern basin by a not-at-all-wide narrows in the middle. It looks a bit like one of the dancing brooms from Fantasia, or maybe the talking feather duster from Beauty and the Beast. Some day I will make a reference that doesn’t relate back to an animated Disney movie. That day is not today.
It’s about three kilometers from the access point to the portage over to Big Rock and the Minnow Lakes in Kingscote’s northeast corner. Our plan was to paddle Kingscote, then hike up to the Minnow Lakes to check them out. We figured that would be more than enough to stretch our paddling muscles without overstretching anything on the first day.
We passed a few campsites on the western shore as we made our way up. None of them looked all that special at first glance, but we figured we’d stop on the return trip and check them out in more detail to see if we were missing anything (spoiler: we were not missing anything). It was quick work getting up to the narrows where we crossed to the eastern side before continuing north.
The Minnow Lakes
It wasn’t long before we were arriving at the portage and getting ready for the first carry of the season. That portage out of Kingscote can take you to two destinations. Big Rock Lake is a 1.3 KM carry to the east. Lower Minnow Lake is about 570 meters to the north. We were heading up to the Minnow Lakes, and happy enough to be avoiding a 2.6 KM round trip.
Since we were coming back that way, we stashed a couple of pieces of gear near the takeout that we didn’t want to carry up to the Minnows with us. Why carry more than necessary, right? This seemed to be proven almost immediately to be a good decision as it turns out that my canoe had somehow gotten significantly heavier over the course of the winter (and no, it had nothing to do with the canoe carrier getting significantly weaker over that same period). That portage requires a bit of uphill, and I was well aware that I hadn’t carried a canoe for six months by the time I got to the other end. It didn’t help that there was a blowdown across the path about 100 meters from the end, giving us a chance to practice our doubles canoe acrobatics as we manhandled the canoe through the branches.
Lower Minnow Lake was quite nice. There are no campsites here, but there is a nice rocky spot on the north shore that looks like it was made for a picnic lunch. It’s a wide shelf of rock that slopes gradually towards the water. Would be a great spot to hang out for an hour or two if you’re looking to get away from Kingscote.
The portage from Lower Minnow to Upper Minnow is only 290 meters, but the first fifty or so of that is fairly uphill and I was glad I didn’t have a canoe on my back for that one. Upper Minnow looked a lot like Lower Minnow in that it’s small, has no campsites and has a couple of rocky spots along the shoreline that look like they would work for a break. I imagine both of these lakes might be popular for fishing, because otherwise I’m not sure why you’d head up there (unless of course you had some silly goal to visit every canoe route accessible lake in the Park).
Paddling Kingscote
Once we felt we’d sufficiently appreciated the Minnow Lakes we retraced our steps and set off for home. As we paddled down Kingscote we stopped to check out a number of the sites that we’d bypassed on the way up. The overall verdict: with one exception, meh. The exception is site 7, the northernmost site on Kingscote and one I would happily go back to another time. It’s a great spot, sitting on a large rock face with a nice view down Kingscote, a little (emphasis on little) hidden beach-y area and room for at least a couple of tents. The rest of the sites? See the above “meh”. For the most part they’ve all been plugged into the shoreline with varying degrees of success. Site 8‘s only viable tent spot turned out to also be an extremely viable swamp thanks to the spring run off. Site 9 wasn’t bad, but only in the sense that it would be a reasonable stopping point for one night on an interior trip if you didn’t have any better options. The west shore sites were also all pretty underwhelming enough that, as we arrived back at our walk-in site for the night, we agreed that we were staying on what would be our second choice site of the sites we’d seen on Kingscote, which is not what you’d expect for a parking lot adjacent campsite.
Back on the site we spent some time collecting enough firewood to get us through the night. Then we collected a bit more, just to be sure. One of the benefits to being out in mid April is that finding wood is not an issue. We were able to get a pretty decent stack in place and then it was time for dinner.
I had brought along one of my trusty bags of salt (some people may know it better as Alpineaire’s Pasta Roma). I’m a big fan of these kinds of dehydrated meals. I hate doing dishes and with one of these bags the only thing that needs washing is your spoon. They’re simple to cook too. Just add some boiling water to the bag, let it sit for 10 minutes and voila, you’ve got enough salt (and other stuff I guess) to keep you going for the night. Of course, as simple as they are to prepare, you do need that boiling water and by then my bottle had run low. No problem. I could filter some more using Gordon’s gravity filter, get the stove going and be arm deep in pasta and red sauce within fifteen minutes. All I had to do was find the filter and, uh … oh.
Crap.
It was at this point that I turned to Gordon, who was still sawing away near the fire pit, and asked a question I already knew the answer to, but really really hoped I was wrong about:
“Hey, Gordon, did you pick up the filter back at the portage?”
Paddling Kingscote ... Again!
Remember how we dropped some gear at the start of the Minnow Lakes portage? Well, that gear happened to be our water filter and Gordon’s camp chair, both of which were going to come in handy that evening. I’d stashed them off to the side of the path in case anyone else came along, saw them and thought maybe the Portage Fairies had left them a present. Unfortunately, I’d done such a good job of stashing them that not only did all those theoretical Portage Pirates not see them as they looted their way across to Big Rock, we also missed them on our way back from the Minnow Lakes.
We spent about five minutes trying to decide if Operation Gear Grab could wait until the next morning, but with uncertain weather coming in, paddling conditions that still seemed reasonable at the moment and enough daylight left that we knew we could get up and down Kingscote safely, we decided to go for it.
Know what’s fun? Realizing you have to add another 7 KM of paddling to your day at around 5:45 pm. That’s fun. Know what’s also fun? Realizing that in a fit of hyper efficiency you’ve already tied your canoe back on top of your vehicle on the basis that you had zero plans to paddle again that evening and were unlikely to be paddling the next day due to the aforementioned iffy weather. That’s super fun.
Once we got the canoe off of the roof rack, we retraced our steps from earlier in the day. The wind had picked up since the afternoon. Not enough that I thought we were putting ourselves at risk, but more than enough to give us a nice tailwind as we paddled north. Weirdly, once we made it into the narrows in the middle of Kingscote the wind disappeared, and when we came out the other side, still heading in the same direction, it had turned into a sidewind that wanted to be a headwind. The net result was that we had a tailwind and a headwind both coming and going from the Minnow portage.
We made good time getting back to the portage, and the gear was exactly where I’d left it. So at least we beat the Portage Pirates I guess? We grabbed the filter and the chair, turned the boat into the wind, and headed home. We made decent time getting back down the lake, and the whole misadventure only ended up costing us about an hour.
Back on the site, with the canoe back on the car, we settled in to a very pleasant evening. Dinner was delicious and the fire was warm(ish). It got cool as the sun went down, but it was nothing that seven layers (in Gordon’s case) and a heated jacket (in my case) couldn’t handle. I don’t think either of these approaches to keeping warm would be viable on a backcountry trip, my jacket was big enough to fill a dry bag on its own, and 7 layers seems like a lot of layers to cram into a stuff sack, but for some quasi car camping? They worked great.
We shut things down around 11 and crawled into the tent, wondering just how chilly it would get overnight. The answer to that question was indeed chilly, but it didn’t matter. Between my Scout Troop’s worth of sleeping bags and the blue foam mats that Gordon had brought for each of us to put beneath our sleeping pads, I was quite comfortable. I’d never realized what a difference those blue foamies can make. Gordon, who has done his share of winter camping, is an old pro at keeping warm when it’s cold out, and he swears by them. After that night I have to admit he’s on to something. It’s too bad they’re so bulky. A more compact version would be a great addition to an early spring or late fall backcountry pack (and, hey, if anyone out there knows of a more compact version, feel free to let me know!).
Heading Out
I slept well that night. We woke up to clouds moving in and the wind picking up, but no rain and really no sign that the rain would be arriving any time soon. Regardless, we didn’t have anything else we wanted to do at Kingscote, so we packed up and loaded the car. Before heading out I did a quick walk through of each of the walk-in sites, just to see if I’d missed anything from the day before. I hadn’t. Site 6 remained my favourite of the bunch, and the only one I’d choose to stay on over a paddle-in site (and that would only be during the shoulder seasons).
And that was it! First night of the year in the books. I don’t think I’ve been camping in April before; I could get used to it! This was a great way to kick off the year (reminded me a bit of my Basin Lake base camp from a couple years back, albeit much earlier in the season). My tripping season starts in earnest in a few weeks with the annual May trip with my buddy Mark. We’ll be doing a loop up from the Shall Lake access through the week leading into the May long weekend. I’m looking forward to that. Should be better weather than our trip last year (no snow is a low bar to hurdle), and we’re covering some ground I’ve been wanting to see for years (including White Partridge Creek, which is 13 KM long and, at least on the map, looks like an alder sanctuary).
Thanks as always for reading and enjoy the start of the season!
Stats
New Lakes: 3
Total Lakes: 3
Total Portages: 4
Total Portage Distance: 1.72 KM
Total Travel Distance: 18.7 KM
Griffin Bell - June 26, 2017 - March 18, 2024
On March 18 of this year my daughter’s friend Griffin passed away after a nearly lifelong fight with cancer. He was six.
Griffin was an incredible friend and an inspiration to everyone who met him. Together with his family he raised both money and awareness for childhood cancers in the hopes that other families will someday be able to avoid what theirs has gone through. The biggest fundraising event of their year was, and still is, the CN Cycle for CHEO (for those not from the Ottawa area, CHEO is the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, the hospital where Griff and countless others in the region have received exceptional and compassionate care). This year, the Cycle is happening on Sunday, May 5th. My daughter Zoe is fundraising for Griff’s Gang and both she and I would appreciate any support you could send her way.
I’ll be blunt. This has been a tough one. Watching Zoe process losing a friend has been one of the saddest experiences I’ve gone through as a parent. Knowing that the world doesn’t have Griff and his light in it anymore is one of the saddest experiences I’ve had period. And that’s just what I’ve been feeling as someone at the periphery of Griff’s orbit. I can’t begin to imagine what his family is going through, and will continue to go through for years to come. What I do know is that the fundraising Griff’s Gang does matters to Griff’s family and it matters to Zoe. If you’re at all able, please consider clicking the button below. I’d really appreciate it.
Hi there, thank you for your comment but I did want to note that you’re not actually permitted to use drones within Algonquin’s boundaries. Still a great spot for a photo shoot, just not the aerial kind!