An Algonquin canoe trip is a right of passage for any young outdoorsy east-coast Canadian, and for many, it’s usually the first canoe trip when ready to step up from car-camping.
It’s a large national park with multiple access points and connecting routes – allowing you to journey for as long as your heart desires or time permits. Various lengths of portages connect you from lake to lake, and depending on your route, you can craft your trip to be super chill and easy or way more extreme with long, lingering and challenging uphill canoe-carry battles.
I started going to Algonquin National Park when I was about 10 at summer camp and year after year, our cabin would venture back on longer trips and different routes throughout the park. My last camp canoe trip was when I was 16, so the first trip back since then was exciting.
Looking at the maps again, the names of the lakes started to come back to my memory and we decided on a week-long trip starting from Canoe Lake, right where the famous Portage Store is. We booked our sites in April to ensure we had reservations on the lakes we needed to in order to make our planned route. Like many backcountry camping trips in Canada, you typically reserve a lake on a certain night to camp out at, and then it’s first come, first served on choosing a campsite on that particular lake.
When we portage, our goal is to carry everything in one go – no double backing on our trips! To achieve this, we have 1 large backpacking bag that has our sleeping bags, sleeping pad and clothes and 1 large barrel that holds all of our food. When we have the canoe over our heads during the portage, we each carry either the barrel or the bag and have the lifejackets tied around the seats. The paddles are tied to the yoke and seat with an ingenious trick we learned from a fellow canoe tripper – you take two pieces of Velcro and form an ‘X’ formation. You then either glue or tie the X together (we used sewing thread and wrapped it around a ton). Then the opposite end of the ‘X’ go around the Yoke, and the other opposite ends go around the paddle – you’ll need 4 of these ‘X’ Velcro things for 2 paddles.
Canoe trip meal ideas: https://backpackingwithblisters.wordpress.com/menu-planning/
Packing list ideas: https://backpackingwithblisters.wordpress.com/2016/10/24/packing-list-canoe-tripping/
The night before our canoe trip, we camped out at Tea Lake so we were ready to hit the water as soon as we could and still have some sunlight while setting up camp for the night. We also wanted a chill night before the trip so we spent the evening making campfire pizza and watching the stars – we had beautiful weather and took full advantage of being outdoors.
Canoe lake > Tom Thompson Lake
Of course, the day that our canoe trip started turned out to be the windiest day of the summer and the park rangers were suggesting we alter our route or else face an uphill battle. We chose the battle. From Canoe Lake, we travelled north up towards Joe Lake pushing hard against the wind, taking double the time it should have to arrive at the first portage. Luckily the first portage of the trip was super quick at only 295 meters so we quickly regained our speed – but if you plan on doing this route, know this portage is VERY busy. We call it ‘Hwy 401’.
From Joe Lake, we continued north to Teepee Lake, Littledoe Lake and then moved west to Tom Thomson Lake where we spent our first night on the water. We planned on arriving by mid-afternoon but with the wind fighting us, we didn’t arrive until it was almost dark already which made finding a campsite super frustrating. We had to circle around the outskirts of the lake a few times until we finally found one. It wasn’t ideal as it was close to the opening of the next lake, which meant thru-traffic, but it was only for a night and it was too dark to keep looking.
We had a bit of sunset still to enjoy when we arrived so we set up camp as quickly as we could and got dinner cooking. We had a delicious ‘fancy pasta’ and swigs of whiskey while the sky turned all kinds of purple and pink – an ideal day 1 dinner!
Tom Thompson > Sunbeam Lake
Knowing we had 4 portages to get through, we left our site at about 8am and went northeast towards Bartlett Lake where the short portaging began through a series of small lakes. A lot of the lakes were dried out so two of the portages just became one longer one.
We arrive at Sunbeam Lake just after lunch – and because we arrived early in the day, we weren’t competing with other paddlers for the winning campsites. We leisurely paddled around the lake until we spotted the best one – an island site just ahead of the next day’s portage. It wasn’t near any other campsites and was far enough away from the main paddle route that it felt like the lake was all ours. It was also a massive site so we were able to set up our tent away from our ‘kitchen’ and hang a massive clothesline up between the trees.
With gorgeous sunny weather and a perfectly positioned large flat are coming out of the water, we spent all day reading, tanning, playing backgammon and swimming on pride rock. It was luxury after a portage-heavy morning.
For dinner, we made my famous backcountry pad thai and watched the sun go down with an incredible view of the whole lake – and timing worked out perfectly as we settled in our tent for the night, a massive rainstorm hit which we knew we had to deal with in the morning.
Sunbeam Lake > Burnt Island Lake
Waking up to rain on a canoe trip is the worst feeling – you know you have work to do to get the campsite taken down, but everything is either soaked (or just damp if you’re lucky) and you have no shelter anymore as a barrier. It wasn’t raining hard but was still a nuisance.
We moved as fast as we could knowing we wanted to set up shelter at our next site as soon as we were able so we paddled southeast through the rain and started our days journey with 4 short portages. The lakes we went through were more like boggy ponds and not an ideal site to linger in. With this setting, plus the rain still coming down, we weren’t moving as quickly as we had hoped but luckily the portages were fairly easy and our non-double backing rule was helpful.
We got to burnt island just as the rain cleared up mid-afternoon and had a good few hours to set up our site. Finally sitting down to enjoy, the rain came hard again but we were able to still relax under the tarp we set up just before it hit. It lasted until it was time to make dinner and luckily we had a clear night to cook in. Trying to make dinner in the rain is never fun.
We had my backpacking recipe for curry chickpeas and a nice hot meal to take our rain-pain away.
Burnt Island > Canoe Lake
Our final day was our longest distance of paddling and we still had 4 portages to get through – but knowing in just a few hours we would celebrate with burgers and beer at the Portage Store, our spirits were high.
The route was beautiful with great weather and no other boats on the water. It felt like we were all alone there, forgetting how many thousands of people are at Algonquin on any summer day. As we got closer to Canoe Lake though, the hotels, summer camps and ‘rustic cottage experiences’ came in to view, along with more canoes on the water. You can tell who was tripping and who came from a ‘luxury country resort’ as some of the canoeists were in super clean, expensive ‘camping’ clothes (aka their J Crew casuals), while we were in dirty, smelly clothing we were wearing for the last 4 days. We got a good laugh watching some of them paddle with the goal not to splash anything on themselves – a lot of lily dipping going on and not a lot of distance being gained.
We got back to the Canoe Lake access point early afternoon and celebrated as planned at the Portage Store. We then headed back to Tea Lake campground where we car-camped for the night.
Centennial Ridges Hike
We woke up early the next day as we were hiking Centennial Ridges – a must do for hikers if in the Algonquin area. It’s a moderate hike that takes 5-6 hours so most people on the trail have done some sort of hiking before. We started out on the trail around 8 am with just our day bag filled with lunch. Even though the canoe trip was only a few days, it felt good to not have a massive backpack, barrel and canoe to carry every step we took.
Centennial Ridges is a large series of rock ridges with lookouts in all directions across Algonquin. It’s a 10.5 km loop hike that’s rated difficult on the map but its more moderate – you’re not climbing much in elevation, it’s just longer than other hikes in the park.
It was a great hike with spectacular views the whole time, and because we went early in the morning, there were only a few other people on the trail despite it being a well-known hike.
Huntsville
After the hike and filling ourselves with Kawartha Dairy Ice Cream at a roadside stop (Death By Chocolate all the way!), we spent a few relaxing days in the town of Huntsville before we headed home. We splurged on massages at Deerhurst Spa, wandered around the cute shops and visited art galleries filled with tons of Group of Seven inspirational work.
If you have any questions about my trip or any other info you want to know, reach out!
Backpacking with blisters 