The Last Camping Trip

There were signs that we should have called it quits.

Some friends of ours were going to join us for an interior camping trip in Algonquin Park and plans were made. I reluctantly agreed because I did want to spend time with these friends and because I love kayaking.

And DW said we'd be staying close to an area where moose were common at this time of year. I haven't seen a moose up close in quite some time, and with my 360-degree video camera on the deck of my kayak and my D-SLR with my long telephoto lens mounted to it, I'd be prepared to capture all that we spotted.

As the date approached, one of our friends was given an important medical appointment that fell on our departure date. Of course this appointment took precedent, so we told our friends that we would just meet them later, at camp. Unfortunately, the time of the appointment was such that they felt they couldn't make the trek to the camp site in the evening, but that they would book a motel room close to the lake and they would meet us by lunch on day two.

No problem.

DW and I set out early on Friday to Opeongo Lake, Algonquin Provincial Park's largest lake. Our plan was to drive to the Algonquin Outfitters store on the southern end of the lake, park the car, load up our kayaks, and paddle to the far end of the North Arm of the lake, near a portage point and across from Hailstorm Creek, the aforementioned swampy area that is famous for moose sightings. The camp site would be about a 15-kilometre paddle.

Again, no problem. Though DW and I had only been in our kayaks two other times this year and had paddled no more than seven kilometres, we knew that we could cover this distance as long as there were no tough obstacles like a storm or strong winds.

There were strong winds.

The wind, coming from the north, directly into us, was blowing so hard that if you stopped paddling, you were blown backwards. White caps were numerous and as far as the eye could see, and swells bounced us around in our kayaks.

We weren't paddling a lake: we were paddling a raging river and we were going upstream.

Pictures never do justice to the rough conditions we faced.

DW and I have paddled the St. Lawrence Seaway twice, and we've paddled against the current, and Lake Opeongo was tougher by far.

I would have turned around after about 5K but DW was determined to make it to the area. And we needed to move quickly, she added, because other campers would get to the best spots first. Plus, we had our friends coming the next day and they'd be counting on us getting a good site.

Our hearts slowly sank as we saw lots of water taxis, laden with canoes, race past us and head northward. We were sure that we weren't going to get a good site. But I knew how many potential good sites were available and I counted the boats and their occupants, and I wasn't going to totally give up until the number of these people outnumbered the available sites.

Plus, some of the boats seemed destined for the East Arm.

It took three hours of non-stop paddling as fast as we could go to reach one of the sites that we had pegged as an optimal camp spot. I barely took the time to stop for water and I wasn't going to risk getting blown back as I pulled out a snack.

Because I have arthritis in my right foot, both knees, both hips, and both shoulders, I was in a lot of pain and utterly exhausted as I pulled my kayak onto shore at site #19. Both DW and I made ourselves a lunch and caught our breaths before we set up our tent and bug shelter, and had a nap.

The wind was relentless until shortly before sunset, when DW and I cooked dinner and sat on a rock to take in a beautiful sky as the sun sank below the trees and below the horizon, when the sky almost seemed to catch fire.

It was beautiful but at the time, the only thing that made it worthwhile was the fact that our friends would be joining us on this optimal site. I fell asleep listening to the call and answer of loons throughout the lake.

Unfortunately, DW's air mattress had sprung a leak sometime in the night and she had to lie on the cool, hard ground, and she had a terrible sleep. All she could say, the next morning, was that she was glad it hadn't happened to my mattress, knowing that I already dislike sleeping on the ground in a tent, even if I have a thick mattress.

Green marker: in the creek.
Red marker: our camp site.

The next morning, after an early breakfast, DW and I got in our kayaks and crossed over from our site to Hailstorm Creek, hoping to spot moose. The wind was calm and all was quiet, so we were hopeful.

Though we did spot a beaver, busy at work, a giant snapping turtle that was sleeping on a mound of mud, and several birds, including red-winged blackbirds and sandpipers, there were no moose to be found. In the distance, we heard the hooting of an owl and the jackhammer rattling of a woodpecker.

This was the kind of kayaking that I enjoyed.

When we headed back to camp, though, the wind had picked up again and I could only hope that our friends were well underway, that they wouldn't feel the full force of the gusts as DW and I had endured the day before.

And while the wind grew stronger and stronger, it didn't seem quite as bad as on Friday. Our friends had only had their kayaks for a short time and one of them didn't seem quite as confident, so we started to worry when lunchtime came and went and there was no sign of them. I stood on a rock on a point of our site and searched with my binoculars, but to no avail.

If I couldn't see them in the distance, they'd still be at least an hour away.

DW and I found the leak in her mattress and patched it up, hoping for the best. At least it took up some time while we waited for our friends. With the wind as strong as it was, we didn't feel like getting into our kayaks again. We had completed DW's photo challenge; waiting for the glue to harden, we awaited word from our friends.

By about 1:00, we had our answer. Our friends texted us to say that the wind was too much for them and that they had turned back to the outfitter shop. We suggested that they hire a water taxi but their spirits were broken. They were worried that the wind would be too much for them on the return journey.

DW and I were heartbroken that our friends wouldn't be joining us and we were also worried because they were also supposed to bring dinner for that evening. They were supplying a curried dish: we were supplying the rice.

Fortunately, DW always keeps an emergency, freeze-dried food pack in her camping supplies. Though the sweet-and-sour chicken boil-in-bag had a best-before date of 2022, we were sure it would be edible.

It wasn't bad. We also had some left-over salami and cheese from lunch, so we made the best of the evening.

After dinner, we went for a sunset paddle, back to Hailstorm Creek. Still no moose but the paddle was calm and peaceful. We decided that we would get up before sunrise, the next day, and see if we'd have better luck spotting moose if we were on the creek earlier.

Sunset on Hailstorm Creek.

I had a terrible night. The temperature dropped to about 5°C and it seemed that my sleeping bag had lost the loft needed to keep the cold out. I awoke in the middle of the night to put more layers on but my teeth chattered and I shivered all night.

When DW's alarm went off, I was frozen to the bone. DW threw an emergency blanket over me and pressed herself against me to warm me up, and by the time I felt warm, the sun was up and we felt we had missed our window to check for moose.

The air was also cold and we would have had to wear all of our layers to get in our kayaks. Plus, the wind had picked up again, so we said no to a final paddle to Hailstorm Creek. We made breakfast and then packed up camp, and loaded up our kayaks to head back to the car.

The wind was blowing at full force as we set out. We thought that the saving grace was that at least the wind was at our backs, but it was constantly blowing at the back of our kayaks, trying to turn us off course. Huge swells kept sweeping over our sterns and flooding our cockpits.

It was a bad day to have left our kayak skirts at home.

We had to constantly find shelter to bail out our cockpits and it took two hours and forty minutes to make it back to the Algonquin Outfitters store. We were soaked, tired, and hungry.

I had one pair of clean clothes and didn't care about any modesty. I stripped down in the parking lot, dried myself off, and dressed, not caring who saw me. I just wanted to get to somewhere we could have a hot meal and then continue on home.

Paddling a long distance in bad weather is not my idea of a good time. For me, the kayaking portion of our camping trips is what makes me come out to these remote places. And I was not enjoying the journey there nor the voyage homeward. I did enjoy paddling Hailstorm Creek but at what price?

Our friends were smart to abandon the trek. They would have been miserable by the time they had reached our site. And I would have been concerned for their safety on the paddle back.

I don't like camping. I don't like cooking and cleaning outdoors. I don't like going to the bathroom on a box over a stinking hole. I don't like sleeping on the ground and I hate being cold.

DW has planned another camping and kayaking trip for us but I'm out. She has tried to entice me with all the activities we could do: there are cycling trails and lots of places to kayak, but for me it's not worth sleeping outdoors.

All the power to her.

I'll go for day-long kayak excursions as long as I can either go home at the end of the day or sleep in a motel. My days of cooking without running water and sleeping on the ground are over. For good.

As I approach my 60s, I know what I'm willing to do and what I'm not. And camping falls into the Not category.

UPDATE:

DW sent me this excerpt from a book by Kevin Callan, a canoeing adventurer who knows Algonquin Park like the back of his hand. He was on an island in the East Arm of the lake (see the first map, above).

The entrance to the "Northwest Arm," as Callan calls it, is where we saw the biggest swells and took on the most water.

Enough said about Opeongo Lake. We're never going back.