North Tea Lake, Algonquin Provincial Park
By the end of the summer of 2016, I was able to get three trips under my belt. As I do not partake in winter camping (lack of equipment), the end of the summer camping season is always the worst. My friend Grant, who has been of a few trips with me, was itching to go again, and visit the beach site that we found on a past trip together. This site is on North Tea Lake in the North West corner of Algonquin. If you have read my post about bringing my girlfriend on her first canoe trip, this is the beach site that I was referring too that I really wanted to bring her too. I have yet to make a post about the trip with my work friends when we discovered it, but that will be coming ;)
Due to our other friends being away at school and/or not being able to get time off of work, we decided that the two of us would just go for a short weekend trip. It was an easy trip to pack for because since it was just the two of us, we had a lot more room in our packs, which means less weight to paddle with and portage. We would start on Lake Kawawaymog, wind our way through the meanders of the Amable du Fond River, and end up on North Tea after a couple of short portages. The travel time for this route is very short, and takes 2.5 hours roughly. Unlike my usual trips where we camp at a site, and then pack up and travel for the day to end up on another site, we decided to just have a "chill" weekend, and hangout at our favourite camping site in the whole park! Below I have embedded a video of us paddling along the Amable du Fond, and it is pretty easy to see why it is my favourite river to paddle in Algonquin :) It's incredibly peaceful, and takes about an hour to get to the first portage.
The weather wasn't the greatest during the trip. Saturday it more or less rained all day, so we were stuck in the tent for most of the day. We even cooked bacon in the tent Saturday morning near the door to the tent! It was a little bit dangerous, we were careful! We even added some Dissarono into the pan to give it a nice flavour :) Friday night we were able to have a relaxing campfire though! Not as many people camp at this time of the year compared to the summer, so it felt as if we had the whole lake to ourselves! On Saturday morning though, it was a surreal realization that we had some visitors near our site during the night! We found massive hoof prints in the sand, followed by a smaller set, that trailed the whole beach and into the bush. This was indicative that there were moose in the area! I unfortunately did not take photos though.. I should mention that we did something I have always wanted to do! We set our tent up right on the beach in the sand. Up in the forest from the beach there is room for tents and a campfire, but we set the tent up in the sand, and gathered rocks to form our own firepit. As you'll read below though, camping on the beach could have been catastrophic!!
Near Disaster
Sleeping in the tent on Friday night was okay. But on Saturday, the weather was really poor and rained for most of the day. The tent we were using was a big 6-person Coleman square tent. It had been the tent of choice that my friends and I used for all of our trips over three years because of it's size, and it always held up pretty well in stormy weather. The bottom was made of tarpaulin, which was great for keeping water out. I had a smaller 2-person Eureka tent that does not have a tarp bottom, and I just find that if the bottom gets really wet, it seeps through. My trusty old coleman tent was great, but unfortunately we would find out on Saturday that she had served her tour of duty and was officially spent. This was her last trip into the backcountry. We were inside the tent during the day, when I noticed there was a small pool of water gathering in a wrinkle of the tarp floor. We immediately discovered that not one, but TWO corners had fast-dripping leaks flowing into the tent. To patch it wouldn't solve the problem, as it was coming in through the seems. Because of the awkward location of the leaks, we used strip after strip of duck tape to seal it up. But these leaks were the least of our worries...
The problem about being on the beach during stormy weather is that we had no trees blocking us from the winds coming off of the lake. The heavy winds didn't start picking up until we went to bed, but we didn't really think much of it. I woke up randomly in the middle of the night, to a site of pure horror. From the inside of the tent, one side was getting pushed so hard by the wind, that the threat of imminent collapse was very real. Grant was still fast asleep, and I didn't want to bother him, so I took it upon myself to figure something out. It was too dark and far to relocate the tent in the cover of the forest, so I thought about using something to prop up the collapsing side of the tent. So I exited the tent to retrieve the two paddled which were underneath the canoe. When I got outside of the tent, it looked so much worse than it appeared outside. I can't even fully decribe it, but I never knew a tent could be bent and manipulated by wind until I saw it with my own eyes. I quickly got the paddles and brought them back inside the tent. I then took my heavy camera case and put it on the floor near the edge of the collapsing side of the tent. I then took the two paddles, rotated them upside down, and wedged the handles against the camera case. I then pushed the wider bottoms of the paddles into the side of the tent, and seprated them outwards to give my support rather than just having one point of contact against the side. With some adjustments and a bit of duck tape, it was sturdy enough that I knew we were going to be alright. For the hour or so it took me to fall back asleep, I was very uneasy and my nerves had been strung worrying that the contraption I created could collapse with a strong enough gust of wind. But it held for the night, and Grant woke up the next morning what the hell had gone on during the night haha. When we left that Sunday morning, it would be the last time I'd be packing away that tent.
The first video below is of us carrying some of the packs up to the spot in the forest where we should have set up our tent before we decided to set up on the beach. The following video is just me carrying a pack during one of the short portages :) This trail was very easy-going without any rocks or obstacles.
