Canoe Lake to Catfish & Beyond
Part Two: Shippagew to Catfish
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This is Part Two of my Spring 2025 Trip Report. If you want to catch up on Part One, you can find it here.
Day 3
The sky was threatening the next morning. Not an “I’m going to turn your campsite into an unofficial lake, sucka” kind of threatening but more of a “I haven’t decided what I’m going to do here, but just know that if I want you to get wet, you’re getting wet” kind of threatening. We packed up quickly and, after what has become my standard trip breakfast of oatmeal/protein powder/dried fruit sludge, said goodbye to what I assumed was going to be our best site of the trip (spoiler: I was wrong).
The paddle out of Shippagew went quickly. We went north, heading towards our first portage of the day, a p1440 that follows the last gasp of the Tim River down to Longer Lake. The start of that portage looked pretty iffy. The landing was a mix of mud and rock that meant we were either going to have to scoot from rock to rock like we were starring in Algonquin’s answer to Star Tropics, or be prepared to potentially offer up one of our shoes to the Mud Gods. The path leading away from this mess didn’t look much better. From the water it looked like it basically petered out into a wall of deadfall, leaving me with visions of us reliving last year’s Sundassa Slog in real life instead of just in my recurring nightmares.
Fortunately, none of it was as bad as it looked. The landing was navigable and the path took a hard right just before that mess of deadfall and turned into one of the nicer portage trails of the trip. The path follows the Tim through a wide-open hardwood forest along a clear, dry trail. There’s a bit of up and down, but nothing too challenging. Soon we were on Longer Lake and starting the paddling heavy part of our day. We had about 13 KM of almost uninterrupted paddling between us and our next significant portage, and I was looking forward to the time on the water.
Longer Lake to Burntroot Lake
The paddle up Longer went smoothly. Longer is, in a twist that absolutely anyone could see coming, a long lake. Really, it’s just the Petawawa River widening out for a bit before narrowing once again as it connects into Red Pine Bay and Burntroot. The one thing that struck me about Longer is that the lake’s three campsites are pretty far apart from each other. There are two down at the south end, right near the portages to Big Trout and Shippagew, while the third is a couple of kilometers north, near where Longer turns back into the Petawawa. If I had a permit for Longer I’d probably just grab the first site I saw rather than run the risk of trying for something better at the end of the lake and finding the site already taken (there are only two permits available for Longer, so theoretically if you find one of the sites taken the other two should be free, but theories don’t always pan out).
Longer narrowed as we turned east, morphing back into the Petawawa for about a kilometer before we arrived at the first of a couple of small portages that briefly break up the paddle. The first carry is a P40 that I had been very confidently assuring Mark would be fully shootable. It turns out that, like 16 year old Drew standing in front of the mirror with a bottle of Sun-In in one hand and a hair dryer in the other, that confidence was misplaced. I had the P40 and the P80 mixed up in my memory and one look at the jutting rocks and standing waves in front of us convinced us that we should maybe just take our chances with the portage.
“Take our chances”? In what universe does a 40 meter bypass around some fast water qualify as taking a chance, Drew? Well, in this universe, actually. Because this is the universe where that portage is home to both a poison ivy plantation and a thriving colony of poison ivy loving snakes. Or, more accurately, this is the universe where the last time I was through this way this portage was home to a poison ivy plantation and a thriving colony of poison ivy loving snakes. This time around it was early enough in the season that the poison ivy hadn’t … sprouted? … and the snakes were still holed up in some gross snake ball somewhere and, importantly, nowhere to be seen at the portage.
We were across the portage quickly and down the next stretch of river just as fast. Pulling up to the p80, we saw that this stretch of the river was definitely shootable. The rapids the portage goes around don’t really deserve the name rapid. After scouting from the shore we decided we could easily paddle through. We got back in the canoe, picked a line and let the river carry us through to the other side. Honestly, once you throw in the scouting I don’t think we saved any time by paddling, but it was a heck of a lot more fun.
That set of rapids opens up into Red Pine Bay, which itself opens up into Burntroot Lake. Both Red Pine and Burntroot are beautiful. They’re big. Red Pine Bay, which is much smaller than Burntroot, is still bigger than many medium sized lakes I’ve paddled in Algonquin. It’s home to some stunning scenery, particularly as you pass through the narrows into Burntroot. There are occasional rock faces sprinkled around the bay and massive pine lining the shoreline. The area has a windswept look that I love, and it’s a beautiful paddle, even if it did take longer than I expected.
We arrived on Burntroot as the wind was picking up. Fortunately we were paddling with the wind for most of the way and able to stick to the shore. We paddled up the east side of Burntroot, stopping briefly to check out a great looking site near the start of the lake, before arriving at the portage over to Perley Lake.
Wait, didn’t you say you were headed to Robinson Lake at the start of this day? Isn’t Perley the wrong direction? Well, yes. It is. But the good news is Perley wasn’t our destination on that portage. Right at the start of portage on the Burntroot side there is a small, not all that appealing, campsite. But behind that campsite is a very appealing relic from the Park’s earlier days, which is why we’d made the stop.
Burntroot Cellar
That thing you’re looking at? That’s a root cellar. Possibly the most sturdily constructed root cellar the world has ever seen. The thing is so strong, and has been there so long, that the forest has grown up overtop of it. The cellar is built of thick, saddle-notched timbers (no, you just googled “types of log cabin construction”). The ceiling is more of the same, with a hole carved out of the middle that I assume was meant to be a chimney or maybe a really early skylight? You have to crouch down to get inside, but once you pass through the grand foyer (there’s like three feet of what I can only describe as a hallway to get inside) the first thing that strikes you is what good shape the place is in (or possibly the first thing that strikes you is one of the ceiling beams if you haven’t crouched low enough). I would feel pretty confident about riding out just about any storm in this cellar, or even just using it as a place to escape a scorcher of a day.
Robinson Lake
Once we’d finished looking around we got back in the boat and headed for our last fully loaded portage of the day, the p1300 up to Robinson Lake. The wind had turned against us for this part of the paddle. Or, more accurately, we had turned against the wind. What had been a very helpful tailwind on our way up Burntroot became a wildly unhelpful headwind as we paddled to the Robinson portage. Fortunately it wasn’t too far from the cellar to the portage, and soon we were on the carry up to Robinson.
The portage was fine. It’s long and consistently uphill, but it’s also clear and easy to follow. The uphill isn’t steep, just steady. By the time we arrived at Robinson my legs were letting me know that they were done for the day. Fortunately for my legs Robinson was our home for that night. I couldn’t promise them they were done walking, but at least they would get a break while we set up on our site.
And. What. A. Site.
Over the years I’d heard good things about the island site on Robinson. So many good things that, like the previous night’s stop on Shippagew, I built our route specifically around staying on Robinson for a night. At first, as we paddled out onto the water from the portage, I was a bit concerned that the whole Robinson experience might have been overhyped. The first site we saw, the one that I briefly thought might be the island site, was a perfectly serviceable looking grassy clearing on the north side of the lake that did not in any way look like the kind of thing Algonquin dreams are made of. Fortunately it was only a few more paddle strokes before the actual island came into view. We paddled to the western edge of the island, at which point we realized that if anything the hype had been underselling the whole thing.
The site is perched on the top of a large rocky outcrop at the far end of the island. It’s spread out over a couple of levels, like Algonquin’s answer to a luxury condo. There’s a small landing area at the base of the cliff, and a decent tent pad and fire pit set up at the top. It’s the kind of place you stop at and immediately start planning how you’re going to get back there some day. We set up shop, enjoyed the view and some lunch, and took some time just enjoying being where we were.
As the afternoon wore on we turned our attention to the second half of our day. We’d always planned today to be a two-parter. The first was the paddle up from Shippagew. The second was a side trip to the west of Robinson that would let us visit a couple of new lakes and also connect this trip to our 2023 spring route. I mentioned earlier that one of the attractions to this year’s route was that it touched on many of the previous trips Mark and I have done together. Day one retraced part of our Big Trout Loop from 2020. Day 5 touched on our Labour Day Loop from 2023. Day 6 took us back to 2022’s Crow River Loop and Day 3, this day, was going to take us back to our 2023 spring trip along the Nipissing River. It meant paddling a couple more lakes and hiking almost four KM, but with plenty of daylight, no gear and no canoe needing to be carried for most of those four kilometers, it seemed doable.
Whiskey Jack to the Nip
Around mid-afternoon we paddled west to the Whiskey Jack portage. This is a p100 that’s basically a liftover around a small creek. As we crossed the short boardwalk over the creek Mark pointed out something really cool. Whiskey Jack is held back from Robinson by a large beaver dam. The dam lets just enough water through to feed that shallow creek. The water in the creek can’t be more than 18 inches deep in places, but somehow that’s deep enough to be home to a surprising number of large fish. Here’s the part where I remind you that I know absolutely nothing about fish, so I’m not even going to try and guess what they were. What I do know is where they were, which was milling about in a tiny pool surrounded by branches and rocks, seemingly unconcerned that they were a couple more sticks in a dam away from living in a mud flat.
After taking a few seconds to quietly contemplate the immortal words of Dr. Ian Malcolm I finished the (short) portage and we paddled out into Whiskey Jack. Whiskey Jack isn’t a huge lake, and the paddle to the Remona portage didn’t take long. I did notice that Whiskey Jack is a remarkably clear lake and that there were a few campsites I wanted to check out on the southern shore. But before that we had a side quest to complete.
The portage over to Remona isn’t long, only 450 meters, but it does its best to make you feel those meters. There was some up and down and a few roots and rocks in the way, but what would be a pain in the ass route for a fully loaded carry is, well it’s still a pain in the ass without bags, but it’s a duller ache. The difference between sitting on a tack and sitting on a dozen tacks. Remona was fine. It’s a small lake with a couple of campsites that is wider than it is long and we were across it quickly. From there we stashed the canoe at the portage trailhead and walked the p1890 down to the Nip.
This is a nice enough carry that is consistently downhill the entire way from Remona to the river (this of course meant that it would be entirely uphill from the river to Remona, but that was a problem for slightly further in the future Drew and Mark). We arrived at the Nip and said hello to two years ago us. Which is kind of a weird feeling. More and more I’ve been covering ground in the Park that I’ve covered before. It’s strange standing somewhere I’ve stood before (or looking at a stretch of river I’ve paddled before) while knowing that the first time through I’d have thought that there was a very good chance I’d never see this part of the Park again. It makes me wonder which of the places that are new to me now are going to be spots future me goes back to, and which ones I’ll truly never see again. I dunno. It was probably too much metaphysics for a bend in the Nipissing.
Once we felt we’d truly taken in the moment (and a snack) we retraced our steps back up to Remona and then over to Whiskey Jack. Back on Whiskey Jack we paddled along the south shore checking out the three campsites located there. Of the three, the middle site (site 4 on the map) was probably my favourite. It’s not a spectacular site by any means. It’s small and hilly, but it’s got room for a tent and a nice view. In comparison, Site 5 was even smaller and felt kind of like it had been jammed into the shoreline then forgotten (great fire pit though) and Site 3, while bigger, was surrounded by dense growth on all sides and felt like a cave.
When we had finished with Whiskey Jack we went back over to Robinson and settled in for the night. We managed to time our evening swim with the sun’s only real appearance for the afternoon and soon after I was enjoying a dinner of rehydrated TVP, peppers and Uncle Ben’s Bistro Express rice. The clouds meant we didn’t get much of a sunset, but the rain they were threatening didn’t materializ beyond a couple of drops. We spent the night playing cards and enjoying the view from the top of the site before turning in at the outrageously late hour of 8:58 pm (I tried so hard to keep myself out of the tent until 9 and it just wasn’t happening). As I fell asleep I thought a bit about the day we’d just had, and the day that was just ahead. The trip so far had been a series of ever increasing highs. On Day 3 alone I’d crossed off three separate entries on my Algonquin bucket list (the Burntroot cellar, Robinson and Whiskey Jack). I didn’t know what Day 4 had in store, but I was looking forward to finding out (but, also, not looking forward to the 5.8 KM of low maintenance portages waiting for us).
Day 4
I woke up on Robinson Lake at around 6 am ready to face the day. I quickly realized that this particular part of the day included a light rain splattering against our tent and I revised my status from “ready to face the day” to “man, this sleeping bag feels cozy” and promptly went back to sleep until around 7:30. By then, the rain had moved on which meant we could too.
The first three days of the trip had all been paddling heavy. Sure, there were a few carries between Canoe Lake and Robinson, but we had certainly spent more time inside the canoe compared to under it. That was about to change this morning. We had 16 kilometers of travel between us and Catfish Lake, and six of those kilometers were along mostly low maintenance portages. I’m not going to say I was looking forward to a more portage focused day. Our last couple of spring trips were essentially hiking trips with a light dusting of paddling thrown in for colour and I’ve since developed a healthy respect for the misery that can accompany a full pack and canoe along one of the Park’s lesser traveled portages. But I was looking forward to seeing a section of the Park I’d never visited before and was resigned to the fact that getting there meant squeezing in a leg day.
Junco Lake & Hayes Lake
Our portage out of Robinson was a reasonable way to start the day. 640 meters of mostly clear trail between Robinson and Junco. The carry was muddy, but it turns out they pretty much all were that day, so let’s not get too upset about this one. Junco Lake is a small, organ shaped (don’t ask me which organ, it just looks like it belongs somewhere in my abdomen) lake whose defining feature (apart from looking like one of the buzzers in Operation) were some cool looking rocks poking out of the middle of the lake like speed bumps.
The next portage was a p1440 over to Hayes Lake. On Jeff’s (indispensable) Algonquin Map he’s got this carry colour coded as pink, meaning it’s typically a very challenging trail. Fortunately for us, the most difficult aspect of this particular portage is that it can be overgrown and hard to follow at times. It turns out that early spring, before anything can actually grow in to overgrow things, is not one of those times. This ended up being a great carry. Easy to follow through a beautiful hardwood forest. The only time that things got remotely confusing some helpful soul had gone through before and thrown up some flagging tape. All in all, it was about as enjoyable as portages get. Even better, someone had left balloons for us to celebrate when we paddled out onto Hayes Lake.
Wait. That’s not better.
About halfway across Hayes we saw something floating near the north shore. At first I thought it might be a buoy because … well, I wasn’t sure why. Maybe someone was scuba diving in the middle of one of Algonquin’s most out of the way lakes after portaging all their scuba equipment at least 25 kilometers from the nearest access point? Fine. It wasn’t my best theory. We’ll put it somewhere between Relativity and All To Well Is Definitely About Jake Gyllenhaal on the list of great theories and move on. Besides, as we got closer we saw that it was a silver Happy Birthday balloon, half deflated and floating listlessly on the water, which sent the Hayes Lake Mystery Diver Theory straight to the scrap heap.
My best non scuba related guess is that this was one that got away from a birthday party from anywhere between Ottawa and Barrie (or further!) and ended up on Hayes when the helium ran out. It reminded me of when I was a kid and our school would do this charity fundraiser where everyone would release balloons with their contact information on it and whoever’s went the furthest would win. I always imagined mine coming down somewhere in Japan and resulting in a lifelong friendship with a Japanese boy my age who also believed that rat tails were never going to go out of style. Unfortunately for my burgeoning International Society of Rat Tail Enthusiasts, that never happened. Instead, I’m guessing those balloons ended up in backyards, parks and lakes just like Hayes. With memories of childhood dreams unfulfilled (and childhood rat tails that hung around much longer than they probably needed to) we picked up the balloon and finished the paddle over to the next portage. (Huh, before we move on to that I should probably mention that Hayes is a cool lake. It’s bigger than it looks from the portage put-ins and has only one campsite on it. It’s probably one of the most secluded lakes you can book in the Park).
Macoun Lake to the Petawawa River
The P690 was a relatively easy carry. I did wrench my back at about the halfway point, but fortunately that minor twinge didn’t turn into anything worse. Once the portage was out of the way we found ourselves on Macoun Lake, which connects directly to Plumb Lake. Two for one new lakes! What a deal! We paddled through Macoun and into Plumb where we had a floating snack break. Honestly, I probably have stronger opinions about the protein bar I was eating during that break than I do either of these lakes (a protein bar is just a way to justify eating a chocolate bar for breakfast. Prove me wrong). With a couple of well-spaced low maintenance campsites, Plumb is an introvert’s dream. Macoun has no campsites at all and is basically just a buffer lake for Plumb. They’re both fine lakes and I bet you could have a pretty peaceful weekend up there if you felt like getting away from the place where you’d usually go to get away from it all.
The p2200 down to North Cuckoo Lake is marked as orange (challenging) on Jeff’s Map but, honestly, apart from the distance I didn’t find this one to be particularly difficult. Most of it followed an old, straight road that was easy to see and a joy to walk. That said, the last little bit does cut away from the road again, and we initially missed the turnoff. See, while the path down to North Cuckoo is easy enough to see if you’re looking for it, the road in front of us was even easier to see, so we weren’t looking for it. It wasn’t until we were another twenty or thirty meters along and discovered that the road was rapidly becoming one with the forest did we realize that we’d missed our turn. Fortunately it took very little backtracking to find the right trail, and soon we were on North Cuckoo.
North Cuckoo is small trending towards mid-sized with one campsite and no easy way in. The northern portage, the one we’d just finished, is over 2 KM long. The southern portage, which connects down to the Petawawa River, is only 900 meters, but they are a tough 900 meters. This was the hardest carry of the morning. There were plenty of obstacles, lots of mud, rocks, slippery terrain and more mud. I was thrilled to finally stumble out of the woods at the Petawawa, knowing that the hardest part of the day was behind us.
I really like this stretch of the Petawawa. Back in 2017 I paddled it solo on a trip from Canoe Lake up to Brent (more a Brent Crawl than a Brent Run), but that time around I was coming through this part at the end of what had turned into a 30+ kilometer day and I was too exhausted to enjoy the scenery. Not this time. This part of the Petawawa is a mix of short sets of rapids and easy paddling. The short portages between the North Cuckoo portage and Catfish Lake (Snowshoe Rapids and Catfish Rapids) are fine, and the river parts are quite pretty. We stopped for lunch at the Snowshoe Rapids portage then made our way downriver to Catfish Lake, pushing ourselves a bit to try and a) outrun some weather that seemed like it might be moving in and b) beat anyone else who might be heading to Catfish with Shangri La Island on their minds.
Oh, you’re not familiar with Shangri La Island? Let’s fix that.
Shangri-La Island
Shangri La Island sits in the middle of Catfish Lake’s southern basin. Catfish Lake, for those who haven’t been there, is a large-ish lake about a day’s paddle out from the Brent access point (access #27 on Cedar Lake). Because of its size, location and the fact that you can head in multiple directions once you’re there, Catfish is a popular destination for trippers in the north part of the Park. That it’s home to one of the nicest campsites I’ve come across in the Park is just icing on the cake (it’s also home to one of the crappiest campsites I’ve come across in the Park, but I’ve already spilled about five hundred words on that spot elsewhere).
The Shangri La campsite is an enormous island site set on a hill and fronted by beautiful rock slabs that turn into hard packed dirt and grass at the top of the island. Up top is where you’ll find the deluxe fire pit and, if you take a walk towards the back of the island, a really nice view to the east from the top of a surprisingly tall cliff. The site is awesome. It’s got plenty of flat ground for tents, 360 degrees worth of views, good cover, great sunsets and awesome swimming. Those rocky slabs and ledges at the water’s edge make for a fantastic place to sit and watch the water, and the fire pit/kitchen area gives you everything you could want for food prep. Admittedly, that last bonus is kind of lost on me since my food prep means pouring boiling water into a bag but if you’re more of a Michelin Star kind of backcountry chef, you’re not going to be upset with what you find on Shangri La.
So, awesome site, long-ish day and another long-ish day tomorrow? Time for a break right? Well, yes, but only if by break you mean tacking on another 9 KM worth of side quest before dinner. That’s what you meant, right?
Lynx & Luckless Lakes
Lynx and Luckless Lakes are just west and north of Catfish. I’d never been to either and, honestly, probably would never get there without making it a dedicated mission. While they form a small loop with Catfish, and you can take a 3 KM portage north from Luckless to the Nipissing River, I can’t see myself building a trip plan that would have me going through either lake organically. Which meant that one more side trip was in order before we called it quits for the day.
The paddle north on Catfish was quite pleasant. It was later afternoon and a kind of stillness had settled on everything. The water was flat and the sky overhead a jigsaw puzzle of low hanging cloud. That rain we’d been worried about had never materialized, and if you squinted you could convince yourself there might be some blue cracks in the overhead blanket. Blue sky or grey, it made for a lovely paddle.
Catfish connects to Lynx by a narrows that at the wrong time of year would likely be impassable due to low water. This was May, however, and low water was not an issue. We arrived on Lynx without hitting any major mud bumps and were greeted by Lynx’s small but actually kind of appealing southern campsite. I’m not going to put it on a “10 Sites In Algonquin Park You Just Can’t Miss” listicle, but if I was solo and looking for a quiet place for the night? It’d do.
After checking out the site we paddled north to the Luckless portage. This was kind of hard to find from the water. It’s guarded by rocks and muck and the sign is all but invisible behind the dense shoreline growth. The portage itself, once we found it, wasn’t much better. The mud fairies had been through ahead of us leaving a large mucky patch at the start and then sprinkling some tripping hazards and muck traps along the way for fun.
Luckless was fine if unexciting. The campsite at the start of the Luckless to Catfish campsite was just plain unexciting. It’s small, cramped and tiny. Yes, I just used three words that mean the same thing. I suppose it would do if … no, you know what? Some things you just can’t justify. This site sucks. Don’t bother.
The portage back to Catfish did not suck. In fact, it was quite nice. Where the Lynx to Luckless carry was mucky and obstacle strewn, the Luckless to Catfish one was mostly dry and easy to follow. There was a downed tree across the put in at the Catfish end that straddled the path at just the right height to make it impossible to go under or over with the canoe, but other than that it was a nice carry.
The sun broke through the clouds as we made our way back down Catfish to the campsite leading to an absolutely gorgeous night. We managed a sunny swim before dinner, our fourth day of swimming in a row and a new spring trip record for times (willingly) getting into the water. The sky was completely clear by sunset, and the stars that came soon after were clear and crisp and beautiful.
Shangri La folks. Shangri La.
To Be Continued!
Part Three
Part Four
And ICYMI, Part One
Finally, if you’re not done with Part Two, here Are Some More Pictures From Days Three & Four.
