Lenny wrote:

Booked a trip for August long weekend! 
1-Crotch Lake
2-3- Shirley Lake
4-5- Booth Lake 

Going to miss you by a little bit, also just booked our summer trip from Shall Lake.

Aug 2 - 8
Tattler Cabin
Dickson
White Partridge
Lavieille
Animoosh
McKaskill Cabin

Day 3 : Little Cauchon to Cedar Lake  
(ORIGINAL PLAN:Little Cauchon L. to Carl Wilson L.)
TOTAL KM: 14.9 KM   
# OF PORTAGES (DISTANCE): 2 (0.5KM)
(TOTAL KM: 8.1 KM  | # OF PORTAGES (DISTANCE): 1 (1.1 KM))


               
We woke up to another beautiful morning. The sun was shining and it promised to be a warm day. The wind was already up a little bit on the lake, which was not promising for our new plan. No better way to spend your birthday though!



Our original plan was to explore two more sets of ruins around Little Cauchon, before portaging into Carl Wilson for the night.
We had wanted to see the building ruins and waterfall on the Windemere Lake portage, followed up with the cabin ruins on the Gouinlock portage.


           

           
With our decision to leave the Park on day 3 already made (over quite a few drinks on night 2) we elected to skip our morning of exploring and just leave Little Cauchon. One day we will return to explore these locations, maybe on a shorter trip with the kids into Carl Wilson. Now we had several extra hours in our day… how would we use them? Well, it just so happened that a few buddies of ours (Jarin and Buddy Steve from Knox on Woods) were staying at the Lost Coin ranger cabin for the weekend. What luck that we happened to be in their neck of the woods. We would leave the park, figure out how to drive down to them, and surprise them with a quick visit!
           
Now, all we had to do was paddle and portage from Little Cauchon back to the Brent access point on Cedar Lake. We finished out egg and bacon wraps and made our way back under the railbed to the P130 to Laurel.

Algonquin Park: Cedar Lake to Little Cauchon Lake Loop
ACCESS POINT START :  Cedar Lake
ACCESS POINT FINISH: Cedar Lake
# OF DAYS / NIGHTS:  3 D / 2 N                 
DIFFICULTY LEVEL:  Easy
TOTAL KM: 36  
# OF PORTAGES (DISTANCE): 7  (1 KM)



We were a little torn on where to trip for our annual May long weekend trip for 2024. In September of 2023 we picked up another addition to the Single Malt and Maps family, a German Shorthaired Pointer named Henry! We decided on a fairly easy loop from Cedar Lake that involved very little portaging for the first few days, and would let us stay reasonably close to the truck in the event things did not go as well as planned. Our trip plan did have us starting on the largest body of water in the Northern part of Algonquin though. Henry had very little canoe experience leading up to the trip, with the Canadian winter being most of his life up to this point.
We packed up Henry’s new camping toys, bright orange life jacket, food, and beep collar and left home around 0330 am on the Friday of the long weekend. We were excited to locate and explore some relics noted on the new map by Jeff M, and to just escape for the weekend.

Our original plan was to camp on Hurdman for night one, Little Cauchon for night two, and spend our last night on Carl Wilson Lake. Due to another unfortunate bit of gear failure we ended up cutting our trip one night short and leaving the park from Little Cauchon.

All in all, Henry conducted himself exceptionally well and really settled into the back country lifestyle. We are looking forward to undertaking some longer / bigger adventures with him in the future!


__________________________________________________________________
Day 1 : Cedar Lake to Hurdman Lake
TOTAL KM: 14

Not going in as early as most of you, but we are planning to enter on the 16th of May at Magnetawan for a 4 day trip.
Plan is to paddle the Tim to Shippagew, and return to Mag through the Devine / Rosebary / Mubwayaka route. Pretty excited for this trip. Not much "new" territory in Algonquin for me but this trip is an exception.

I am hoping the access point situation on the west side is sorted before we head out!

 
 

Penn lake side of the P375 from Rock.

Dwight wrote:

This pic taken from the same campsite as the previous photo but looking in a north easterly direction.

This looks like Fassett, from the North shore campsite looking back to the P1025... but the campfire area does not math my memory..

PaPaddler wrote:

I see quite a few comments about getting feet wet when getting in and out of the canoe for portages.  Unless it is a muddy, sloppy landing, I don't usually get in the water and just step right onto land or a rock or a root or something solid.  But I'm deliberate and careful...because I don't want to make a mistake that ruins a trip or puts a damper on the day.  Others may just splash out and dash onto the trail in the spirit of moving on quickly...kudos to them.

I am in the latter camp... I find it easier to just swing over the side into the shallow water, grab my gear, then lift the canoe right from the water and just walk on to the portage. I used to try and keep my feet dry all day, then would eventually step wrong and it was all for naught anyways. All the time and effort, wasted haha.
I have learned to just live with soaking wet feet for the entire trip. Bring lots of socks, and some light/dry footwear for camp and it is bearable.

That being said, putting on wet shoes on a cold morning is my least favourite thing about camping!

IanTendy wrote:

Burntroot...?  The walleye lense is making this more difficult than I think it is.

 
Not quite.. but very close.

We were indeed on a beautiful site, but we were North of Big Trout.