Day Trippin'
The Highway 60 Blitz
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If you spend any length of time looking at the Algonquin map you’ll eventually notice that scattered along highway 60 are a small number of dead-end lakes (trust me, they’re there. I’ve spent a lot of time looking at that map). These are a handful of lakes just north and south of 60 that are connected to the road by their own personal portage and don’t offer much else. There aren’t any routes leading out of them, there aren’t any campsites on them … they’re just kind of there. Maybe they’ve got good fishing? Whatever the reason they exist, they’re on the map and they’ve got squiggly little lines connecting to them. And those squiggly little lines meant that at some point I was going to check them out.
That point, as it turned out, was the August long weekend last summer (2025), when I convinced my wife that she’d like nothing better than to drive along highway 60 with me for a morning while I ran each of the portages on my list (Who says I don’t know how to show a girl a good time?).
In total, I’d be visiting six lakes. Bud Lake, Brewer Lake, Lake St. Anthony, Little McCauley Lake, Bluff Lake and Jack Lake. I’ll be honest, this is going to be a quick report. We’re talking about maybe 10 kilometers of work and a couple of hours at most, including driving time. That said, it was a fun morning and I ran into a beaver on Little McCauley, so let’s dig in.
Bud Lake
Bud Lake connects to Highway 60 just before the east gate (or just after if you’re coming from the east). The portage comes out at a bend in the road, and there’s no real indication that it’s there apart from the sign which is a few feet back into the woods. There’s no real parking, either. Because of the curve in the road the shoulder gets a little wider near the portage opening, but that’s it.
This lack of parking presented us with a bit of a problem as our understanding is that you’re not supposed to park on the shoulder inside the Park. There are plenty of parking lots and pullouts that you can use, unfortunately none of them were all that close to the Bud portage. The closest, the Pine Lake access parking, would be about a kilometer worth of walking just to get back to the start of the portage. Neither my wife or I were excited about that, so she decided she’d hang out in the car while I ran to trail to Bud (not going to lie, I don’t think she’d been all that excited about the walk to Bud either).
The portage to Bud Lake is about a kilometer long. It’s a nice trail, with only a small bit of elevation change (according to my Strava). I was there and back in about 17 minutes, which included a stop at the halfway point to check out Bud.
Bud is a pretty little lake. The view south was gorgeous that morning, sunlight glinting on slightly rippled water under a clear blue sky. On the opposite shore from the portage put-in (so the south shore) there’s a nice hump of exposed rock that looks like it would be a great spot for a picnic if someone were to carry a canoe back there. And right beside the portage put-in was a cedar tree that some beaver had been sharpening its teeth on recently. I’d say that tree was maybe an hour’s worth of gnawing away from becoming lumber
Brewer & Lake St. Anthony
Brewer has its own pullout and parking area, but no obvious way to access the water. The parking area is about ten feet above the shoreline, and the nearby embankment is fairly steep. It turns out that there is a small footpath just on the other side of the guardrail near the center of the parking area. This is the best place to launch from, even if getting down there requires some careful foot placement.
It was funny being out on Brewer in a canoe. I’d driven by Brewer more times than I can count but had never paddled on it before. It was short work to get across to the Lake St. Anthony portage. The takeout is protected by a patch of lily pads and some tall creek grass that was waving gently in the morning breeze. The portage is tucked away just out of site of the highway on Brewer’s south shore and it was kind of nice how quickly you could forget the concrete river rolling by less than a kilometer away as we glided over the lilies and ground the bow into the mud of the takeout.
There’s a little bit of elevation on the p590 trail up to Lake St. Anthony. Nothing too challenging, and it was a nice path. It followed a small creek for a bit, and the trickle of water rambling through the woods was a welcome soundtrack to the walk.
Lake St. Anthony was quite pretty. The portage put-in area is surrounded by tall grass, and with a light breeze blowing across the water that grass was rustling like it was trying to sneak up on a herd of cattle (that … I don’t think that worked. Rustling grass. Cattle Rustlers. You see where I was going with it? You know what. I’m leaving it in. This is my blog and I’ll make as many terrible decisions as I want (which is also the founding principle of my tripping philosophy). We enjoyed a quick snack, then headed back for Brewer and the car.
Little McCauley Lake
Next up was Little McCauley Lake. The portage over to Little McCauley is on the other side of the highway from the Brewer parking lot. As Little McCauley is another dead end lake, my wife decided to hang out in the car while I ran up the portage.
The portage entrance is about thirty meters along the highway to the west of the Brewer lot, and well hidden by the nearby growth. From the road, it looks like the portage path is going to be a kilometer plus slog through dense brush. But that dense brush lasts for maybe five meters, and then you find yourself on a wide, clear trail through a very pretty forest.
The portage up to Little McCauley is almost 1300 meters, and it does throw some elevation change at you along the way. By the time I arrived at the water I was good and sweaty despite the relatively short run. Fortunately, Little McCauley was worth the effort. To be honest, the lake itself isn’t all that different from the others I’d seen that morning (although Jeff’s Algonquin Map does show some potential ruins along the east shore), but the beaver swimming back and forth right in front of the portage put-in was a great bonus. I took a few minutes to watch it work, then turned and headed back for the car.
Bluff Lake
Bluff Lake is a small lake on the south side of 60, just across from the Opeongo Road turnoff. Once again my wife stayed behind to guard the car from marauders and maybe catch up on some sleep, while I headed down to Bluff (this was my third trail run for the morning and while the distances were relatively short, my legs were starting to share their thoughts on how much more of this they were willing to take).
The start of this portage is guarded by some pretty aggressive raspberry bushes, which meant my legs got to add “is making us look like a feral barn cat’s scratching post” to “is making us run way too much” to their list of complaints. Fortunately the raspberry bushes petered out pretty quickly and left behind another decent path.
The highlight of this portage was a deep paw print in the muck just past the raspberries. I’m not a printologist, but judging by the chart of paw prints I just looked up on Amazon of all places, it was either a bear or maybe a badger? And I feel like there aren’t a ton of badgers roaming Highway 60 in early August. I spent the rest of the trip to Bluff having a spirited internal debate as to whether or not it was a great idea to be following what was apparently a bear infested path a kilometer into the woods while bleeding freely. I settled on, “maybe not my best idea, but I’m doing it anyways” and soon found myself at the Bluff Lake put-in.
Bluff is actually a pretty nice little lake. Unlike the others I’d visited that morning, the put-in was a relatively clean bit of shoreline. No muck or mud and a nice bit of solid ground to load the canoe. I could be convinced to come back this way, but only if I had a flamethrower for the raspberries and maybe a backpack full of bear spray as well.
Jack Lake
The final stop of the day was Jack Lake. I’d actually been to Jack a few times before, but always along the Hemlock Bluff hiking trail. There’s also a portage trail that leads off from highway 60 a few hundred meters west of the Hemlock Bluff trailhead, and I wanted to see how that approach compared to the hike.
Not all that well, as it turns out.
First of all, the portage was a bit tricky to track down. There’s a small pullout on the side of the highway that I assume is meant for anyone heading up to Jack by way of the portage instead of the hiking trail. You could park one car there, maybe two. From that spot, you have to walk a couple of hundred meters east along the highway before cutting up and over a small rock face. Like most of the other portages I’ve found along 60, the sign for this one is just back into the trees and relatively well hidden from the road. My wife had decided to join me for this last walk, and I could see her regretting that decision as we searched for the trail.
We did, however, eventually find the opening, and that hunt was easily the hardest part of the walk. The rest of the portage was clear, wide and actually quite pleasant. Jack Lake, from the vantage point of the portage put-in, was nice enough, but I have to say I much prefer the views from the Hemlock Bluff trail. We spent a couple of minutes taking it all in, then turned back for the car and, eventually, a quick lunch at the Canoe Lake restaurant.
And that’s it. A quick report for a quick trip. This was a fun way to see a few lakes that I probably wouldn’t have gotten to any other way. That said, I don’t know that I need to revisit any of them any time soon (although the ruins shown on Jeff’s Algonquin Map on Little McCauley might be enough to drag me back there). If you’re looking for a trail run from the highway, both Bat Lake and Track and Tower are better options than any of these portages, and while the lakes at the end of those carries are certainly secluded, I don’t know that that’s enough to get me back there.
Stay tuned. I’ve got another quick day trip report coming soon, and then it’s on to my Labour Day family trip and my annual fall buddies’ trip. For now, enjoy the snow and what has felt like a very extended trip planning season!
New Lakes: 6
Total Lakes: 6
Total Portages: 5
Total Portage Distance: 3.68 KM (x2)
Total Travel Distance: 10.71 KM
