Lady Evelyn Smoothwater Provincial Park -
Maple Mountain - Sugar Lake loop
113km total, 5075m in 12 portages + 6.4km hike (round trip distance) to peak of Maple Mountain
I had
heard many good things about Temagami but never had been there before. It’s a far enough drive that it is mostly out
for an aft-work drive to get up there which leads to it’s remoteness too. I quite like a long paddling trip which has a
good day hike in the middle of it. Even
though Lady Evelyn lake is certainly large enough to use our familiar kayaks
for most if not the whole trip, we decided to rent a canoe this time. Peter and myself wanted to get a new
experience with proper canoe tripping, portaging with gear, and the different
options it afforded. Kayak portaging
especially with loaded ‘yaks is a little limited on rugged terrain.
Day 0
We
left Guelph around noon and headed towards Temagami. We stopped at MEC in Barrie to pick up a few
things on the way. Weather was mixed –
sunny periods interspersed with blustery, rainy periods. We got to Temagami shortly before dusk and
picked a campsite at Finlayson Point Provincial park. It was the last operating night of Finlayson
Point for the year. It was rainy and I
think there were two other groups of people there. Most of the campground was closed off but we
picked a site near the comfort station that was still open. We went into town (if you even call it that)
to get some Temagami Dry ginger ale…
Peter had known about it since he is from Kirkland lake and sold it
there. So we brought it back to camp and after setting up a tarp, we proceeded
to crack into a few beers and Forty Creek rye and Temagami Dry.
Day 1
We got
a bit of a late-ish start. We ate club
sandwiches from the gas station diner and headed to Smoothwater Outfitters halfway
between Temagami and the Mowat Landing put in.
We found Smoothwater and after a short wait, we picked up an ‘extra
light’ canoe for our trip which we rented and I threw it onto my canoe carrier
accessory I got recently from my Thule roof rack. That worked perfectly. We made our way to Mowat Landing, down a long
road from Hwy 11. There’s quite a large
free parking lot on Crown Land near the public access dock on the Montreal
River, and the dock wasn’t very busy at this time of year. We spread out all our gear and made choices
of what is a must have and what is a nice to have item, since we never packed
for a canoe trip with portages before between us. We chose what gear to bring and put them in
dry bags inside duffel bags, and my canoe pack.
After
organizing things, we pushed off around 2 and headed towards Lady Evelyn. We quickly got to the take out dock at
Matawapika Dam to Lady Evelyn and decided to do a test one-carry portage, with
me carrying the camera bag, my duffel and the canoe, Peter carrying the canoe
pack, his duffel bag and the paddles. It
worked OK. We then paddled down the long
narrow channel towards the main lake in off and on sunshine. When we got to the main lake, the wind was
significantly stronger as Lady Evelyn’s quite large and that allows the wind…
and waves to pick up. We dug hard into
the wind and made it a few kms across the open water with waves sometimes
splashing across the bow to a rocky island campsite where we would camp. There was a late day rainbow and the sunset
later was great, we gathered wood and made a fire.
Day 2
The
wind didn’t quite relent at night, but it did calm down, and there was no
rain. We had breakfast and packed up our
gear, still somewhat bit dew soaked from the night before. We wanted to hit the water early enough to
get some paddling in before the wind picked up again. We didn’t make it far before we realized
paddling would be a bit of a struggle that day.
It was windy, overcast and spitting rain again, although we were
comfortable from all the paddling effort.
We powered into the wind and waves to cross the main body of water
towards the Obowanga dunes, a strange formation of sand dunes deposited by the
glaciers amidst the otherwise rocky topography of the Canadian Shield. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t encouraging
the exploration of the dunes we were just hugging the shore to protect from as
much wind as possible towards the narrows and towards the western body of Lady
Evelyn. 
We stopped at a campsite for a
quick lunch and to put on out rain pants.
The waves had been crashing over the gunwales at times and was soaking
our pants. We passed one set of canoe
trippers (out of only three we would see the entire trip) on their way the
eastward the other way. We dug into the
wind down the Obisaga Narrows, but when we got to the main westerly body of Lady
Evelyn, there were regular white caps, large waves and we were struggling to
maintain 2km/h into the wind so we stopped at an unnamed island at the mouth of
the narrows. We were hoping to wait out
the wind a little but it didn’t let up… actually it got worse, so we made a
camp on the island with an excellent fire pit, two tent pads and gathered a lot
of firewood. Sometime during the night
the wind died off completely and it was calm again by morning, thankfully.
Links:
For GPS Track:
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