Algonquin Canoe Trip (Entrance #1)
June 29 - July 5, 1985
Dave & Helen Damouth
damouth@comcast.net

This trip, six days and five nights, started at entrance #1 (Kawawaymog Lake).

day 1: Left entrance station at 10:15 AM. Amable du Fond River, N. Tea Lake, Manitou L. Camped about 2/3 of the way up this lake at 3:30 pm. A pair of ducks swims or flies by the site fairly often; must be a nest nearby. There is a beaver house nearby - trees have been chewed off recently, even in the middle of the campsite, and floating leafy branches are all along the shore.

The map mentions an area on the south shore denuded by a 1973 tornado. You can see the difference in the growth, even from a distance. The same storm apparently went over part of our island. Walking inland and up a hill, the upper elevations are a tangle of downed trees, with younger growth of all about the same age. There's lots of firewood, but it is tough to get to it.

day 2: Up at 6:30 AM, leave camp at 8:15. Amable du Fond R., (The first portage out of Manitou Lake on the river is marked slightly wrong and can be confusing: It looks like it comes out of the lake at the river mouth. In fact, you have to go into the river and run the first (mild) rapids before coming to the portage sign), Kioshkokwi L., Whitebirch L. Made camp at 3:30. This campsite has lots of mosquitos. Why? At dusk, a bullfrog chorus serenaded us, from all over the lake.

day 3: Left camp at 9:15 after a leisurely cornmeal pancake breakfast. Waterclear Lake, Club Lake, Mouse Lake, Big Thunder Lake, Erables Lake. Made camp on a point on the east shore of Erables at 3:30. A moose was feeding in the water right where the portage came into Big Thunder Lake. He stayed just long enough for us to look each other over, then ambled off into the woods.

We went to investigate a horrible noise coming from a small island a few hundred yards from our campsite. It sounded sort of like a horde of giant squirrels atacking a family of tigers. It would quiet down for a while and then start up again. It turned out to be a heron rookery. Each of many dead trees in the center of the island contained a couple of huge nests - perhaps three feet across - made of large sticks. Each had a heron sitting in it, and often another sitting on a nearby branch.

Some of the live trees around the periphery also had less visible nests. There were at least a dozen, perhaps twice that many, nests. The noise seemed to arise when a parent would show up with a fish to feed the little ones. The babies would all start squalling and fighting, and all the other birds on the island would start yelling in sympathy. We never actually saw this happen, since during the entire time we were near the island, the absent adult birds stayed away. The few that came to investigate veered away and refused to come in for a landing.

Later, when we were well away from the island, they started coming back and the noise started again. We found out why they prefer dead trees. A heron with a five foot wingspan has a terrible time getting into or out of a live tree through all the small branches and leaves. To take off, they would hop from branch to branch until they were on as small a branch as would support their weight, then spread their wings and bang and crash through the small branches to get into the open.

One nest was tipped sideways. A full grown heron was hanging over a branch, dead, under the nest. It looked as though another tree had blown over in a storm and brushed by the nest on the way down.

Day 4: The lake and the campsite were very nice, the weather was beautiful, and we were doing very well against our schedule, so we didn't move and spent a lazy day swimming, reading and exploring the lake. A flock of cedar waxwings invaded the site during the morning. If I sat still, they would occasionally perch within a few feet of me. Close up, they are beautiful birds.

Day 5: Up at 6, on the water at 7:30. Maple L., Ratrap L., Dahinda L., Boggy L., N. Sylvia L., lunch at a very nice campsite on Three Mile L. Then on to Upper Kawa L., Kawa L., Sinclair L., Made camp on Biggar L. at 3 pm. While canoeing across seemingly isolated Upper Kawa Lake, we were somewhat surpised to hear, and then see, an 18-wheel logging truck which roared past us on a logging road only a few yards from the lake shore. The park does does contain active logging operations. They keep them away from the lake shores, so that in general the canoeists are unaware of it. At several points the portages cross the logging roads, which show signs of frequent use. Sometimes when in camp, I get a bit of the feeling of living on a Hollywood stage set, suspecting that if I walk inland a few hundred yards I'll find that the forest has been clear-cut by the loggers.

Day 6: Another leisurely pancake breakfast and a late start. It is our last day and we are still enjoying it and lingering. On the other hand, we anticipate a long uphill paddle against stiff winds on the big lakes.

Left camp about 9:30; Hornbeam L., Magnotasi L., North Tea L. As expected, the wind was strong. Fortunately it was a bit south of west and we occasionally got some shelter along the south shore of this long mostly East-West Lake. It still was a long hard pull, and rounding headlands exposed us to the full fetch of the Lake with substantial breaking waves. Even in our big Odyssey, which has a high flared bow designed for rough water, we occasionally shipped a little water - never more than a quart or two at a time.

When we finally got to the portage, we met a young couple who had just come an even more difficult route (they had been camped on the more exposed north shore) in a low-freeboard 15' cedar strip canoe. They also indicated hard work, a modest amount of bailing, and no real problems, which took a bit of the edge off our feeling of accomplishment. On the other hand, they saw another canoe capsize in the waves, some distance out in the lake from them. It was part of a multi-canoe party, so they did not go back.

One additional difficulty appeared during the first half of N. Tea L. We were hugging the shore to stay out of wind and waves as much as possible, and making rather slow headway. As we approached a large rock in the water, a seagull became increasingly and loudly agitated. It wasn't until the bird began divebombing us that I realized there was a nest on the rock. The gull would circle behind us and dive, from the rear, each time passing closer to our heads. It was close enough so that the sound of wind through feathers was loud. Watching behind, to duck as the bird went by, meanwhile paddling hard to maintain headway and watching the waves to avoid broaching on a big one was more than a full time job.

It got even worse when the gull's mate heard the commotion and joined in. Now the two of them were taking turns diving on us. Finally, I got smart, timed a dive, and stuck my canoe paddle up in front of the gull as it flashed by. The bird instantly locked its brakes, lowered all flaps, rotated, and somehow lifted over the paddle. The maneuverability was impressive. The profanity it hurled at me was just as impressive. However, future dives were at a somewhat more respectable distance (say about the length of a canoe paddle) and we were able to paddle on past the rock. Just after we were out of range of this pair, the next gull up the lake appeared and repeated the same performance. We began to have visions of fighting our way through gulls for the rest of the day. Fortunately there seemed to be only the two nests and the rest of the trip was relatively uneventful.

We now retraced our route up the Amable du Fond R. to Kawawaymog L. It began to rain, and visibility was poor. Half way up the "river", we took a wrong turn where the river forked, and we didn't realize it until we found ourselves in a small lake which shouldn't have been there. It cost us an extra mile or so of paddling a narrow winding creek.

The lake crossing was straight upwind with no shelter and no chance for a rest, and it was now a steady rain. The rain and distance made features on the opposite shore indistinct. Most of this lake is off the map, so we had no real clue as to where to go. I felt fortunate that I had taken a compass bearing from the entrance station to the portage when we came into the lake at the beginning of the trip. I didn't write it down, wasn't really sure I remembered it right, but decided to gamble on my memory and paddle a reciprocal course. Memory turned out to be ok, and about 2/3 of the way across the lake we began to recognize enough features to identify our destination. We arrived at our car about 5 pm, with sore arms and back.

Comments:

From the first portage out of Kioshkokwi L. until we reached Three Mile Lake, we saw no other people. Maple L. and Erables L. in particular are good destinations since they are beautiful and deserted.

Days three and five involved 4600 and 5500 meters of portaging respectively. This is probably the most we have ever tried in one day. Helen and I each carried approximately 40 to 45 pound high quality internal-frame packs. I also carried the 48 pound canoe with a comfortable yoke, partially supported by the pack frame. We were both in rather poor condition this early in the season, but got across the portages without stopping. By the end of these days, we were beginning to drag and had some minor lower back pain, but never felt that we had undertaken too much.

I echo McFarland's earlier comments about the big lakes. If you are exiting thorugh North Tea and Kawawaymog Lakes, leave enough slack in your schedule so you can lay over a day if necessary. The only way out is upwind with little protection. The lakes can easily and quickly become unnavigable, particularly if you don't have experience in waves. The pressure to meet a schedule can cause you to take unreasonable risks.

The attendant at the entrance station said that on Friday and Saturday, June 27 and 28, he opened at 6 am and had filled the quota by 6:30. The quota at this entrance is 30 groups per day. Half of the quota can be reserved in advance, and I forgot to ask him how many reservations he was holding on those days. We came in on Sunday at 9:25 am and he was not busy and was not close to filling up. Moral: if you are going in at the start of a weekend, call a day or two in advance and get a reservation.

Every campsite we checked had a box latrine. The new ones are all just boxes with a hole and a hinged cover - no walls or roof. Most were reasonably clean.

Every campsite but one had a usable steel mesh grille which could be supported on fireplace rocks for cooking. You really don't need to carry your own grille in Algonquin.

Mosquitos ranged from non-existent to a real annoyance. The only place where they got bad was one campsite where the wind was blowing from the forest toward the lake. Even here, DEET kept them from biting. They were thick enough to be very annoying anyway. We carried head nets, but it never got quite bad enough to put them on. Sites with a good breeze off the water were never a problem. A few portages required conscientious applications of DEET.

We saw no black flies. I have two bites which appear and feel like black fly, but I got them near the motel the night before we went into the park. Deer flies were occasionally annoying.

Because of the current Giardia scare and the relatively high population of beavers (and people) in the area we were entering, we finally got religion and decided that we wouldn't drink raw lake water this time. (On all previous trips, several trips a year for the last 20 years, we have drunk lake or stream water without treatment when we knew there were no regular human or farm animal pollution sources upstream. We have never yet been sick).

We took a proprietary brand of Iodine tablets which are documented to be fast and effective. As it turned out, we never used them. It was convenient to use our evening campfire to boil enough drinking water to last through the next day. We carried three quarts, although we never used more than two plus whatever was needed for breakfast.

Motel accomodations can be a problem, particularly on weekends. On the way up, we stayed in a rotting poorly maintained log cabin a mile or so south of South River, after seeing "full" signs on a couple of previous motels. We had dinner at the Castle Inn on the main highway in Sundridge - a good meal, better than one expects to find in the back country. On the way out, we stayed at Ten Gables Inn, perhaps 10 miles south of Sundridge, and I recommend it as one of the nicer places we found in this part of the world. It is a resort owned and run by a young English couple, with a golf course, swimming pool, shuffleboard court (!), children's play equipment, restaurant, and about 10 guest cabins. The buildings are old, but picturesque, freshly painted, meticulously clean, and nicely decorated in a frilly victorian manner. The meal (advance reservations required) was good.

A few blueberries were ripe along the water - this seems very early. There will be a bumper crop of blueberries and blackberries this year