Barron Canyon Loop

Map provided courtesy of Toporama which contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada. I have marked my route in blue and portages in red. 

Paddling through the Barron Canyon is one of those canoe trips that is on everyone's bucket list due to the sheer natural wonder that it is. Despite its distance from the GTA area (about a 6-hour drive), it is a very popular area of Algonquin Park and can be quite difficult to book during the summer months. For those Tom Thomson fans, the area was a backdrop for many of his works and only adds to the area's allure. He spent the summer of 1916 in Achray, working as a fire ranger. Thomson's 'The Jack Pine' was painted on a point on Grand Lake, just a 10-minute paddle or a 1.5 km hike from Achray campground. 

So, all by my lonesome, I decided to investigate the area over a weekend at the height of bug season. I knew it would be easier to book at this time, and since I was planning to base camp and do a day trip down the Barron River to the canyon, water levels would still be high, making river travel a little easier. 

Day 1 - Grand Lake to St. Andrews Lake

On the second weekend in June after the parks opened up after the Covid-19 closures, I left Peterborough in the mid-afternoon on Friday. I made excellent time to the park and was pulling up to Achray campground on Grand Lake shortly after 6 pm. Three other parties were putting in. Everyone was talking about the weather because the forecast was predicting a 40% chance of storms and the winds were up. It was indeed gloomy on Grand Lake. 

Grand Lake is big, and as I got out into the center of the lake, there was a strong wind blowing from the wide-open water in the northeast. Being in the southwest part of the lake, it was pushing me into the campsites along the southern shore. I made my way around the point, grateful for its protection and calmer waters. There, I could take stock of the pretty landscape of the Barron River that connected Grand and Stratton Lakes. 

In a matter of minutes, I was at the dam between the two lakes and was portaging past it. It was little more than a lift-over.  

After another few minutes, I passed under an old railway bridge and was paddling out into Stratton Lake. This old railway was an important link in the development of this eastern section of the park, which wasn't added to Algonquin until 1914. Campers and canoeists began coming here by rail the following year, and until 1963 when a road was finally built to Achray, the train was the only way in.  

Getting into Stratton and out in the open again, the conditions got nasty. I didn't so much as paddle down Stratton as surf it. Normally, I'm very pleased to have a tailwind to help me along, but this was ridiculous. I rode sizeable whitecaps for the majority of the distance of Stratton Lake. The tricky bit of doing this is when the canoe sinks into the trough of each wave. I was legitimately concerned about capsizing. For this reason, I stayed very close to the southern shore. 

The wind only seemed to get worse the further along the lake I went and the rain started coming in spurts. I was relieved and happy to reach the end of the lake and paddle past the occupied site on the point next to the river. A short, two-minute paddle on the river brought me to the short portage to the left of some bony rapids and into St. Andrews Lake.

Protected by trees and staying close to the northern shore, the wind on St. Andrews was much more manageable. St. Andrews is a pretty lake and most of the sites close to the portage were occupied. I was hoping to get a site closer to High Falls Lake to shorten my day trip on the following day, but I was also hoping it wouldn't be too bushy at this time of year. Bushy means bugs. I was extremely pleased to find the site across from the portage to Marie Lake on the northeastern arm of the lake vacant. It was on a rocky point that jutted out into the lake, had a nice mix of tree cover and open skies, and possessed a gorgeous view of the cliffs across the lake. Best of all, it had enough exposure to the wind on the lake to blow many of the bugs away. Expecting the worst though, I put up the bug shelter but was happy to say that I never had to use it over the weekend. 

As the evening turned into night, there were sporadic periods of drizzle, but not enough to send me undercover. The temperature dropped considerably though and by nightfall, it was cold enough to see my breath. Cooking dinner over the open fire, I felt cozy sitting next to the fire for a couple of hours, enjoying a sip of whiskey or two. Not long after dark, I called it a night and retired to the tent knowing I had a big day ahead of me

Day 2 - St. Andrews Lake to Barron Canyon to St. Andrews Lake

Waking up the next morning, I saw that it had rained steadily most of the night because everything had gotten a good soak. I hadn't noticed though; I think my canoe may have moved more than I did during the night. I had slept like a corpse. 

After retrieving my barrel from the lofty heights of the trees, I took out my stove to boil water for my coffee and oatmeal and was dismayed to discover that it wasn't working properly. I didn't have any firewood ready. I had arrived fairly late to the site the previous night and only really had time to get enough wood for that evening. There I was, in a situation with no wood, a very wet landscape, and a malfunctioning camp stove. I played with the stove a bit and finally got it going, but couldn't get a strong flame coming from it. It took the better part of 30 minutes to bring a pot of water to boil. Grrr. 

After finally getting breakfast out of the way, I packed my day bag with what I needed, put my canoe in, loaded it, and started heading for High Falls Lake. My spirits were a little low. It was cold, cloudy and I was concerned about eating with a malfunctioning stove for the rest of the trip if continued to rain. 

The great weather manitou in the sky must have taken pity upon me because as soon as I reached the take-out for the portage to High Falls Lake, the sun appeared and began to warm things up.

The portage into High Falls Lake was nice. The Barron River descended a series of chutes there and emptied into the lake with a pretty waterfall. The put-in to the lake was very steep and I had to be very careful with my footing while gaining access to the lake. I would lose my sunglasses here on the return trip later in the day! Grrrr again. 

High Falls Lake was remarkably beautiful. It was dotted with several little islands with stands of trees that would catch the eye of any Group of Seven painter.   

The area on the northern shore toward the eastern end of the lake looked like it had been through a war though. The trees there were all dead. Looking it up afterward, I discovered that there had been a nasty, little forest fire there in 2016. Thankfully, it was put out before more of this beautiful area could be destroyed. It was extinguished by fire rangers that camped on the lake while working on the fire. A link to a blog post about the fire is below. It states that the fire was started by careless fools, camping at a location that was not a designated Algonquin campsite. It's one thing to camp at a spot where you shouldn't be in a provincial park, it is a whole other thing to do it AND not take proper care of your campfire. The penalty for idiots like this should be drastic, indeed.  

I thought about investigating High Falls, but it seemed to be a bit of a bushwhack from the High Falls Lakeside. According to the map, it looked like it was better accessed from Stratton Lake. Besides, one of the main reasons to visit High Falls is to skid down the waterslide part of the falls on your bottom, but the water was still a bit chilly for that. Also, I had a long day ahead of me getting to the canyon and back. 

It didn't take long to paddle through the lake and I soon found myself at the take-out on the first portage heading down the Barron River. This was the start of five portages down the Barron River past several stunningly beautiful waterfalls. I can't overestimate how gorgeous this part of the trip was. Many people who come to visit the Barron Canyon will put in at the access point that is west of the canyon before Brigham Lake. Sure, this makes for easy access to the canyon, but one would miss all of the splendid wilderness further up the Barron River known as The Cascades. 

I took some videos of some of the chutes and amalgamated the shots into a montage of scenes. Apologies for the shaky camera work. 

By early afternoon I was traversing the 275m portage that rounded the bend in the river and linked up with the Brigham Lake put-in. A couple of groups were there, a young family putting in with a canoe to gander at the canyon and a middle-aged couple just hanging out by the river. The latter mustn't have known that their trail down to the river was also on a portage because they looked shocked and confused when a sweaty dude popped out of the woods with a bright red canoe on his head. They seemed slightly distressed that they had to engage in social distancing, even out in the wilderness. After paddling through Brigham Lake, I stopped to have a lunch of salami and cheese wraps at the take-out to the 100m portage.

Moving downriver and down the dramatic 450m portage past the beautiful Brigham Chute, my jaw dropped as I entered the canyon proper. Bobbing along at the bottom of 300' cliffs was quite the experience. One can try to capture the scenery with a photo or video, but in no way did my camera ability do it any justice. The canyon was created after the last ice age. 10,000 years ago, as the great Lake Algonquin was formed from melting glaciers, the Barron River, the lake's major exit point, was thought to have a water volume 1000 times greater than what Niagara Falls currently has. Wow! 

Tom Thomson did a much better job in his series of Petawawa Gorges paintings though. The gorge wasn't given the title of Barron Canyon until much later. 

Image taken from wikimedia commons and is under public domain

The 640m portage from Opalescent to Ooze Lake was more challenging. This one looked less traveled and it seemed I might have been one of the first ones on it after the park had reopened. Several large winter blowdowns required some deft maneuvering to get around. The bugs there were very thick, as well. 

Finally getting to the put-in, I could see how Ooze Lake was named. It was nothing more than a very large swamp. It seemed like a prime moose-spotting location, but none were present. Quickly getting across it and through the 300m portage that also had not yet been maintained since the winter, I found myself in familiar territory, putting in on High Falls Lake about 100m east of the portage into the Barron River that I had used earlier in the day. I enjoyed the scenery of this lake once again

Getting across it, taking a last look at the lovely waterfall on the west shore, and back through the 595m portage to St. Andrews, I was relieved when I spotted my site. It was early evening and it had been a long day. I had travelled about 16km that day. That, in itself, is not too demanding, but of the 16 km, I had portaged about 5.5 km. Whew! Let's just say that sitting on my camp chair with an adult beverage and my plate of pasta was very welcome indeed. I had originally planned to head back out on St. Andrews at dusk and try to tap into some trout, but I was just too beat. Canoe tripping is physically demanding, but it's a fantastic kind of tired. It's a tired feeling of accomplishment with fantastic rewards of beauty and solitude for the most part. The remainder of the evening involved playing with the campfire, listening to podcasts, snacks, and sips of whiskey -- the kind of relaxation that is another great reward.

Day 3 - St. Andrews Lake to Grand Lake

 I woke up to sunshine. It was cool again though, which was nice because the bugs were minimal. After coffee and breakfast, I broke camp and was on the water by 10 am. Paddling to the short portage back to Stratton, I ran into a traffic jam. Four guys were taking out ahead of me and they had a lot of things -- coolers, big ol' chairs, several bags, and an old plastic beast of a canoe that looked like it weighed about 150 lbs. Two of them carried it over the portage. I sat in my canoe waiting for quite some time just as another couple came in behind me with two of the most hyperactive canines I have ever seen. They were nice, though and we chatted a bit, despite the dogs yipping and running around all over when I was doing the 2nd leg of my carry. 

The paddle down Stratton was much more enjoyable than it had been on Friday evening. The canoe gods were smiling upon me because I had a pleasant little tailwind. Stratton is a long lake and I had the wind at my back in both directions on it on this trip. How often does that happen?

This time I paddled up the northern shore to take a gander at all the campsites as I passed. There were some beauties on Stratton but most were deep in the trees. The Eastern Pines Backpacking Trail runs parallel to part of the shore here and I was surprised to see how many backpackers were out and camping. After months of Covid-19 lockdown, it sure seemed like many people wanted to be outside, indeed! It was a lovely paddle, on a lovely lake on a lovely day. Simply lovely! It sure was a hell of a lot better than the paddle-in on Friday! 

Back on Grand Lake, I skirted the southern shore and pulled my canoe up on the amazing beach there. From there, I walked up to the point on the eastern side of beach and sat on the bench overlooking the spot where Tom Thomson painted "The Jack Pine". There was an information plaque there.

I would have loved to hang out on this spot more, but I had a long drive ahead of me and I still wanted to do the short hike up to the Canyon Trail for the bird's eye view of the Barron Canyon. I reluctantly glanced down upon my shiny red canoe, beached on the shore, and made my way down to it, but not before taking one last photo of this incredible view. It really was a beautiful spot. 

Getting back to Achray Campground 15 minutes later, I quickly loaded the car and made my way down the road to the parking lot for the Canyon Trail. There were several cars in the parking lot. It is an extremely popular spot and when one gets to the top of the canyon, one can understand why. It was only a 1.6km circular hiking route from the road up a steep hill, but was well-groomed and could be done by most people. Indeed, I saw very small children on the route. 

Standing at the top was a little unnerving though. I got a feeling in my tummy while I was up there. There was no fencing or barricades at the top of the gorge. In fact, the body of a 90-year old man was found in the canyon in 2018 when his car went unmoved in the parking lot after his day pass had expired. If walking this trail, enjoy the vistas, but don't go too close to the edge of the cliff! 

Getting back to my car, I drove home, stopping in at a drive-thru in Bancroft for dinner. Restaurant dining was still not open to the public yet. Munching on my burger in the driver's seat of my car, I thought about how my trip was a very rewarding and amazing experience. I explored the geological wonder that is the Barron Canyon, the beauty of numerous waterfalls on the Barron River upstream from the canyon, and an iconic location of Canadian art. Not bad for a weekend outing, at all!