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Ok, I know we're still five months away from paddling season, but I was looking at the map and started wondering about this route:
Tim Lake Access Point
Night One - Grass Lake
Night Two - Loughrin or Lawren Harris Lake
Night Three - Mangatosi or North Tea East Arm
Night Four - Craig/Nahma
Night Five - Mujekeewis
In
I've got a few questions:
- For the most part this would be low maintenance portages, so I'm wondering if anyone has done any parts of this route recently, and how difficult the portages are.
- Has anyone done the stretch between Nahma and Mujekeewis? What's the 3.6KM portage like? Jeff's Map suggests it's not awesome, particularly with the cliff scaling about halfway through.
- It's 111KM in total, so not too bad when looking at it from a distance perspective over 6 days, but there's a lot of river travel and portaging. Are the Nippissing and Laughrin Creek generally easily navigable, or am I likely to run into shallow water/blockages (let's assume I'm doing this trip in the late spring or early summer). This would be especially important for the second day, which would be about 25KM in total, most of it along the river.
- Is Grass Lake a nice place to spend a night?
Thanks,
Drew
Last edited by AlgonquinLakes (12/21/2017 12:25 pm)
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I've done your entire route, but different sections over different trips.
So here are some thoughts:
You can save some time and some walking by starting at the Park boarder just west of West Koko lake. It's a bushwhack, and not too long, I've done it twice and worked fine - got me to Grass Lake in good time. (can send you GPS tracks for the bushwhack if you need them). PM me for parking and other details if you plan to use this entry method.
The Nip between Big Bob and the Nod Lake portage will have its challenges, but for the most part will just be an adventure. Nothing impossible, check my site for TR20, days one and two cover the West Koko bushwhack and Nip to the Nod Lake portage. I stayed at the Grass Lake site on this trip.
Between Nahma and Mujekeewis is also very straight forward. There are no 5m cliffs. There are 5ft at best. Do not worry about this section. Be sure to stop at the South River P.O.W. site for a slice of history. The 3650m trail follows the old railbed. Long, but flat.
Loughrin Creek will be just fine. There is one tiny section that gets shallow, but it wont slow you down by more than a minute or so.
Stay on Lawren Harris if you can. Pretty lake and MUCH better campsite than Loughrin. P1910 has a pretty steep climb up from the Nip, but you've done worse.
North Tea has much more desireable sites than Mangotasi, but will be much busier, obviously.
Craig is nice, but you can see a giant concrete dam from pretty much every site. Nahma has nice clear water and a decent campsite out of the 4. Pishnecka has a great beach site on the east and a big rock site on the west.
Mujekeewis is typical of a low maintenance lake. Basic sites, but feels very private and secluded. Big Bob has much better sites if you can make it there instead.
Have fun man!
Last edited by Peek (12/21/2017 1:51 pm)
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Thanks Peek, this is awesome. Exactly what I was hoping for. I'll check out that trip report.
Do you think the route would be doable in one less day?
Last edited by AlgonquinLakes (12/21/2017 3:19 pm)
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Everything is possible.
Given your route, to shave a night off without re-arranging all the camped lakes I would recommend removing night 5. Just push through to the car at Koko. If you access at Tim, Nahma to Tim is a big day with a lot of walking, totally doable, but not ideal. Nahma to Koko would help you a lot - again, if you need to shave a night off. If you don't, the longer the better (obviously!)
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