IanTendy wrote:

Hi, it's a great lake.  I wouldn't waste time heading to the island site on the north side, but the sites along the southern shore are all really great.  It's very well-trodden, finding good firewood requires some beach-combing.  Last time I was through there I stayed at the first site north of the portage from Hambone, great site.  Very spacious and picturesque. Pics and a triplog here:https://iantendy.wordpress.com/2014/10/28/triplog-solo-to-ralph-bice-lake/

Thanks for the reply and the link to your trip-log.
Great read.
Cheers.

I will post when back from the weekend.

Cheers.

Check out the Algonquin Adventures PCI entries for some of the campsites on Ralph Bice Lake .. http://www.algonquinadventures.com/PCI/listRT.htm
Note: Right-mouse-click and open the links into a new tab or page, as they are originally 'frame-directed'.
 

BarryB wrote:

Check out the Algonquin Adventures PCI entries for some of the campsites on Ralph Bice Lake .. http://www.algonquinadventures.com/PCI/listRT.htm
Note: Right-mouse-click and open the links into a new tab or page, as they are originally 'frame-directed'.
 

I did. Thanks Barry.
I'll submit a review if we use a site not already on the list.

I just got back two weeks ago from doing the La Cloche Trail in Killarney in just over 3 days.
A friend brought his VR camera and we were able to get some pretty cool video and photos of our trip including campsites that he uploaded to Youtube so that people can get an idea of the campsites. We stayed at H35, H21 and H6. He remembered to shoot some video of H18 when we stopped for a water top-up.
Overall video of our hike: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuOfeV3-26Y
Campsite H35: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syJLAntZfkU
Capsite H21: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uy9HFvJGro
Campsite H18: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWGNwCyZ6Js
Campsite H6: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oRYks4FbUw

If you click and hold your mouse on the video then drag you can pan around just like google streetview. It turned out really cool

Unfortunately I won't have that same camera with me for this trip...
I think it's the future of campsite reviews .

Cheers and thanks!

The trip was great!

We got to the permit office about 10 minutes after 7 in the morning.
Got our permits and got on our way.

We were on Ralph Bice by about 9:15.
We knew the lake was fully booked and with the poor weather forecast we decided to look for something on the west end of the lake to make for a little easier paddle on Sunday.
There were a few sites that were already taken. There was one which had pretty steep access, then we came up to Campsite number 19 (see the PCI) which appeared to be good for what we needed and someone had left us a nice pile of firewood.
We setup camp had something to eat then took a trip to David lake to check it out and try our hand at some fishing (being the middle of August after a heat wave none of us had very high hopes that we'd be successful with our fishing).
David lake was a nice small lake but we weren't getting any action on the lines so we checked it out and then headed back to site.
It was an EARLY morning (4am on the road) so we decided to take it easy, have some dinner and hit the hay relatively early.
We were fortunate enough (sarcasm) to have a group of 4 guys whom we saw in the parking lot earlier unloading 2 full size coolers, guitar, etc... camp on site 18.  They serenaded us that night with the wonderful singing of "System of a Down" and we were greatful (sarcasm) to fall asleep to the sound of them banging something repeatedly.

We woke up around midnight to some rain, but it didn't last long, our alarm was set for 5:30am to get up and get ready for some fishing, we slept in a bit as the rain had started back up.
We got up about 7am and got ready and just as we were about to put the canoes in the water we could hear rain in the distance and we watched it coming down hard as it crossed the water towards us. It only lasted 10-15 minutes and we were finally able to get on the water.

We were out for about 1.5hours and and about 45 minutes in to my utter suprise I had a fish on!  A nice approximately 1.5lbs Lake Trout... My compadre switched to a similar lure and we started back up... 15 minutes later he pulled one in roughly the same size.  Our compadres in the other bolt heard the commotion and headed over to see what it was about. They then saw our bounty and decided to switch to the same tactic we were using... About 20 minutes later, they pulled in one approximately in the 2lbs range.  We spent another 10 minutes fishing, but decided to head in for a "shore brunch".

This was definitely the best meal I have ever while camping.  I had just caught my first ever lake trout, in Algonquin (one of my most favourite places in the world to be) and now we were cooking them up in the pan over the fire. The meal was delicious, I was surprised as just how good lake trout taste!  I was ever so grateful to mother nature that day for the delicious bounty she provided us with.
The weather was turning out to be great too with the sun shining with a few clouds, didn't really feel like there was going to be any rain.

Shortly after finishing out meal we heard a buzzing sound on the lake, like a motor boat, we said to ourselves, there's no motors on this lake. We peaked through the tree cover to the water to see a small canoe with a small outboard on the back heading right towards us... It was a couple of park Wardens.  They were there to check out permits and to replace our privy which they said they were told was in pretty rough shape.  We chatted with them for a little when they were done, they were pretty surprised at our fishing success. They also told us the forecast for the day had changed and it was calling for no rain and sun and clouds, we were to expect some rain overnight, but Sunday was supposed to be nice as well. When we were done shooting the breeze, they were off.
It was pretty neat to see, they brought out 2 bundles of wood strapped together.  The thunderbox was basically prebuilt (almost like ikea furniture) they just needed to put it together.  How often are you able to say that you (mind you, it wasn't me it was one of the other guys I was with) are the first person to christen a thunderbox? haha.

A couple of us went back to the David lake portage where we had seen plenty of good firewood lying around on our exploration the day before and we loaded up the canoes with a healthy supply.
After dinner we went back on the water to try our hand at fishing (C&R this time as we already had some plan and food for dinner).  We gave it about an hour, hour and a half and my canoe mate got one more 1.5lber +/-, that was all. We were happy with our success based on what we were expecting going into it.
This time we stuck within eyesite of our campsite as the neighbours from site 18 were out in their canoes smoking some special herb and paddling around our general campsite area; we felt a little leary of them; I didn't want to have to post in the "Campsite Pirates" topic here on the board.
We were lucky (as I'm sure many others on the lake that night were) to hear them yelling and singing away again into the night.
We ignored them the best we could, had a nice dinner and sat around a great campfire late into the evening.

It rained heavy with thunder and lightning overnight and high winds. We woke up early again we went out for some more fishing but came back in as it was too choppy. We packed up our stuff while it wasn't raining and headed out back to the access point; at this point it had stopped raining and we had a nice dry paddle back.  We left around 8am and got to the access point around 10am +\-.  The high winds made for a much slower travel than on the way in as we were heading into the wind the whole time,  Ralph Bice was pretty choppy.

All in all it was a great trip.  I hadn't been canoe camping in a quite some time (I am a Backpacker/Hiker). My 3 compatriots had never been interior camping before (I think they enjoyed themselves).
It was much more relaxing than the backpacking trips I'm used to.

Agreed with Blobsquatch above.
We were strong paddlers, but definitely had to dig deep at times to keep up the momentum.
It was a very blustery Saturday night.

Gilgamesh wrote:

Nice trip report, thank you for the wind warning. Wanted to write a more detailed response, but need to leave now. Thanks again!!

No worries.
I'll contribute to the PCI upon receipt of the photos from one of my camp mates.

Cheers.