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Many of you are so familiar with the park that guesstimating time of travel for a given day is a quick eyeballing, but I'm far from that. As much as I have gotten out of the map formerly known as Jeff's, I have a hard time using it to figure out time of travel, so I made a spreadsheet method. You need four things: 1) water distance, 2) land distance, 3) rate of speed by water, 4) rate of speed by land.
Land distance is easy enough to get - portage distances. To determine distance by water, I use a "point to point" distance calculator online - there are lots of these to choose from. It is a little tricky to determine river distances, so I try to be conservative about that. I double-carry, so the total distances are 1X for water and 3X for land.
The critical thing is figuring out rate of progress on land and sea. For this, I baseline off a trip I took from Magnetawan to David and back. On the way there, it took me 3.5 hours (with the wind, but I goofed on Hambone which seems impossible but I did, plus I took several pictures and made 4 or 5 videos), on the return, 3.0 hours with the wind in my face. So, somewhere between 3.0 hrs and 3.5 hrs, If I use 2.0 mph by sea and 1.4 mph by land (3.22 kph and 2.25 kph respectively), that trip works out to 3.1 hours. The land rate is slow, but takes into consideration take-out/put-in. That rate of travel should include some time for lollygagging, rubber-necking, and being old. Honestly, both rates are kind of slow, but I can't argue with how long it took me to do the Magnetawan-David route, I clocked it both directions....
So, using that method, here's the family trip this summer. We haven't done this before (two canoes, the whole family), so we'll have to see how reality works out, but....
Magnetawan - Daisy: 2.3 hours
Daisy - Jubilee via Petawawa: 5.6 hours
Jubilee - Casey: 4.3 hours
Casey - Magnetawan: 3.9 hours
Day 2 could be a bit of a grind, but we'll see. We could stay on Moccasin instead of Jubilee, that would make Days 3 and 4 just about the same travel time, but in reading posts it looks like folks prefer Jubilee for swimming & fishing, although Moccasin seems to offer a bit more solitude w/only two campsites and is an interesting-shaped lake.
I'm going to try to record some times this summer on the family trip, and in the fall on my solo trip, to refine the rates of travel a bit.
So, that's how I do it - how do you do it?
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Years ago I created an excel spreadsheet for planning a trip. By inputting your portage speed, paddling speed, number of portages, distances etc.. it will spit our your estimated travel time each day. It also totals things up. I print out a copy and stick it on the fridge as a float plan for my family. I don't use it much any more except as a float plan to stick on the fridge. I don't spend as much time planning trips as I used to. Now days I just eyeball it and give myself lots of leeway. It does not take into account wind, weather or difficulty of the portages. So not always accurate. But it is fun to fill out in the planning season and the process immerses your into the details of your upcoming trip!
Link to download -
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I just add up the travel times on Jeff's map. I'm somewhat faster than his posted times, so that gives me a sort of baked-in safety net if it turns out to be a rough day.
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I must be lucky, for the most part the times on Jeff's maps seem to fit my travel speeds. Obviously this varies a little with wind/weather/partner etc. and I always give myself a couple extra hours/day as a contingency.
@MartinG: funny that we travel at exactly the same average speeds. And I quit making calculations long ago as well: when I travel alone there's no difference between, say, 6 and 8 hours, and when we travel as a family any calculations are meaningless.
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There is so much else involved in a trip - fishing, eating, photos, video, napping - that I don't get too hung up on travel time. Well, I care about it, but I plan relatively easy distances for travel days with gear and then adjust the other activities to get to camp at a decent time.
We also do a lot of base camping with day trips which means we don't have to worry about finding a site most days and can readily adjust the length of a day trip to the weather, wind, and how long it took us to get that far from camp in the first place.
That also means we're coming back out the same route we went in so I have a good idea how long it will take to get home.
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LoL @ EddyTurn @MartinG
That's extremely close to the baseline values used on the Unlostify maps. Basically, just a hair slower on portages, but the same on paddling. The biggest difference is that we add a bunch of customized speed penalties where appropriate based on per-route conditions.
The Jeff's Map math was slightly different (I don't remember it exactly) but that's because it was derived mathematically from a whole bunch of sample data. I had to relearn intro to statistics for that one haha!
But for all intents and purposes, I'd say that those numbers are basically backed up by the model I came up with.
Although (obviously) it's possible to beat those times, I was quite surprised with how little variation there is from those baseline values for people that travel faster than average.
All in all, I found the model I created (including all the special tweaks on a per route basis for actual conditions) to make predictions that were 95% accurate, 9 times out of 10 (as compared to the times I got from all the GPS data people contributed)
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@jeffrey Have you taken a look at the calculations on my spreadsheet! It's friggin rocket science!!!
Now all I have to do is look at your maps and count to 4?
No more excel for me.
and I'm doing ZERO planning for this springs trip. 
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Nertz. I tried to show a screen shot of my spreadsheet, but nope, didn't work. You'll just have to imagine it. A thing of beauty, nothing less.
Last edited by dontgroandaddy (3/27/2018 5:33 pm)
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MartinG wrote:
@jeffrey Have you taken a look at the calculations on my spreadsheet! It's friggin rocket science!!!
Now all I have to do is look at your maps and count to 4?
No more excel for me.
and I'm doing ZERO planning for this springs trip.
:D woohoo! lol!
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I have a similar spreadsheet which I find is usually quite accurate. It doesn't take into account the number of portages, but I've considered adding that, as I did find is less accurate when I had many portages in a day. It, by design, tends to overestimate time, but when you add in breaks, a stop for lunch, detours it ends up being pretty accurate. The whole thing is based on a few years of GPS logs.
The one thing it does is produce two time estimates, the one is what I actually expect, and the other is a worst case (traveling into strong wind, and double carry the portages). This pessimistic estimate is just to give me some idea of how bad my day could be, for example if I hurt myself and can't single carry anymore. Some very doable days fall apart when you start having to double carry.
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Spreadsheet and algorithms Oh Boy!
I occasionally feel like I’m overly obsessive about my trip planning then I come on here and you guys make me feel better about myself.
By the way would it be weird if I had the majority of my trips already planned out for the next 2 years. ?
Sickos ! 
Last edited by ShawnD (3/27/2018 7:33 pm)
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It doesn't take into account the number of portages, but I've considered adding that, as I did find is less accurate when I had many portages in a day.
Yea, that's one of the most important factors that's overlooked. In fact, that one in particular really bit me, and is what motivated me to come up with my own times.
I'd always screw myself over since my ambitions required my time estimates to be perfect ("If I planned everything right we'll arrive just before sunset"). But then I'd vastly underestimate portage loading/unloading times alongside other relevant factors like particularly strong currents, etc....
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Years ago I created an excel spreadsheet for planning a trip. By inputting your portage speed, paddling speed, number of portages, distances etc.. it will spit our your estimated travel time each day. It also totals things up. I print out a copy and stick it on the fridge as a float plan for my family. I don't use it much any more except as a float plan to stick on the fridge. I don't spend as much time planning trips as I used to. Now days I just eyeball it and give myself lots of leeway. It does not take into account wind, weather or difficulty of the portages. So not always accurate. But it is fun to fill out in the planning season and the process immerses your into the details of your upcoming trip!
Link to download -
I generally don't have any troubles calculating trip times... If it's comfortable route, then sometimes I simply hold a ruler to the screen and measure against day routes that I know pretty well lol! But there always an odd route one can't be sure about (ie river, wind, portage elevations, etc) - Think it's always better to have more info before a trip begins than wish you had done so when in the park lol... This is a nice little spreadsheet - Think I may 'tweak' a copy for my planning...
Also, with Bob and Diana's new trip planner tool (well I've only recently discovered, so may not actually be new lol) - Would be really neat to be able to add their back end data to a spreadsheet like...
Thanks for sharing Martin!
=D=D
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@jeffrey Have you taken a look at the calculations on my spreadsheet! It's friggin rocket science!!!
Now all I have to do is look at your maps and count to 4?
No more excel for me.
and I'm doing ZERO planning for this springs trip.
Hey Martin, I don't see a field for lake orientation relative to the prevailing winds in there! If you really want to get serious you need to factor in whether the lake runs north-south or east-west and which way you'll be travelling. 
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@RobW not to mention the moon cycle!
@Ash You are welcome to it Ash.
Just a note for anyone who wants to use it. Don't fill in any of the numbers under the words "Portage" and "Paddle". Those numbers are automatically calculated. Just fill in what is highlighted in yellow below (be exact with format!).
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I just add up the travel times on Jeff's map. I'm somewhat faster than his posted times, so that gives me a sort of baked-in safety net if it turns out to be a rough day.
What Uppa said. Having those travel times on Jeff’s Map has been super handy.
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