Bon Echo is a great Provincial Park in
Ontario. Not only does it have the
majestic cliffs right in front of the park in Mazinaw Lake, it also has 17kms
of backpacking trails (or backpacking-lite), and also the introductory canoe
camping lake Joe Perry Lake, which you park your car, portage down to the
water, load it up, and canoe across the lake to one of the 23 campsites lining
the perimeter of the lake. I have never
been there, but I hear many are very nice, some with their own private sandy
beach!
In any case, I was there yurting with some
friends for the 2013 May 24 weekend recently and we decided to tackle the
Kishkebus route, a 16 km canoe route that essentially encircles the Mazinaw
Cliffs, through a series of portages, lakes and rivers. It is rated moderate to hard and takes 4
hours according to the woefully insufficient information in the campground
info. booklet. In fact they label it as a 21km route which it isn't anywhere near, and I would call it a novice to intermediate day trip, closer to the novice side, but it depends how heavy a canoe you have.
The weather wasn’t all that great – overcast,
spitting rain very lightly and a little windy but we decided to go
anyways. In the end, it took us about 4
hours. I had my new canoe and my other
friends rented a canoe from the lagoon at the park - $25 for 8 hours. We got started around 12:30. Clockwise is the preferred direction, to get
the longer 1.5km portage out of the way early on. From the Lagoon at the park where the canoes
are rented you head northward, go through the narrows near Mazinaw rock, along
the rock to check out the pictographs, Walt Whitman inscribing, and the ancient
cedars along the face of Mazinaw cliff.
Just around the corner is the beginning of the long portage, after a small
bay that you probably think is the portage, but it is not. There is a sign
indicating the portage is to the left. 
Right next to the portage, to the right is a hut belonging to the alpine
club for the rock climbers. A few steps
up from the shore to begin the 1.5km portage.
I had not much trouble portaging with my new canoe, as it is light and
nicely balanced, but the others had more trouble with the much heavier rental canoe
that was also not balanced properly and was nose heavy. I didn’t really look at the map much
beforehand, so the length of the portage was a little longer than I expected,
but it was not much of a problem. The
portage ends at Kishkebus lake, a nice serene lake, part of Bon Echo park with
no motorboats or cottages on it.
At the end of Kishkebus lake, there’s a short portage
to Shabomeka lake, where you’re back into cottage country again. Rounding the corner to the right we came to a
small dam where there is a portage to the left side. There’s a small signin not very visible brown
with yellow lettering, with ‘TRAIL’ written on it, not really marked well. We
stopped for a quick lunch here, but then it started raining moderately so we
started off again. At the dam, the water
looks a bit shallow to put in just after it (probably even much more so in mid
summer). But, there was no obvious
portage farther downstream… we found out one does exist if you go left a bit
and straight, but we didn’t see any from the dam’s perspective. We put the rental canoe in just after the
dam, but my new canoe I crossed the dam, and put in in a swampy area to the
right of the dam, which worked well in the water levels we had. As we rounded the first corner we saw were we
were supposed to put in.
Just after that bend, there’s a recently
built short beaver dame we ran just by paddling quickly up to and over it. Otherwise, there doesn’t seem to be a portage
on either side, probably because of the recentness of it. This opens up into strangely named
semicircle lake, as it isn’t a semicircle at all. The bottom is shallow and silty on this
lake. Heading left out into Campbell
creek there’s a low bridge you either had to duck under or portage around. The next part is a nice paddle, down a
meandering stream with lots of beaver activity, we saw quite a few lodges in
this area.
Then comes the last
portage at the mouth of Campbell Creek and Mazinaw Lake. As you approach, it looks like the portage is
on the right, although there’s no signs.
But after you get out ans scramble up a small bank, you don’t know where
to go. There’s an ATV path that just
follows the Mazinaw shoreloine quite a ways away, but doesn’t go near the
lake. If you follow the creek past 2
beaver dams, there is a put in after going down a short but steep bank, but
there is still another dam past that one.
There is a portage sign facing the other way but no proper trail or no
obvious way to go. I figure the beavers
had just built the last dam recently, this portage could use some cleaning up
and proper signage. We paddled to the
other side then got out to portage around the last dam and in again…. while getting eaten alive by mosquitoes in
late May. Then we rushed out to Mazinaw
for a good breeze to blow the bugs away, and it’s a 2km paddle northward in
Lower Mazinaw back to the campground.
The Kishkebus route is a nice half day
adventure trip in Bon Echo for someone that wants to get acquainted with canoe
tripping and portaging without carrying gear, or just to get away from the
throngs of powerboats and paddlers along the Mazinaw cliffs.
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