Ontario

I had an almost enjoyable trip to Ontario in June/July this year. I planned to spend 10 days canoeing and camping with friends I had met on a previous visit but as things turned out I went for two five day trips with two chaps I had met via the internet (one trip each) and I managed to exhaust both of them! Whether they will ever paddle with me again is still open to debate (though one has invited me to Nepal next year).

The first trip was into Algonquin Park in Central Ontario. It is a large park by UK standards (over 8000 square kilometres) with only one main road running though the SW corner.

Andrew and I planned a six day trip in the northwest corner but for various reasons we had to do the trip in five days. I was quite excited, having visited Algonquin before but this trip was to be a challenge in more ways than one.

Firstly it was extremely hot (over 35°C everyday and some days over 40°C). We had planned a longish trip with lots of long portages 'for the challenge' - it was my idea, must have been rather mad!

What we hadn't accounted for were the mosquitoes! The spring had been long wet and cool and the little beggars had been breeding like crazy. As a result the camp sites were a complete nightmare, and after two nights we had just about reached the end of our tenous grasp on reality. I had bites on my bites on my bites (my legs looking rather like raw meat even though I wore long trousers), and I won't go into the problems of going to the loo!!!

The result was we decided to get out of the park on the third day. Our main problem was we had reached the farthest point from the put in and now needed to complete the trip or repeat a series of hideous portages from the day before.

So started the long day - we did roughly four days worth of paddling and portaging (around 28-30km on the water and probably about 9-10km in the forests carrying heavy packs and a 16 foot canoe).

By the time we got back to the car we were both extremely dehydrated (despite Andrew filtering water as I paddled) and sun burnt (even though we were using factor 42 sun block!). Andrew had reached the point that he could no longer really paddle, and when we finally beached the canoe he was walking in anything but a straight line. An interesting trip - but next time I'm going in September!

The second trip was with Bill - a Scot who emigrated to Ontario when he was about 6 years old. We planned a five day trip to Temagami - a wilderness area in Northern Ontario described on the map as "Algonquin on speed". Unlike Algonquin there are no maintained campsites or portage trails so camping and moving through the forests took on a new level of interest. We did discover how useful GPS was in these areas though!

After Algonquin I was ready to call the trip off, but Bill has a very casual way of persuasion that somehow revived my enthusiasm. Hence we found ourselves making our way up Highway 11 on a school bus, with Bill's canoe rather precariously strapped to the roof (and attached to the rear screen wiper!).

Having reach the access point we had 30km of off- road driving (in a school bus!!) to get to the lake we were aiming for. Needless to say it was quite entertaining - and I was glad I hadn't had a large lunch.

As we reached the beach to launch we were a bit surprised to find some other people about to set off too - and we spent sometime sizing up the 4 foot waves breaking on the beach thinking 'This looks interesting for a heavily loaded open canoe!!'

Having plucked up courage we set off only to find it was getting dark and we couldn't find a campsite in the tree lined shores. We paddled on into the dusk and finally found a small island campsite and crashed out with a good meal (peppered steaks - Bill knows how to eat well in the wilderness).

The next day we headed off across a series of huge lakes (northern Temagami - the largest lake in Ontario except for Lake Ontario, Diamond Lake and Lady Evelyn Lake). We eventually found an unlikely looking campsite that turned out to be perfect as it was on a small island with no wildlife - and hence no mosquitoes! Hurrah - eating and sleeping without the bites and the hum! Great!!

We used this as our base camp and the next couple of days did some day trips - including portaging through some of the worst infested forests and paddling for miles in extremely strong head winds and huge waves.

At the end of the trip we crossed back over Lake Temagami to get back to the bus fighting against strong winds and waves in excess of 4 feet. The only way we could make progress was to zig-zag in and out of the wind. Paddling into the wind we averaged about 0.5km/h (according to the GPS) whereas running with the wind we managed to top 10km/h at one point. Very exciting and exhausting.

A really excellent trip.

(Bill has now forgiven me for being a slave driver and has suggested for our next trip we hire a float plane and go somewhere really remote - bring it on!)

	Search this site powered by FreeFind
	Swaledale Outdoor Club

Ontario

Carol Haynes