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Hi there,
I'm planning a 2 night Labour Day weekend trip with a group of 6. Departing from Toronto and need to rent canoes on the way. Ideally:
- About 2-5 hours of travel time from the access point to camp (we're decently speedy)
- 1-2 portages that are 1500m or less in total
- A nice lake with good site options and some seclusion/peace and quiet
Posting here because this is our 7th year so we've done many of the commonly recommended Hwy 60 routes (some more than once) and would love to try something new. Here are the routes we've already done:
- Smoke-Ragged (incl. Parkside Bay)
- Cache-Tanamakoon (we were going to continue on to Little Island but bad storms cut our trip short)
- Rock-Pen
- Rock-Louisa.
Loved them all. Louisa last year was absolutely perfect but I've promised the group a slight reprise from the 3k portage this year. Any suggestions would be much appreciated!
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Have you tried Booth yet? That might be a good option for y'all
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Rock to Clydegale, fits all of your requirements.
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Owl. Third campsite with the rocky point. Beautiful one of our favourites.
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Opeongo Ourfitters water taxi to Happy Isle portage and either stay on Happy Isle or continue to Merchant.
Ya it is a 2200M port to Happy Isle but it is easy peasy and you are still fresh not having to paddle yet. The port to Merchant is nothing and gets you that little bit further.
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I will be entering Rain lake access in a few weeks. We are picking up rental at basecamp in Kearney and paddling to Jubilee lake for a few nights with exploring other lakes during our stay. I will let you know when we get back.
Seb
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Since you say "lake" singular, it sounds like you're planning to spend both nights in one spot. Correct?
I'll suggest Byers Lake in the south end of the park. Rent canoes from Pine Grove Point and have them delivered to the Kingscote access point. Paddle from there to Byers on the first day, and on the last day travel down the York River to Pine Grove Point, and have them drive you back to your cars at Kingscote. The shuttle is free when you're already paying rental and delivery, last I checked. On your layover day on Byers, daytrip up to Scorch Lake (might be a bit of a challenge getting through the rock garden) and hike the Scorch Lake Trail to the lookout.
Good bass fishing on this route, sandy beach campsites, nice varied scenery on the way down the York, and Byers has only two campsites with no sightlines between them.
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I'd consider starting at Magnetawan access point and going to Daisy Lake. I took a small group here last September... because it was their first trip, I was looking for similar things.
You can rent canoes at Kearney (either pickup or have delivererd to access point).
We stayed two nights on Daisy ==looks like you'd like to stay two nights at the same place too. For a day-trip on our no-moving-camp day, we continued down Daisy lake and into the first part of the Petawawa River -- the water level through that section of river can be very low, but since it was a daytrip we just went a ways and bailed out when it got silly.
To get to Daisy there were 3 portages (I think that's right). longest was 450m =/-... one was only 50m.
I liked our campsite a lot -- and several of the others looked nice too.
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I did a great 2 night trip entering from Rain and staying on Bandit both nights. On the "off" day there's a loop up to the Petawawa River and through Misty that was a lot of fun (in part because all of our gear could stay at the site).
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Pinetree lake is not handy to the Toronto side but still along hwy 60 ... very private and a long enough portage to keep the partiers away ...
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Having lived in South River with Access #1 basically at my front door, whenever I wanted to get away from it all I canoed to North Tea Lake. An easy 3-5 hour trip in to North Tea. You can easily get lost on this lake and there are many EXCELLENT campsites, even on some of the islands. Also, some excellent fishing in this lake should you wish to fish. Also, at the west end of the lake, you have easy side trips to Lost Dog and/or Cisco Lake.
Have a good trip!
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