Every once in a while there will be a moment on trip where I’ll stop for an instant, take a deep breath, look around and realize that Canoe Trip Planning Drew must really hate Canoe Trip Doing Drew. Then I’ll spit out the cloud of mosquitoes I just inhaled, ram the canoe through the tangle of downed branches that made me stop in the first place, and continue on towards whatever lies ahead. Oblivion, maybe.
Huh. That’s a bit grim. Maybe I should try this again.
My spring trip is always a highlight. For the past few years it’s been a great way to usher in the canoe tripping season, and it’s taken me to parts of the Park that have been on the “I’ll get there someday” list since 2016. In 2022 I crossed off the northwesternmost corner of the Park and in 2023 I made it to and through what I think of as the center (spiritually if not geographically) of the Park. This year was no different. My buddy Mark and I planned an 8-day route that covered some familiar ground, but also added in a whole bunch of unfamiliar ground as well.
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The Route
Our goal was to get from the Shall Lake access point to the Lower Crow River and back, more or less in one piece. This was an ambitious route. While the overall distance wasn’t terrible (on Maps by Jeff’s Algonquin map our route clocked in at about 125 KM or about 15 KM per day), it turns out that not all kilometers are created equal. This particular route included long portages, longer portages, a visit to the Alder Gardens of White Partridge Creek and a trip through whatever circle of Hell the Aylen River below McKaskill Lake represents. Some pretty rapids and awesome ranger cabins, too!
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- The Route
- Day 1
– Farm Lake
– Kitty Lake Ranger Cabin
– Booth Lake - Day 2
– North of Booth
– The Presto Portage
– Round Island Lake - Day 3
– Round Island to Little Dickson
– The Sundassa Slog
– White Partridge Lake - Day 4
– White Partridge Creek
– The Lower Crow River - Day 5
– Woodcock Lake
– Lavielle & Dickson - Day 6
– Animoosh to Hidden Lake
– McKaskill Ranger Cabin - Day 7
– Vireo to Roundbush
– The 10th Circle of Hell - Day 8
– The Road Home - Trip Stats
Day One
We arrived at the Shall Lake access point in the early afternoon. This was the Monday after Mother’s Day and as we both like being married we figured leaving on Mother’s Day, or just before, was probably a bad idea. The parking lot had a few cars in it, and one trip that was packing up to go out. Otherwise, it was very quiet. I dropped by the permit office to confirm our route and see if there were any advisories to be aware of. There were not, unless you count the Permit Officer looking at our route and saying “Oh, so you guys are going on a hike” as an advisory.
Actually, yeah, that’s an advisory. Or a prophecy. Whatever you want to call it it was an accurate description of what was headed our way.
Well, headed our way starting Day Two. Day One was, unusually for us, a very sedate start to the trip. This easy start was deliberate. Last year we went from zero to 60 on the first day, travelling almost 20 KM from Kiosk to Erables with some upstream creek travel and a bunch of uphill carries thrown into the mix. I was exhausted by the time we hit our first night’s site, and I’m convinced that was a big contributor to my back going on strike and derailing the last segment of the trip a few days later (my defective sleeping pad and our epic battle with Maple Creek probably didn’t help either).
This year I was determined to ease into things. Our goal for the first night was Booth Lake, which is only about 7 kilometers from the parking lot. Along the way we’d be passing through Farm Lake, Kitty Lake, a stretch of the Opeongo River and only carrying across a couple of short portages. I figured even my jerk of a back couldn’t complain about that route.
Farm Lake
We pushed off under low hanging clouds and a sky that didn’t exactly promise rain, but wasn’t saying no to the possibility either. I’ve paddled the route to Booth a few times now, but always in the fall. It was interesting going the same way in the spring. Paddling through Farm Lake I didn’t notice much of a difference until I got to the northwest corner where the Opeongo River feeds into Farm. There’s a shallow sandbar here that sits in between a long spit of tall grass and another clump of the same about thirty meters away. The water in between looks navigable. Historically, it is not. At least, it is not for me. I’ve gotten stuck there every single time I’ve tried to paddle through to Booth. And, each time, as I’m trying to shift a couple hundred pounds of solidly beached canoe and passengers back the way it came, I promise myself that next time I won’t be fooled.
Welcome to next time.
As we approached the sandbar I told all this to Mark, ending with the suggestion that we go around the small island to start with and save ourselves the hassle. He looked at the invitingly open water and suggested that maybe we give it one more shot. While trying to decide if I’d accompany my “I told you so” with a full-fledged interpretive dance or maybe just some elaborate hand gestures, we turned the boat towards the center of the channel, put in a few strong strokes and … sailed right through.
Here’s the thing. Water levels are generally higher in the spring than they are in the fall. This is probably not news to most people, but it’s apparently an above the fold headline for me. There was at least a foot of clearance between the bottom of our boat and the bottom of the lake. We crossed the sandbar easily and turned upriver, with Mark very kindly keeping his own well earned “I Told You So” dance to himself.
Kitty Ranger Cabin
The Kitty Lake ranger cabin is, as far as I can tell, not on Kitty Lake. It’s located on a small basin just before the 90-meter portage down from Kitty Lake. Despite this (maybe?) misnaming, the cabin is lovely. I’ve never been able to check it out before as it’s been occupied each time I go through, but less than 10 minutes after the sandbar I Told You So that wasn’t, we paddled round a bend in the river and saw an empty Kitty Lake Cabin just waiting to be explored.
This is a great little spot. The cabin is large, I think the largest of the cabins I’ve been in so far (Birchcliffe might be close). It’s home to four sets of bunk beds and doesn’t feel cramped. There’s a great fire pit area outside and the location, close to the access point but not too close, makes it seems like an almost ideal late season destination. I’d love to head back there in late October, fire up the wood stove, and poke around the surrounding area for a day or two.
We spent about ten minutes checking out the cabin before continuing on to Booth. The p90 just around the corner was the first fully loaded carry of the season, and I was pleasantly surprised when I arrived at the other end without adding any additional aches and pains to my 42 year old body’s depressingly robust ache and pain inventory. 90 meters isn’t exactly an endurance test, but it was nice to get that first one out of the way without incident.
Booth Lake
The rest of the paddle to Booth went smoothly. The Opeongo River was pleasant and the p640 over to Booth was fine (Mark took the boat for this one, which probably contributed to that fineness). I had two sites in mind for Booth. The first, site 6, was my preferred destination. About halfway up the lake on the east shore, this is a great little spot fronted by a wide crescent beach. Except, when we got there, someone was already on the site. This wasn’t as disappointing as it could have been, since the high water meant that the beach was underwater. So we moved on to my fallback site, site 10, right at the start of the 1.9 KM portage up to Chipmunk Lake.
Like site 6, the beach that fronts site 10 (pebbles this time) was mostly underwater. Unlike site 6, site 10 was free. We unloaded quickly, got our tent and bug tent set up, built a fire and before long had a couple of steaks on the grill and a couple of foil wrapped sweet potatoes in the coals.
To the Ruins
After dinner we decided to walk part of the Chipmunk portage. We were headed that direction the next day so it made sense to do some scouting. The map also showed a set of ruins by a small lake about halfway up the trail, and those seemed like the kind of thing that would be easier to check out without a canoe on your head.
The walk was a good idea. The trail was wide and easy to follow, but it was also home to quite a few downed trees. After running into a couple of these within the first 100 meters we decided to head back to the site, get the saw and see if we could make the next day’s carry slightly less aggravating.
We cut and pruned our way up to ruins of an old cabin near a small and (for now) unnamed lake in the middle of the carry. We stopped our maintenance work here and spent a few minutes checking out the area. The ruins are in decent shape. There are parts of three moss covered walls from an old log cabin about equidistant between the portage and the lake. The lake is also in decent shape, provided your definition of decent shape is similar to your definition of swamp. Don’t believe me? Ask the black fly colony that controls this part of the portage.
Ugh. Black Flies.
You may have noticed that I haven’t mentioned the bugs yet. Do not take that to mean that bugs weren’t a factor. Mostly it’s an acknowledgement that if I mentioned each time the black flies (and, soon, mosquitoes) made me wish I’d brought a flame thrower with me on the trip, this write up would be twice as long. And significantly itchier. Let’s just assume that if there ever comes a point where you find yourself wondering how the bugs were at a particular moment, assume they weren’t great and you’ll be covered (in the same way that I was covered in bug bites within 20 seconds of setting foot on that portage).
Once we felt we’d soaked in enough history (and black fly saliva), we headed back down to the site to watch the sun set. The clouds that had seemed so threatening earlier in the day folded like a parent finding new fractions between two and three and didn’t deliver on their promised rain. By the time the sun was going down they had mostly broken up, leaving us with a beautiful sunset and (although we didn’t know it at the time) at the start of one of the all time great stretches of good trip weather I’ve ever experienced.
With the sun below the horizon we retreated to the tent to get some sleep and get ready for the next day, when our trip would start in earnest. We had only 10 kilometers to Round Island Lake, our next destination, but half of those kilometers were along portages whose reputations preceded them (and not in a “man, you’re going to absolutely love these trails” kind of way). As I drifted into what would be a phenomenal first night’s sleep, I found myself both grateful for an awesome first day and wondering if the blowdowns along the Chipmunk carry were a sign of things to come.
Day Two
We woke up to a beautiful morning. Blue skies, cool but not cold morning air. The weather report had said that our first and second days might be iffy, but one look at the rapidly retreating clouds in the western sky gave me hope that the Weather Gods were on our side for once. Which was good, because the Portage Gods were at best ambivalent towards us.
To get from Booth to Round Island we would be passing through four (new!) lakes and crossing five (also new, but let’s hold the exclamation mark for now) portages. I’d heard that this was a challenging stretch; equal parts hiking and paddling, with some elevation gain along the way. Still, it seemed reasonable. We were both feeling good after our low impact first day and ready to tackle some bigger carries. We were away by 8:30, walking from the site to the start of the portage, and then onwards (and upwards).
Chipmunk & Presto Lakes
Mark took the first carry, which also meant he took the first true climb of the trip. The Booth to Chipmunk portage rises pretty consistently from Booth, and while it’s not a steep slope, you do know that you’re climbing. Fortunately for Mark, some unknown hero or heroes had gone ahead and cleared out the obstacles for the first half of the carry, so it wasn’t long before we’d arrived at the halfway point marked by the ruins of that log cabin and the unnamed lake nearby. Unfortunately for the next canoe carrier, who happened to be me, the blowdowns didn’t stop just because we did. We switched off the boat at the south end of the small lake, and by the time I was passing the north end I’d had to step over, or push through, at least a couple of inconveniently placed portage hurdles.
Mark stopped about midway up the lake to break out the saw and clear the first of those obstacles, while I continued on towards Presto. This put some separation between us on the trail and meant that I was blissfully unaware of the large moose that jumped out from the weeds at the north end of what will forevermore be known as Hidden Moose Lake. The moose, having probably just remembered an urgent appointment on Marshy Lake, tore down the portage just in front of Mark. I must have been a decent distance ahead, because I didn’t hear a thing and I feel like I’d remember being flattened by 900 lbs of rampaging forest tank. I do remember being equal parts relieved and disappointed that I hadn’t seen the moose when Mark arrived at Chipmunk and told me about the run-in. Moose are awesome. Playing chicken with one on a portage is less awesome.
Chipmunk Lake is long and narrow and doesn’t have a campsite to its credit. From a trip planning perspective, I wish it did. There were a couple of spots along the shoreline that looked like they’d be half decent, and a site on Chipmunk would make getting to Dickson in two nights a more enjoyable trip. Right now your best first night option if you’re going this way is Booth. Booth is a great spot, and Shall Lake to Booth Lake is an easy first day, but that’s kind of the problem. It’s too easy. It leaves you with a much harder second day if you want to get up to Dickson, There’s almost 10 KM of portage trail in between Booth and Dickson, and that’s a lot of carrying to contemplate in a single day (hear that? That’s the sound of Day 3 clearing its throat. But we’ll get there). Adding in that portage up to Chipmunk on Day 1 would spread out the carries and make Day 2 up to Dickson slightly more appealing. That said, Maps By Jeff’s Algonquin Map notes that Chipmunk Lake is a fish sanctuary, so I’m guessing that’s part of the reason there’s no camping on it. Whatever the reason, it’s a nice lake and I would totally camp there if I could. But I can’t. Which means it’s time for the portage up to Presto Lake.
Chipmunk to Presto was a decent carry. There were a handful of blowdowns to navigate, but it’s a relatively short portage (610 meters) and it wasn’t long before we were on Presto Lake. Presto is a small lake that sticks out in my mind mostly as a short but pleasant paddle in between portages. The portage from Presto to Marshy sticks out in my mind because short and pleasant are adjectives that do not belong anywhere near that thing.
The Presto Portage
This portage had a little bit of everything. While it’s not long in terms of distance, only 680 meters, it feels about twice that. There were a couple of mucky rock gardens to navigate, along with a few blowdowns and other obstacles. But the best part of this carry is the creek crossing in the middle of the portage. If there ever was a bridge here, it’s long gone. There are a few decomposing logs leading out into the water, then you get to try and Tetris yourself into the far bank. It was weird. You’d think all you’d have to do was put the boat in the water, paddle a stroke or two, then pull it out on the far side, but, like my Grade 10 French final, that would be mostly wrong. We did put the canoe in the water, and we did take a couple of paddle strokes to get to the other side, but then we realized that this particular stretch of other side was more sink than solid and if we tried to unload here we’d end up in the Algonquin version of quicksand. Quickcrud? We tried reorienting the boat towards a drier looking patch of creek grass, but that was easier said than done in a 17.5 foot boat with about 17 feet of clearance. It took us a good 10 minutes to move about 20 meters, and once we were back on solid(ish) ground the trail didn’t magically clear up. There were still deadfalls and hurdles, and the last fifty meters or so into Marshy Lake was a rock hopping puzzle worthy of StarTropics. I eventually dropped the canoe, walked my pack across the last of the rocks, glared at the jumble of logs choking the portage bay that meant I had to walk even further to get to the put-in, then went back for the boat and did it all over again.
Marshy and Mountain Lakes
Marshy Lake, for all that effort was … actually, you know what? It was kind of nice. This is another lake without any campsites, but it’s a pretty spot. Despite it’s name, it’s wide (enough) and clear (enough). Like all the lakes along this stretch, it didn’t take long to paddle across, but it was a nice little break between portages.
Come to think of it, so was Mountain Lake. Mountain is the next lake north from Marshy (a soggy but much better in comparison to what had come before p610 connects them). I was expecting Mountain to be surrounded by high hills, but there didn’t seem to be anything particularly special about the shoreline. What was special was the complex of beaver lodges tucked into Mountain’s western bay. There was actually a beaver swimming across the lake as we arrived from the portage. In a stroke of luck that apparently used up all my animal sighting karma for the trip, I had my camera on the beaver as it took notice of us, slapped its tail on the water and dove. That was super cool!
The next portage was meant to be our last of the day. It was a relatively unmemorable p700 that led down to Round Island Lake, where the plan was to set up shop for the night. This would leave the almost five kilometers of low maintenance portage in between Round Island and Dickson for the next morning when we were fresh. We arrived at Round Island around 11:30 in the morning and were greeted with a very pretty lake and a nagging feeling that 11:30 am was far too early to call it a day.
Round Island Lake
I’ve mentioned this before, but the camping part of camping isn’t my favorite part of the day. I tend to get bored if I’m on a site too long, and arriving on a site before noon qualifies as too long in my books. Despite everything I’ve told myself (and others) about not going off permit without a better reason than “I feel like it”, I was starting to wonder if we should push on to Dickson given how much daylight we still had in front of us. That said, our permit was for Round Island, and it would be a lot of walking to get to Dickson. For legs that had already done 4.5 KM of portaging before noon (after a long off season of doing approximately zero portaging before noon each day) doubling the day’s hike seemed like a big ask. We decided to take a proper break, check out the sites on Round Island and push any decisions about moving on until after lunch.
A couple hours later found us lounging in the sun on Round Island’s northern island site, having just finished a fairly substantial portage fuel-y kind of meal and having played some fairly substantial Ramen Fury. By this point we both knew that our preference was to move on. We made the decision to do it, loaded the boat and … stood there. I looked at the waiting canoe, looked at Mark and realized that as much as the part of me that always wants to push on was doing some lunges and getting limbered up for the carry in front of us, another part of me, a part I don’t hear from all that often, was pointing out that it was an absolutely beautiful day, that we had the lake to ourselves, and that there was a pretty damn nice point site about a kilometer south of us that was just begging for someone to swim from it.
So we stayed. Instead of turning north to the portage we went south to the point site, unloaded the boat and settled in for the afternoon.
I’m glad we did. Despite the fact that this set us up for a whole lot of portaging the next day, I think it was worth it. Hanging out on Round Island was awesome. Our site straddled a small point and was fronted by a nice shelf of sloping rock. It had a great view of pretty much the entire lake, and was getting enough sun that a mid-May swim actually sounded appealing. Mark took that swim. I, on the other hand, stepped on a very small but very very sharp fish bone as I was about to get in the water and ended up with a fun little puncture in the bottom of my foot that I figured I probably shouldn’t get wet right away.
We spent the afternoon hanging out, reading and, towards the end of the day, paddling around the lake. We checked out Round Island’s fourth and final campsite (the southernmost site, hard pass) and walked a bit of the portage up to Dickson to see what kind of condition the trail was in (not bad, actually). Once we were back on the site we had dinner (I made a mix of Uncle Ben’s prepared rice, TVP, vegetarian chicken stock and dried peppers and it was actually super tasty), watched the sun go down and were in the tent before the last of the colour had gone out of the western sky.
Despite the relatively challenging day and my tired legs, I had a hard time falling asleep that night. I was thinking about the next day, and the thoughts running through my head were wearing clogs and banging drums. Our goal was White Partridge Lake, some 20 kilometers from where we were sleeping (or not sleeping, in my case). That’s not all that bad as far as distances go, but 10 of those kilometers were going to be along portages. 10 KM of portaging? That’s not ideal. I knew how tired I felt after a 5 KM day. I wasn’t looking forward to doubling that distance, while also tacking on a decent amount of paddling. Still, we had to get to White Partridge if we wanted to complete our route, and my lying awake wasn’t going to change that. Eventually I fell into a fitful sleep, hoping against hope that when I woke up I’d somehow already be on Dickson Lake.
Day Three
I was not on Dickson Lake when I woke up. I was on Round Island Lake, looking out at what promised to be a beautiful but challenging day. The rain that had been forecast for the first couple of days of the trip had never arrived and as I ate my standard breakfast of instant oatmeal and protein powder mush all I could see were blue skies and flat water. Not a bad omen, I thought, as we pushed off. Maybe this won’t be as hard as I think it would be.
Round Island to Little Dickson
If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time at all you probably know that most of the time when I end a paragraph with something like “maybe this won’t be as hard as I think it will be” the next paragraph starts with something like “it was as hard as I thought it would be” or maybe just a string of incoherent swear words. But, guess what? This time, and for this portage, it actually worked out. While the Round Island to Dickson carry is certainly challenging, it wasn’t bad!
Clocking in at just under five kilometers, this wasn’t an easy carry. But it wasn’t as hard as it could be either. There were a few blowdowns to deal with, and some ups and downs that included a couple of very steep embankments that should probably be double carried, but otherwise this was a clear and pleasant trail (A Clear and Pleasant Trail is the title of my unpublished sequel to A Clear and Present Danger. It’s not very good). An added bonus for us was that going towards Dickson was mostly downhill. I’d probably have different feelings about this portage if I was going the other direction, but for the most part it was a surprisingly enjoyable experience that found us looking out at (a beautiful) Dickson Lake less than two hours later.
At this point I was feeling pretty good about our day. Sure, I was tired from the portage, but that had to have been the hardest part, right? True, we had a few more carries in front of us, but we also had some new lakes, and a great day for paddling. We drank some water, then set off for Cisco Bay.
There was a bit of a wind as we paddled across the bottom of Dickson towards Cisco, so we kept to the shoreline until the narrowing shores cut the breeze. After a couple of hours with the blackflies it felt great to be back out on the water, and Dickson is a lovely paddle. We leapfrogged from small island to small island to get across to the north shore, then paddled through some narrows and into Cisco Bay. The most interesting thing about this stretch was the knowledge that, in a couple of days, we’d be paddling through here again, going in the same direction, but with a very different starting point and destination from the one we had today. See, we’d planned our loop as a figure 8, and that bottom part of Dickson was where Day 3 bumped into Day 5. Recognizing that we’d be through again, and that we’d be looking for a place to stay the second time around, we stopped to check out a point site just before the narrows to Cisco Bay. It looked like a reasonable goal for Night 5, but here, on Day 3, we still had miles to go before we could rest, so we pushed on towards Cisco Bay and the portage over to Little Dickson.
I didn’t mind that portage. It’s a p890 with a couple obstacles and one short steep bit that had my legs grumbling. But after the Round Island to Dickson carry this one felt like it was over before it even began. We decided to stop on Little Dickson for lunch and pulled up to the first campsite after the portage.
I liked this site! It sits on a small point and while it’s not huge, it would work well for a small group or a solo tripper. You know who else it works well for, apparently? The bugs. Unfortunately, we weren’t the only ones who decided to stop for lunch on Little Dickson. While the black flies had been out since our first day, this was the first time that they were truly swarming. And biting. We took some time to rest and refuel, but the bugs probably made that break a little bit less restful than it could have been. Turns out you can’t quite sink into a state of Algonquin Zen when you’re also pacing back and forth across a small point, high fiving blackflies and listening to a million tiny bug voices shrieking “Too Slow!” every time your hand passes uselessly through the cloud. Eventually we’d had our fill of peanut butter wraps and black fly bites and packed up to move on. The 2.6 KM portage to Sundassa Lake was waiting.
The Sundassa Slog
God, that thing sucks. Actually, I take that back. God has nothing to do with the portage between Little Dickson and Sundassa Lake.
The next hour (year?) is an exhausted blur. At over 2.5 KM of lower maintenance trail, this portage would be a challenge under the best of conditions. These were not the best of conditions. The trail was littered with deadfall and, I assume, the broken spirits of everyone who came before. There were many (too many) opportunities to put the canoe down and get to know our surroundings as we tried to figure out how to get the boat over or through each new obstacle. This was also the portage where the bug jacket became a permanent part of the trip’s portage couture. At about the 2/3rds point the swarming blackflies were joined by the first waves of mosquitoes and the Park’s bug population went from a manageable annoyance to something significantly more soul crushing.
On the plus side, this portage did give me a chance to pad my stats. Staple Lake is a tiny dot of water in the middle of the portage. The trail crosses the very northern end of the lake and you get around the water by carrying across a beaver dam. That dam has seen better days, and I had visions of an unexpected swim if I tried to walk it. So, instead, I put the canoe in the water, sat in the canoe, took exactly one paddle stroke to get to the other side, and can now add Staple Lake to the list of Algonquin lakes I’ve paddled. Hooray!
After the dam the portage was more of the same. At one point Mark came across a blowdown blocking the path that he didn’t realize was a blowdown and followed a side trail into a tangle of downed trees and branches before getting hung up. It says a lot about the quality of the trail to that point that either of us could have easily looked at that mess and thought “yup, that seems right”. A few hundred steps further on the portage crosses a marshy area by way of a decomposing, moss covered log bridge. This is the kind of bridge that even a troll wouldn’t live under. There was, of course, a bunch of deadfall across it. Nothing that I’d consider too inconvenient on a normal carry, but by this point, on this trail, they were the tree-sized straws that broke the canoe carrier’s back. I ended up dragging the canoe through the muck beside the bridge, then manhandling it over the downed trees, all the while wondering how much I could get for my camping gear when I got home.
I’m not going to lie, between the bugs, the obstacles and the already long day, this portage broke me. By the time I was over the bridge I was done with portaging, camping and nature in general. It’s times like these that having a trip buddy like Mark is so important. Despite also being tired and frustrated, he saw where I was mentally and took on a bit more. He finished the carry for us, getting us the final few hundred meters to Sundassa Lake and a slightly better view than what had been in front of us for the past hour.
Slightly Better.
I want to like Sundassa Lake. I want to be able to write about how getting there is tough, but it’s worth the effort. I want to go on about the beautiful scenery and cool features and how it’s a hidden gem buried deep in Algonquin’s backcountry. I also want a jetpack and a lifetime supply of M&Ms. Unfortunately, I’m not getting any of these things.
Sundassa is fine. It’s not terrible, but it’s not gorgeous either. It starts off with a bit of a marshy entrance, then opens up into a moderately sized lake that’s nice enough. The eastern edge of the lake is dominated by a large beaver dam, which actually looks pretty cool, and the portage down to White Partridge is, compared to the portage over from Little Dickson, fine (albeit not without its own hurdles and challenges).
But, you know what? While I couldn’t say any of those things from two paragraphs ago about Sundassa, I can definitely say them about White Partridge Lake. Man, I liked that lake.
White Partridge Lake
We arrived at White Partridge just before 4 pm. We were greeted by an expansive sheet of rippling blue water and a cloudless sky. My first impression was of just how big White Partridge looked. The past couple of days of mostly small lakes and long portages had conditioned me to expect more of the same. So, even though when you’re looking at it on the map it’s clearly bigger than anything else in the neighbourhood, in my head White Partridge was going to be another short paddle. It wasn’t, but it was a very nice paddle.
By this point we were both tired. Rather than cut across the middle of the lake to the north shore campsites, we hugged the western side for a while before homing in on our target site in a large arc. This was less about seeing as much of White Partridge as possible and more an acknowledgement that the water was still colder than the temperature in a room full of Swifties after Kanye West walks in. Super cold water and tired paddlers are not a good mix, so we played it safe and took the scenic route to our campsite.
We ended up on a small point site across from the entrance to White Partridge Creek. I loved this spot. Fronted by a wide shelf of gently sloping rock, the site was perfect. It had a couple of decent tent spots, prime bug shelter real estate and a fantastic view of White Partridge. That rock shelf out front also made for a great swimming spot, and we both took advantage of the easy water access to do a post leg day ice plunge. We ate dinner, watched the sunset, played some Ramen Fury and read our books. But, before we got to all that, we sat.
And man did that feel good.
Day Four
White Partridge Lake feels about as remote as you can get in the Park. No matter which direction you’re coming from, it’s going to take a couple of (hard) days to get there. But your reward for all that work is a gorgeous, secluded spot that you’re probably going to have to yoursel – wait, is that a pickup truck over there?
Sigh.
One of the truths I’m slowly discovering about Algonquin Park is that no matter how far off the beaten track you think you are, you’re not. That track is just around the corner and it’s probably got a pickup truck on it. I’ve run into day trippers on Fassett Lake (in the Park’s northwest corner and a two day trip from the nearest access point, but only a half kilometer from an outside road), I’ve seen a picnic bench on Gibson Lake (in the middle of the Park and along one of the most inaccessible routes I’ve travelled) and now I’ve watched a couple of guys back their fishing boat into the water on White Partridge Lake three days after I left the closest access point. There are roads. Everywhere.
In this case, these guys must have come in from the east side of the Park. One of the things that makes White Partridge relatively unique in Algonquin is the presence of a horse packing campsite on the north shore. I don’t know how you manage to stuff a horse into your backpack, but once you get there you’re going to have plenty of room. The campsite sits at the end of trail that spurs off from the road that connects the Sand Lake Gate to Lake Travers. I say trail, but it is clearly wide enough and flat enough that it is navigable by truck. Whether it’s a road or a trail, it was a bit surreal seeing the trucks parked along the shore and watching that boat putt-putting its way down White Partridge while we were packing up for a more low tech mode of travel day.
Our goal for the day was Mallic Lake, approximately 17.5 kilometers north and west from where I was eating my morning oatmeal. This included about 10 kilometers along White Partridge Creek which, appropriately enough, exits White Partridge Lake and runs north until it meets up with the Crow River. Fun fact: the new Algonquin Map from Maps by Jeff includes a number of helpful features and innovations. One of my favourites is a difficulty rating which indicates more challenging stretches along the way by shading the normally yellow route line pink or orange. Another is a little green leaf icon that highlights spots where the alders have moved in and made themselves far too comfortable. On the route line along White Partridge Creek, there was a disconcerting amount of pink, orange and green. But, hey, it couldn’t be harder than yesterday, right?
Right?
White Partridge Creek
We pushed off just before 9 am and were quickly across to the start of the 2+ KM portage that leads from White Partridge Lake to White Partridge Creek. The portage greets you with a short but steep climb from the water, but once you’re done that (and it’s only like 20 feet) you’re onto an absolute joy of a 2 KM carry. I loved this portage. Sure, there were a few trees down here and there (but would it even be a portage without downed trees at this point?), but otherwise it was awesome. Flat, wide and easy to follow, we flew across that thing. We were on White Partridge Creek in under 40 minutes and ready to ride the surprisingly quick moving current we found there … directly into some alders.
Huh.
Within about 30 seconds of putting in on the creek I figured out why the portage in there is so good. The alders want you, and they’ve made it as easy as possible for you to get to them. If anything, the new map undersells the extent of the alder infestation at the top of the Creek. On the map it looks like there are breaks here and there, but the only thing breaking was my spirit every time another alder branch smacked me in the face. But how about some useful information on top of the hyperbole? Sure, why not.
The alders really are a challenge here. For long stretches of the top and middle part of the creek they grow thick on both banks. This means that you have countless opportunities to paddle into a latticework of crisscrossing branches spread across the water like the world’s most aggressive spider webs. I don’t know how many times I flattened myself across the canoe and tried to shoulder press a particularly stubborn branch high enough that we could slip the boat under. Up front Mark took the brunt of the “maybe we took that corner a bit too fast” impacts, as there were more than a few times where we’d finally get into some open water, pick up a bit of speed, and come round a bend to find a somehow even thicker clump of alder waiting for us than the one we’d just left behind.
The good news is that, apart from the alder, it was actually a pretty nice paddle! There’s a decent current flowing down the Creek (calling it the Creek immediately gets the part of my brain that hates me singing “I don’t wanna wait, for our liiiiiiives to be over”), and the banks are far enough apart that, absent the alder infestation, you can feel like you’re making decent time. The scenery, when it’s not trying to climb into your mouth, is quite pretty. I especially enjoyed the lower part of the Creek once we were through the worst of the alder and heading towards the Crow River. As an added bonus, it’s actually a fairly obstruction free paddle (again, discounting the alder). There were a couple of beaver dams, sure, but nowhere near as frequent or as frustrating as I’ve found on other creeks and rivers in the Park (*cough* Upper Nip *cough*).
The biggest non alder obstacle was the remains of an old crib or dock that is down to just four waterlogged beams lodged into a bend in the creek. Getting across this one was a bit of a challenge. The logs are just far enough out of the water that you can’t push past them while you’re in the boat, but certainly close enough to the water that they fall somewhere in between bar of wet soap and greased up pig on All of Algonquin’s patented “how slippery is this nonsense?” scale. We managed to manhandle the boat out of the alders and over the logs without breaking anything, but Mark did take an unplanned dip in some surprisingly deep creek water. Fortunately, it was another gorgeous day, so drying out didn’t take too long (and it turns out you can warm up real quick when you’re in the middle of what’s essentially a four hour long core workout).
We stopped for lunch about 2/3 of the way down the creek. We didn’t know it at the time, but that lunch spot also marked the spot where we were well and truly free of the alder. From that point on, the paddle towards The Forks (where White Partridge Creek meets the Crow River) was really nice! It took us under an hour to do the last third of the creek, whereas the first 2/3rds had taken us over 3.5 hours.
The Forks, when we arrived, was a welcome sight both because it meant we were leaving the creek and because it’s quite pretty! From the start of the portage over to Lavaque you can see downstream along White Partridge Creek to where it joins into the Crow River. There’s some fast moving water in the distance, and sun tinted the rapids and the surrounding pines in a beautifully warm glow. It was quite nice.
The Lower Crow River to Mallic Lake
You know what else was nice? An honest to God regular maintenance portage in the form of the p1200 from The Forks to Lavaque. A clear trail and no obstacles? Sign me up. It does throw a bit of uphill at you to start off, but once you’re finished with that it’s a lovely walk. Also, Mark had the boat for the uphill, so I’ve got absolutely nothing to complain about.
Lavaque Lake is what you find at the other end of that portage, and it’s also quite pretty. It’s just a widening of the Crow River, but it’s long enough and wide enough that they’ve fit three campsites onto the south shore. It is both fed by and drained by sets of picturesque rapids, and towards the western end of the lake there’s a low-lying island dominated by a couple of large pines that I absolutely loved.
You know what else we found at the other end of that portage up from the creek? People. Lavaque was, compared to every other lake we’d visited on the trip so far, hopping. Two of the sites were taken and those weren’t the only groups we saw as we made our way upriver. Not being much of a fisherman myself, it hadn’t even occurred to me that the Crow would be a hotspot at the start of … trout? …. season. But it sure was. There were groups on the campsites, groups fishing at the bottom of rapids, groups with their heads down and packs on, beelining for Mallic Lake …
Oh, wait, that last group was us.
By this point it was getting later in the day, and we were both tired. There are quite a few small portages in between Lavaque and Mallic, and we settled into a steady rhythm of paddling for a few minutes, portaging for a few minutes and doing it all over again a few minutes later. Despite my waning energy, I really enjoyed this stretch. The Crow is beautiful through here. Lots of ripples and rapids, and great scenery along the shore and around each bend. That said, I was getting pretty tired of loading and unloading the boat by the time we had crossed the last 60 meter carry into Mallic, and I was more than happy to find a campsite and get set up for the night.
Mallic is small. And where Lavaque had a couple of features that made it stand out, Mallic truly does just feel like a widening of the river. We ended up on Mallic’s westernmost site. Of the three, this was clearly the best option on the lake. The eastern site doubles as the portage between Mallic and the river, and the middle site is small, overgrown and has a general “Really? You stopped here?” vibe. In contrast, the main part of our site was wide and flat and had a nice view across to Mallic’s south shore. Kind of perfect, right? Sure, except that to get to that wide and flat part with the great view you had to climb a mini Mount Everest up from the water. That thing is enough of a climb that you could make an argument for setting up base camp about halfway up that hill and trying for the summit the next morning.
Unplanned leg workouts aside, this site worked for us. We found great spots for both the tent and the bug shelter (which was sorely needed that night. The bugs were out and partying), and we even managed to get in a swim. We spent the evening doing what we did most evenings; eating dinner, Exploding Kittens, watching the sunset, and going to bed at a time that would make a five-year-old squint and say “you went to sleep that early?”
This had been a good day. Hard, but good. With the benefit of knowing I never had to paddle it again, the trip down White Partridge Creek was … I’m not going to say fun, but it’s an experience I was glad I’d had. I was also very much looking forward to the next day, which was the only full day of trip that didn’t have more than 3 KM of portaging attached to it. Our goal was that campsite we’d scouted at the bottom of Dickson a couple days earlier. Between us and that site were a couple of short portages, a whole lot of paddling and, if the weather reports rolling in from my InReach were to be believed, potentially a whole lot of rain as well.
Day Five
We set our alarms early for that morning. The forecast was iffy, showing a decent chance of thunderstorms as the day wore on. Our route was relatively easy today, about 20 KM of mostly paddling through Lake Lavielle down to the bottom of Dickson Lake, but we didn’t want to get caught on either Lavielle or Dickson if those storms materialized. We’d both paddled Lavielle in a wind before, and neither of us were anxious to repeat the experience (and I sure didn’t want a replay of my 2020 Kiosk disaster either). So, we were off Mallic before 7, and off the last portage out of the Crow River before 8.
The Crow River between Mallic and Lavielle was a continuation of the previous day’s trip, but also like 10% funkier? The portage takeouts weren’t as easy, being mostly muddy, rocky and wet or some combination of all three. And there were a couple of spots where we were paddling upriver against enough a current that I was looking around wondering if we’d missed a portage sign. Nope. Just a chance to warm up (or possibly tear) the old paddling muscles.
Woodcock Lake
After the last river portage we made a quick side trip up to Woodcock Lake. Woodcock is on the northern side of the river across from that last portage, and we decided to check it out before heading into Lavielle. Woodcock was fine. It’s a small, dead-end lake with no campsites. I’d guess people might fish up there, but otherwise I’m not sure what the draw would be. That said, I’m still glad we stopped to check it out because that stop gave me one of my favourite moments of the trip. When we arrived back at the bottom of the portage the sun was just hitting the river in front of us. The last of the mist was rising off the water and mixing with a lazy ribbon of smoke winding its way west from a nearby campsite. The sky was Robin’s egg blue, patched white and silver by wisps of gauzy cloud. The water was dead still, reflecting the far shoreline so clearly that it looked like a window into another world.
It was okay, I guess.
Lavielle & Dickson
That idyllic view set the tone for the first part of the day. Coming out of the river we followed a bald eagle for a distance. It soared away from us upriver, stopping when it thought it had left us behind, then taking off again when we caught up. At another point we came to a spot where the rocky shoreline and pine forest were reflected perfectly on the water’s surface and Mark commented that it was like looking at a wall of Canadiana, which was a kind of perfect description.
Along the way we stopped for a few minutes to check out the campsite on Hayes Point. Hayes Point is on the east side of Lavielle, where you exit the Crow River and turn south. For whatever reason, I’ve always wanted to see this site. I guess because it’s a point site and I like points? Or maybe because it’s got a name? I’m not sure. Regardless, we checked it out and it was a bit like meeting a celebrity and realizing that they’re shorter than you thought they’d be. It’s not a bad thing, it’s still mostly what you were expecting, it’s just not quite all there.
The site was up a gradual hill from the water. We landed on the river side of the site, at a small gravel beach, and followed the path to the tip of the point where a large clearing and a nice fire pit await. On paper, this works really well. Nice fire pit? Big open space? Water on all sides? Sign me up. In reality … that big open space is surrounded by a fairly dense tree line on all sides, so your view out to that water is semi-obstructed at best. There’s actually a decent sized drop off on the south side of the point, which would make me hesitant to come here with kids. Don’t get me wrong, this is a good site. It just didn’t live up to my baselessly high expectations.
As we pushed off from Hayes Point we noticed a flock of seagulls going nuts over a nearby island (not that Flock of Seagulls, unfortunately). I know nothing about birds and chalked it up to birds? shrug emoji. Mark, who is significantly more knowledgeable about birds, and a good deal more thoughtful about most things than I am, realized that the gulls were chasing off a falcon. This was so cool! Within the course of an hour we’d run across a bald eagle and a falcon. All we needed to find was a chickadee and we’d have crossed off every bird species I know the names of that aren’t seagulls.
The paddle from Hayes Point down Lavielle to the Dickson portage was both quick and pleasant. This was a nice change from the last time Mark and I had paddled Lavielle, when the wind had been blowing hard enough that I wouldn’t have been surprised to see Dorothy and Toto flying over top of us. This day, the water was calm, the breeze was mild (but picking up as we paddled further south) and we made decent time to the bottom of Lavielle.
The Lavielle to Dickson portage is 90 meters long and is currently home to a fish monitoring installation that includes a large solar panel and a very helpful explanatory note. It was also apparently the place where we jumped between the universe where the wind was fine (Lavielle) to the one where the wind was slightly less fine (Dickson).
The wind had been blowing south to north all morning. As we started the day, it was barely noticeable. Paddling down Lavielle it picked up, but only gradually. And, since we were moving towards the southern end of the lake, it had less runway to get to us as it gathered steam. Once we were at Dickson’s north end, however, that wind found plenty of runway. The waves coming towards us weren’t high enough to worry me too much about paddling in them, but they were high enough that I dug out my neoprene top while we planned out how we were going to tackle the paddle south.
The top end of Dickson is home to a few decent sized islands. We decided our best route was to paddle up the west shore to start, then hop between the islands over to the east side before continuing south. This gave us the least amount of time in the brunt of the wind and kept us relatively close to shore the entire way down. And, you know what? This ended up being a good plan! We hopped our way south and before long were rounding a point into Dickson’s southern basin. A short time later we pulled up to the site we’d scouted a few days earlier and found it still empty. We unloaded the boat, set up the tents and got settled in for the … I was going to say we got settled in for the night here, but thanks to our early start we’d arrived on the site well before noon. So got settled in for the day, I guess.
The rest of the afternoon and evening passed both slowly and quickly. Unusually for me, I really enjoyed being on the site so early. After the last few days, this one felt like a quasi-rest day, albeit a rest day where we travelled 20 kilometers. Those storms that had prompted us to get off so early that morning eventually showed up, but not on Dickson. I spent a good chunk of the afternoon sitting in the bug tent watching dark grey clouds roll north about 10 kilometers away from us. You could see the rain falling beneath them and hear the thunder in the distance, but that was as bad as it got. I felt for anyone on Opeongo, while being grateful that our slice of Dickson stayed dry and thunder-free.
As the day gave way to evening Mark and I went for a paddle, mostly in an effort to stave off cabin (site?) fever. We headed into Cisco Bay to check out the campsite on Racoon Island. Earlier in the trip I’d half wondered about setting up there rather than the one we’d ended up on, and after the 10 seconds it took me to walk around the site and realize that it was the campsite equivalent of an elevator in a power outage, I was happy we’d stopped when we did. Once we’d finished our visit to the darkest timeline of Dickson campsite choices, we paddled back to our own (much better) site, ate some dinner, caught another spectacular sunset, and called it a day.
Day Six
In 2017 I planned a spring ice out trip that the Weather Gods convinced me to change at the last minute. The route, as I’d originally planned it (read: glanced at the map and thought, “sure, that seems fine”), was a four day trip out of the Shall Lake access point, stopping on Round Island, Animoosh and McKaskill. Thanks to some flooding and weather forecasts that would have had Noah buying out Home Depot, we called an audible at the permit office. We skipped the Round Island/Animoosh part and went straight to McKaskill (and the McKaskill cabin). This was absolutely the right decision at the time, but it’s meant that for the last seven years parts of that route, and Animoosh in particular, have loomed large in my tripping brain as the ones that got away. Why? I have no idea. Maybe I just like the way Animoosh sounds? Regardless, I woke up the morning of Day 6 with a bit of extra pep in my step. I was finally going to see Animoosh. The one that got away was about to get got.
We pushed off from our site on Dickson into another beautiful day. The storms of the day before had blown themselves north and the sky was a gorgeous blue dotted with the occasional cumulus cloud. Dickson was flat, the water mirror-like, and the view as we paddled into the narrows separating the bottom of Dickson from Cisco Bay was the kind of thing that trip dreams are made of.
We arrived at the p1230 down to Animoosh in good spirits. Sure, this was a longer portage, but we were back on a regular maintenance route. With any luck the carry would be relatively clear and we’d be on Animoosh before we knew it.
And that’s exactly what happened. Mark picked up the canoe on the Dickson end of the carry around 9:30, and less than 20 minutes later I was putting it in on Animoosh. Apart from a bit of deadfall at the start, the portage was in good condition. There’s a nice boardwalk that covers a portion of the middle of the portage, and the closer you get to Animoosh the better the trail gets. There’s a road that crosses the path as you approach Animoosh, which I suspect goes a long way towards keeping the trail in good condition. Whatever the reason, I very much appreciated getting to the end of a portage without once contemplating taking up less aggravating hobbies, like breeding cobras. I was less appreciative of the cloud of mosquitoes circling my head like so many flying monkeys in blue vests (Two Wizard of Oz references in one trip report! The people living at the center of the Venn Diagram that includes Wizard of Oz Enthusiasts and Canoe Trip Report Readers are having the best day of their lives). But, you know what? I had a bug shirt, I had bug juice, and I was finally on Animoosh! Who cares about the bugs, right?
Pbbbtt. Excuse me. Just spitting out a mosquito. There that’s better.
As I was saying, I was finally on Animoosh! I’d been waiting seven years to get there and, as we paddled out onto the still blue water I couldn’t help but feel … slightly underwhelmed?
Here’s the thing. Animoosh is fine. It’s a perfectly serviceable lake with a couple of campsites and nice enough scenery. The shoreline is what I’d consider to be generic Algonquin (trees, more trees, some slight hills in the background). It’s the kind of lake you paddle through and never think about again. And there’s nothing wrong with that! They can’t all be Lake Louisa. I just … I just found myself wishing that, after seven years of waiting, I’d have felt something other than “meh” as I pulled up to the next portage (the portage campsite was quite nice though!).
The portages between Animoosh and Fairy Lake and Fairy Lake and Hidden Lake are both long. Animoosh to Fairy is 2.8 KM and Fairy to Hidden is 1.5 KM. Both portages were fine, despite their lengths. The trails were in good shape and there wasn’t much in the way of elevation change to wear you down. Weirdly, both Mark and I agreed that the 1.5 KM from Fairy to Hidden felt longer than the 2.8 KM from Animoosh to Fairy. I don’t have an explanation for that. Maybe the portage drops into some kind of fold in spacetime that stretches distance to three times the length in real life? That seems as reasonable a theory as any I guess.
Fairy Lake and Hidden Lake are both small, blink and you’ll miss them kind of lakes. There are no campsites on Fairy, and only two on Hidden, neither of which looked all that appealing. If I was travelling through this way again and looking for a place to stop for the night I’d go with either McKaskill or Dickson. The only possible reason I could think of to stay on any of the in between lakes would be if I wanted to get out in one day from the Dickson area. In that case I’d probably stay on the Animoosh to Fairy portage site as it’s a decent spot and it would mean I’d have gotten that first portage down from Dickson out of the way. Otherwise? Both McKaskill and Dickson are much nicer lakes with more, and better, campsites.
The final portage out of Hidden to McKaskill is only 430 meters. Like the rest of the portages along this stretch it was absolutely teeming with bugs. Otherwise it was a decent carry. Short, easy to follow … can’t really ask for more. We arrived at McKaskill, paddled out to the middle of the lake to escape the bugs, and ate a couple of bars while taking in our surroundings.
I like McKaskill. It’s a long lake. I’d guess 3.5 – 4 kilometres from top to bottom. It’s got an interesting layout that gets wider the further south you go. There are quite a few islands, particularly towards the north end of the lake. As we paddled south I wondered if one of the reasons for the narrower northern part could be that the Bonnechere River exits out the top of McKaskill. Maybe McKaskill is really just a wider start to that river? I dunno. Whatever the reason, I really enjoyed paddling between the islands, then out into the larger basin that dominates McKaskill’s south end.
I also really enjoyed the sight of the McKaskill Lake Ranger Cabin, our home for the next two nights. Perched at the top of a small rise on the south shore, this cabin is one of the handful of ranger cabins scattered throughout the Park that you can book in the backcountry. I was very much looking forward to having this rustic and historic log cabin all to oursel –
Wait, is that a truck parked beside the cabin?
Yup. That’s a truck. Hmm.
McKaskill Ranger Cabin
Directly in front of the cabin there’s a steep-ish climb from the lake. There’s a small ladder/staircase to help with the climb and that’s where we pulled up, slightly confused and wondering what the next five minutes were going to look like. We were definitely the permit holders for the cabin, but by the look of the portable grill on the picnic bench and amount of gear in the truck’s bed, whoever was here was ready to settle in.
Mark knocked at the cabin door and after a slight pause the door opened and we were greeted by the largest dog I’ve ever seen (this good boy was basically a horse in dog clothing) and its owner, a very friendly guy who immediately apologized for being in our way. Turns out this guy was driving the backroads of the Park with his dog, looking for spots to spend the night and hoping to make it all the way to Kiosk. He’d found the ranger cabin and decided to stop in the hopes that it wasn’t booked for the night. Putting aside for a moment that this plan ignores a lot of the permit and access rules around using the Park, I kind of loved the free-roaming approach the guy was taking. I would have loved it less if there had been any problems getting him to move on, but that wasn’t an issue at all. He was packed up and back on the road within ten minutes, and Mark and I were left with a gorgeous spot to spend a gorgeous afternoon.
That afternoon was pretty lazy, as far as afternoons go. It was hot. The sun was flexing its muscles after spending the previous day cooped up behind the clouds. The point’s westward exposure meant that as the day wore on and the sun dropped towards the western horizon, the area around the cabin got hotter, not cooler. At one point I did a quick paddle over to check out one of the nearby campsites, but for the most part the afternoon passed in a pleasant blend of sun, swim and sreading (well, reading, but I really wanted to get a third “s” word in there).
As afternoon gave way to evening we decided to take a walk behind the cabin and out to the nearby access road. We were loosely hoping to make it over to where the road crosses the portage down to Roundbush. However, after about 500 meters of walking along the baking gravel, surrounded by every biting insect that ever was and ever will be, we beat a retreat back to the lake where our dinners, and the bug tent, were waiting.
The rest of the night passed without much in the way of excitement. Wait, that’s a lie. Because you know what’s exciting? Yahtzee! Someone had left Yahtzee in the cabin and when the bugs got to be too much even with the bug tent (they were pretty bad that night), we moved to the cabin and Mark added a few more wins to his count for the trip (although we did tie one game, which felt like a W as far as I was concerned).
After determining that the dice hate me as much as the cards do, we started getting ready for the next day. The next day was technically a rest day. We weren’t moving camp, but I don’t think you’ll find that day’s plan beside “rest day” in the Canoe Tripping Dictionary. Our goal was to complete a 20 KM loop down to Roundbush and Alsever Lakes, a loop that included about 10 KM of low maintenance portaging. We wouldn’t find out just how low maintenance those carries were until the next day, but based on our experiences so far we figured they probably wouldn’t be awesome. Given the bug situation, and the call for another scorching day, we decided we wanted to be on the trail early. We set our alarms for 5:30, shelved Yahtzee so that it couldn’t hurt me anymore, and called it a day.
Day Seven - Roundbush Ho!
We were on the water just after 6 that morning. It was looking to be another beautiful day. The sky was uniformly blue, without a cloud to be seen. The air was crisp and cool, but that cloudless sky suggested the crispness and coolness might be temporary. Mist rose from the water as we paddled into McKaskill’s southeast corner bay. The gently shifting layers of grey swirled around us in the spaces along the shore where the sun hadn’t quite filled in the cracks yet. It was the kind of morning you dream of when you’re setting out, but also the kind of morning that you know is going to turn significantly less dreamy as the day heats up. I was glad we were on the water early.
Vireo to Roundbush
Our first portage was a doozy. We were about to cross over half of the day’s 10 portage kilometers off the list before the belly of the canoe saw water again. We had decided to do the loop down through Vireo, Creepy and Roundbush clockwise. This meant that we were starting with a short portage out to the access road that runs beneath Mckaskill’s south shore, then a long (3.6 KM!) walk along that road, followed by another 1500 meters through the bush to Vireo Lake. We’d actually spent a decent amount of time discussing which way made the most sense. There were arguments for both directions, but after yesterday’s late afternoon stroll along the road in heat that would make a Tatooine Moisture Farmer sweat, we both realized we wanted the road out of our way long before the sun was any kind of factor on that wide open strip of dirt and gravel.
I’m glad we went the way we did. Despite the length, I really enjoyed the walk along the road. For much of the carry you’re weaving back and forth from a hydro cut. The terrain through there always makes me feel like I’m on an island somewhere off the coast of Scotland, walking across rocky grassland through hills and valleys. Those gently rising and falling hills are dominated by low scrub and massive hydro poles, appearing out of the mists like skeletal giants. After a week scrambling along portages and down creeks that sometimes felt like they were closing in from both sides, the open space was exhilarating.
We made great time along that road. Turns out that walking an obstacle free path with just a canoe is a heck of a lot easier than scrambling over deadfall with that same canoe plus a 50-pound pack. We were at the turnoff down to Vireo less than an hour after leaving the cabin and feeling pretty good about things.
Turning off of the road and south towards Vireo brings you back to low maintenance reality quickly. First off, the turnoff isn’t that easy to find. The trail isn’t obvious, and the portage sign is below the road and easy to miss coming from McKaskill. At first I couldn’t see the trail at all. I just knew I was supposed to be near it thanks to my GPS. It turned out that I’d walked right by the start of the path down to Vireo and didn’t find it until I put the canoe down a bit further on and backtracked.
There is a trail though, and it leads across the hydro cut. This part kind of reminded me of those old magic eye pictures. It was hard to see where the path went through the tall, wet grass if you were looking for it. But if you didn’t really focus on anything, a faint outline of an outline would show up from time to time.
Following the trail got a bit easier once we were across the cut and back into the woods. But being back in the woods meant being back into deadfall and other obstacles. The portage rises steadily almost all the way to Vireo, and by the time the still waters of Viero’s northern portage bay appeared at the end of the path, my legs were ready for a break. So was the rest of me, actually. I was hot, sweaty and mildly aggravated. The bugs had come out to wish us well as we’d started along the road and, apparently, they’d liked the looks of what we were doing so much that they’d decided to tag along for the entire carry. By the time we arrived at Vireo I’d had a highly motivated cloud of mosquitoes swarming around my head for the better part of an hour and a half. I was ready to be back on the water.
Once we’d paddled away from the shore, the cloud of mosquitoes thinned out enough that we could stop and eat a couple of protein bars in relative peace. While we snacked I took my first good look at my surroundings. I liked what I saw. Despite being less than two kilometers from a road, Vireo feels nicely secluded. I can’t really point to anything unique or overly special about the lake, but the vibe is kind of perfect.
Apparently I wasn’t the only person who thought that! I’d wanted to check out the island campsite about halfway down the lake, but there was someone on it. Instead, I settled for stopping at Vireo’s other site, a small (very small) point site on the western shore that the map says is in rough shape. In this case, the map wasn’t lying. It’s a small spot, mostly closed off from the water and without much in the way of useable space. On the plus side, the Thunderbox was in great shape, further proving my soon to be Nobel Prize winning Unified Theory of Campsite and Thunderbox Relativity: The crappier the campsite, the better the crapper.
I almost missed the portage over to Creepy Lake as we paddled into Vireo’s south end. I was expecting the portage to be at the very bottom of the lake, when in fact it’s about 80% of the way down. This near miss, it turns out, was just a tremendous job of foreshadowing by the Vireo to Creepy portage. I lost the trail on that thing so many times my GPS track looked like one of those old Family Circus cartoons where Billy wanders all over Hell’s half acre just to deliver some incredibly unfunny punchline (don’t get me started on Family Circus). At one point I was halfway through a bog before realizing I’d lost the trail a while back. And, when I found the trail, I kind of preferred the bog. Weirdly, as this was the portage where I’d felt the most lost since leaving the access point, this was the only place I got cell service all trip.
Creepy Lake was basically just a quick break between portages. On the map it’s shown as being a very clear lake, but I didn’t see much of a difference between it and either of Vireo or Roundbush. Of course, it’s hard to take any of my observations about Creepy at face value since what I was mostly observing was the cloud of bugs that had followed us off the portage. Unfortunately Creepy wasn’t quite wide enough for the old “paddle like heck to the middle of the lake to get away from the swarms” trick, so all we ended up doing was paddling like heck from one end of Creepy to the other, then starting down the portage to Roundbush. And I do mean down the portage.
If ever I needed confirmation that we’d made the right decision in doing our loop clockwise it came on the Creepy to Roundbush carry. That thing starts off downhill, then gets steeper. Of the 940 meters of (surprisingly open) trail between Creepy and Vireo, about 1/3rd of that is steep enough that it makes a Crashed Ice course look like a cross country ski trail. I wouldn’t want to climb that thing carrying any heavy emotional baggage, let alone an actual pack or canoe.
Roundbush, when we arrived, was a nice break. We paddled out to the middle of the lake to get away from the bugs before having our snacks. We were marginally successful in ditching the bugs, but very successful at having the snacks. We ate a couple of bars and drank some water while floating in the middle of an otherwise empty lake. There are campsites on Roundbush, but I couldn’t see any of them from where were. What I could see was the place where the Aylen River exits Roundbush on its way to Alsever, which happened to be our next destination.
The river in between Roundbush and Alsever is short and shallow. It ends on the Alsever side with a couple of dams and a sidewalk width’s worth of creek grass and meadow. It would have taken a very small amount of time and effort to pull the boat over that barrier and paddle out on Alsever, but even that tiny little bit of time/work seemed like a lot to ask. It was hot and getting hotter, and we had another 2.5 KM of low maintenance portage ahead of us. We took a couple of minutes to appreciate the (surprisingly bug free) view, then turned around and headed back to Roundbush where our next portage, a p2400 up to a small segment of the Aylen River, was waiting.
Along the Aylen River
I’d say the 2.4 KM carry in between Roundbush and the Aylen River was the worst part of that day’s travel, but that wouldn’t be fair to the stretch of the Aylen River immediately after the portage, which was the actual worst part of the day’s travel.
Sigh.
Let’s tackle the portage first. On the bright side, this was a decently flat 2.4 KM carry. I had ample time to appreciate that fact as the portage was also littered with deadfall, meaning it took ages to cross those two and a half kilometers. The bugs were a factor, as was a new twist on the deadfall theme: trees that weren’t quite all the way down but were instead hanging across the trail at just the right height that someone carrying something over their head like, say, a canoe, wouldn’t necessarily see them, but would certainly run into them (Mark got nailed by one of these. I’ve had that happen in the past and it sucks. You’re walking along, minding your own business when suddenly there’s a loud crack and the bottom of the canoe is bouncing off your head. Makes you feel like maybe Hexxus was onto something).
By the time we made it though to the start of the Aylen River I couldn’t imagine any scenario that would make me want to get back on a portage any time soon. Fortunately for portage enthusiasts everywhere, reality picked up where my imagination failed. I don’t know what circle of Hell those next five hundred meters of river qualify as, but I don’t think Dante ever got there.
Remember all my griping about the alder on White Partridge Creek a few days ago? Turns out that was just a warmup run for what the Aylen “River” had in store. From the put-in onwards the river was choked with alder. Paddling was optional, and ineffectual, for long stretches. Unlike White Partridge where the water was at least deep enough, and the alder thin enough, that we could push ourselves forward by grabbing onto the branches and pulling, the water here was too shallow, the alder too dense. We ended up walking the canoe upstream for the most part, occasionally getting out of the river altogether to stumble along the grassy banks while forcing the canoe through a particularly thick clump of awful. It took us an hour to go about five hundred meters. But, hey, at least we really got to know that part of the river? (I’m trying here folks).
When the portage back up to McKaskill finally appeared out of the alder I almost didn’t believe it. A part of me felt like I was never going to leave that stretch of river. A part of me never did (this paragraph brought to you by hyperbole!).
The path up to McKaskill was … really good. It was wide, it was flat and it was clear. It almost felt anticlimactic to be putting the canoe back into the water on McKaskill without one final run-in with a blowdown or alder monster, but that’s exactly what happened. We were back at the cabin by noon with sense of having accomplished something and an equally strong sense that I would never feel the need to accomplish that particular something again.
We spent the rest of the afternoon enjoying our last full day of trip. It was beautiful out. The sun was hot, but when the portages are behind you for the day that’s a feature, not a bug. Speaking of bugs, even those had died down somewhat in the heat. The water had warmed up from ice bath to partially melted ice bath and it felt great. I was in and out of the lake all afternoon, logging more pre-May 24 swimming minutes in that day than I’d probably had the rest of my life combined.
As evening fell I turned my attention to eating as much of my leftover food as possible and getting ready to head out. The next day was the Monday of the long weekend, and we figured the earlier we got on the road, the less chance we’d have of being stuck in traffic on the way back into Ottawa (that moment on trip where you start to think about non-trip logistics is always a bit of a bummer, isn’t it?). We packed as much as we could in advance, watched the sun go down and once again set our alarms for 5:30.
Day Eight
5:30 came quickly. So did 5:00, which was when I actually woke up. Sometime between falling asleep and the sun rising my brain had flipped into “let’s get out of here” mode. Packing up the rest of our gear went quickly, and we were on the water and paddling through the mist by 6:30.
The Road Home
In between the cabin and the access point are six lakes, the first and smallest of which is Dove Lake. Dove is a liftover portage away from McKaskill, and, as I found out, is very pretty to paddle in the early morning. The mist was rising off the water in corkscrewing streamers and the sun was just poking over the treeline that separates Dove from McKaskill. It caught the mist just above the lake, turning the streamers bright white where it touched. It was a beautiful way to start our last morning.
Not quite as beautiful, but also not terrible, was the p2390 between Dove and Shrew Lake. Don’t get me wrong, this one does have a few challenges. There’s some decent uphill to navigate, and I don’t know that I’d ever call a 2 KM portage easy, but after what we’d been carrying for the better part of the last week, it felt awesome. I’d only done this portage once before, during that ice out trip in 2017, and back then this was a different carry. There was still snow hiding in the shadows, and midway along there was a flooded area that was actually deep and long enough that we paddled it. Not this time. The trail was wide, well maintained and easy to follow. There was no snow, no surprise lakes, no surprises of any kind. Before long we were putting in on Shrew Lake, our last potentially tough portage of the trip in the books.
The stretch between Shrew Lake and Shirley Lake was a dream compared to some of what we’d been working through earlier in the trip. I’d been through this way last year with my family, so what to expect was fresh in my mind. The only remotely challenging portage along this stretch is the p540 between Shrew Lake and Big Red Lake. And, to be honest, it’s only challenging in comparison to the portages that come next (although the uphill at the very start of that carry is a bit of a leg buster).
Big Red Lake, the next after Shrew, was a quick paddle, just as the next p230 over to Ryan Lake was a quick portage. One thing that surprised me as we paddled along Ryan was how empty that lake was. Ryan is a nice lake with lots of campsites. It’s also easily accessible in half a day from the access point. On a beautiful long weekend at the start of camping season I’d have thought it would be fairly busy. In fact, I’d been expecting to see other trippers ever since we started down from Dickson, and apart from one other group on McKaskill it had been surprisingly quiet. That stayed true to and through Ryan. We didn’t see a single campsite in use as we paddled through. We did run into a group on the portage over to Shirley Lake, but it turned out that was the same group I’d seen on McKaskill two days earlier. Other than that … nothing. I don’t know, maybe the bugs carried everyone away?
We chatted briefly with the other group at the Shirley end of the portage and then set off for the home stretch. That last hour or so went quickly. Eight days into a trip with a bag of chocolate chip cookies waiting for you in the car is a pretty efficient state of being. We were across Shirley before that other group was even halfway to the portage. The portage between Shirley and Crotch Lake is just over a kilometer long and Mark had the canoe across it in under ten minutes. From there it was an easy paddle between the islands that dot Crotch Lake. The last kilometer flowed easily beneath our hull and before we knew it we were passing under the bridge between Crotch and Farm and pulling back up onto that pebble beach beside the parking lot.
And that was it. Trip over. Eight days, 33 lakes, 140 kilometers, roughly 7,000 facefuls of alder and we were done. As we packed up the car and put on clean clothes for the first time in over a week, I couldn’t stop thinking about what a great trip it had been (ps. if you’re not already doing it, leave a complete change of clothing in your vehicle. You, and the employees at whichever Tim Hortons you stop at on the way home, will thank me). Sure, there were moments there mid trip where the word “great” would have been replaced by a dictionary’s worth of expletives, but we’d challenged ourselves with this one. And we’d done it.
I can’t think of a better way to spend a week. I can easily pick out at least one highlight from each day that on its own would have made the entire trip worthwhile. The ruins at Hidden Moose Lake. The evening paddle on Round Island. That first glimpse of White Partridge Lake and the gem of a site we found there. The Lower Crow. Paddling a perfectly still Lavielle. The McKaskill Cabin. The mist rising along the hydro cut on the way to Vireo, the mist rising from Dove on the way home. The list goes on.
And soon, hopefully, I’ll be adding more highlights to that list, more moments to go back to again and again as I pore over the map looking for the next trip. Actually, now that I think about it, that’s probably the best sign I can think of that this was a good trip. I didn’t want it to end. And when it did, inevitably, end, all I wanted was to get started on the next one.
Can’t wait.
Stats
New Lakes Paddled: 19
Total Lakes Paddled: 33
Total Portages: 38
Total Portage Distance: 42.09 KM
Total Travel Distance: 143.83 KM
