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A few things that I believe:
I make mistakes
I can (try to) not repeat the same mistake twice.
The greatest thing about mistakes: I can be reminded to be humble… and to treat my favourite place - solo my canoe - with respect — in the sense that screwing up can result in amusement but potentially in a very dangerous predicament.
So… what’s been your greatest bit of backcountry stupidity?
____
My greatest (worst).
On an enormous lake, I pulled my canoe up onto the site’s little sand beach. I unloaded a pile firewood. I did pull the canoe WAY up into the sand. It wasn’t even touching the water… but I did not flip it, I left it upright on the sand. I was looking forward to going for a paddle in a while
Pulling it up so far seemed a bit wise but not really…
I completely forgot to go back partly because a hell of a storm came through.
I battened down the camp but forgot about the canoe.
I got into my tent to ride out the downpour that blew sideways.
Apparently, a 40lb prospector (very flat bottomed) canoe can be blown across sand and out into the lake.
Remember?… enormous lake?
I was incredibly lucky.
I was on Opeongo.
A water taxi turned up just after the storm ended. “Is this your canoe?”.
Seriously humbling.
Amazingly lucky that I was even on the only lake with water taxis.
The kindness of that water taxi driver was extremely appreciated…
…without it, I did still have an out (Zoleo wife, have her phone water taxi to hire one to retrieve us and find the canoe)..,
On any other trip, I would have been in very big trouble.
Especially since I do most of my trips in the shoulder season and, especially in the fall, it’s common for me to not see anyone for days at a time.
**A MASSIVE SHOUT OUT TO ALGONQUIN OUTFITTERS… I stopped by on our way home to thank them in person and spent some money in the store.
—/
So… anyone else?
🤪
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My buddy and I camped on an island for the night. I did no tie down the canoe (lightweight Grumman aluminum IIRC).
Some time later we we sitting on a log drinking coffee at our campsite, looking out over the lake from slightly higher ground, when we saw the boat slowly drift by a few feet off shore.
My buddy was quicker than me; he scored a long dead sapling which he managed to toss out onto the canoe while holding on to the end. But we both got wet.
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I hung up the food bag with a slip knot. Apparently racoons know how to untie a slip knot. Had to drive off about 4 racoons in the morning. We were living on half-rations for the next 3 nights.
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solos wrote:
I hung up the food bag with a slip knot. Apparently racoons know how to untie a slip knot. Had to drive off about 4 racoons in the morning. We were living on half-rations for the next 3 nights.
I was having a conversation with a friend on my last trip to the park, neither of us have ever seen a raccoon in the back country. Can't swing a cat without hitting one at a car campground. Weird.
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We had a racoon do a tightwire act to access our pack one night on Burnt Island Lake. They enjoy white bread.
I've related the story previously of my first trip to Algonquin when I was roughly 10 years old in 1977 where a similar mistake befell us. We camped on the elevated Hayes point site on Lavieille in mid-May. Rainy day coming in over the Dickson-Bonfield, cold, hungry & tired. The first few days were rain and wind but the wind shifted the second night and one of the four canoes that had been tied to a tree along shore went for a float sometime overnight.
We noticed it missing in the morning and made a plan for the remaining three canoes to fan out over the lake to search. That afternoon one of the canoes comes upon two guys with a motor on their canoe coming out of Thomas Bay who said they saw a canoe down at the far end of the bay. That thing had floated over three miles in the breeze!
Technically, since I wasn't the one who didn't tie the canoe, it wasn't my mistake. My mistake was taking a 17 foot aluminum Michicraft canoe (75-80 pounds) over the Dickson-Bonfield in my late thirties. Remarkably stupid.
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I hung up the food bag with a slip knot. Apparently racoons know how to untie a slip knot. Had to drive off about 4 racoons in the morning. We were living on half-rations for the next 3 nights.
I was having a conversation with a friend on my last trip to the park, neither of us have ever seen a raccoon in the back country. Can't swing a cat without hitting one at a car campground. Weird.
I camped at site 15 on Booth in the 80's and it was a raccoon bordello. We had dozens of them descend on our site first night. Nobody in the group got any sleep due to them fighting each other for crumbs. We moved to the campsite 11 next day and not a single masked bandit.
Dumbest move? getting up from my Helinox chair to get some more firewood and coming back to find the wind blew it into the fire.
since 2004
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I once navigated through about 3km's of dense, boreal transition forest before I realized my compass needle was pointing at the battery in my handheld radio. I got a little queasy over that. I did an about face and carefully made my way back. Vitally important to always glance back at where you came from - helped immensely in this case.
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Pretty sure I've never made a mistake. Except that time I went over a waterfall. But otherwise nope, nothing 
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