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Maps 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.
Day 4 - Whitewater Lake to Red Squirrel Lake Parking Lot (13 km)
The weather app on my Zoleo device was predicting high headwinds against me yet again. This was just going to be one of those trips where the wind simply did not want to play fair, no matter what direction I was heading. As a result, I had set my alarm for 5:30 AM to be out and across the expanses of Anima Nipissing Lake before the winds really whipped up. It turned out that I didn't need my alarm because, at around 5 AM, I was awoken by the continuous cacophony of a beaver tail slapping the water down at the south end of the island. This alarmed me somewhat because beavers do that as a warning, but I couldn't see how it was aimed at me; I was perched high in the middle of the island behind a lot of trees. Maybe it could smell me, but it definitely couldn't see me. According to my wife, I'm a formidable snorer; perhaps it heard me? At any rate, I was hoping it wasn't warning a large, third-party mammal. The last thing I needed in the pre-dawn darkness was a moose or bear to come traipsing through my campsite.
Nothing large materialized out of the darkness as I donned my headlamp and broke camp. I made some cold cereal with powdered milk,dehydrated apples, and cranberries. I didn't even bust out my normal camp coffee routine, I just loaded and shoved off in the grey dawn before 6 AM; I had had enough of fighting the wind.
The rising sun was peculiar. It was a red dot on the horizon through a misty haze. I didn't know it at the time, but perhaps it was the beginning of the smoke that enveloped large swathes of North America from the very many forest fires across eastern Canada in the spring of 2023. It would later be the cause of a Canada-wide fire ban and the worst air quality that Ontario had ever experienced. Indeed, climate change is a &!#*$ and an ever-increasing threat.
I was surprised by the fleet of fishing boats stashed at the eastern end of Whitewater Lake next to the portage. There had to have been at least two dozen in total. Obviously, Whitewater Lake must have excellent fishing. I wished that I had more time and energy to do more of it there -- again, next time!
As expected with all of the fishing boats lying about, the 225-meter portage into Anima Nipissing was a clear, well-used trail and easy to negotiate, despite a couple of rock gardens along the way. It emerged at a tiny inlet with nice views of the hills to the east across Anima Nipissing.
I put in and rounded a point heading south. A nice-looking campsite existed there adjacent to some rock faces that possessed some faded pictographs that I could just make out beneath a crevice in the rock.
It is always a thrill for me when I locate and view pictographs. They are amazing; they tell stories and have incredible historical, cultural, and navigational significance. I feel very honoured to be able to interact with them as they were meant to be -- from a canoe. A tobacco offering is encouraged while passing these sites. If I'm able to distinguish what they represent, I often try to imagine the message that the images are communicating in my own way. The Anishinaabeg people have been inhabiting the Temagami area for over 5000 years and pictographs such as these are remnants of their legacy. Click on the button below to read a very interesting paper on the historical and cultural importance of rock art in the Temagami region from an art history perspective.
I continued south and made a crossing across a large inlet. I was happy that I had made the effort to get up and on the water early. It was only minutes after 7 AM and the wind was already coming up.
Twenty minutes later, I was, once again, happy to be viewing more pictographs along a western headland toward the south end of the lake.
From there, it was a short paddle into the narrows at the southern reaches of Anima Nipissing Lake, and I was riding the swifts and gliding into McLean Lake.
By the time I got out into the northern bay of McLean, the wind was up enough to make me work hard. I paused to remove a layer of clothing. While I was putting on my PFD again after doing so, I looked up to see a large head about 500 meters ahead of me swimming across the narrows between the two large bays of the lake. It was either a cow moose or a very large bear judging by the size of the noggin! I'm pretty sure it was the former. As I approached the spot, I paddled very quietly along the opposite shore (after all, I had been downwind) to see if the creature was lingering about, but whatever it was, it was long gone.
I decided to investigate the very southern tip of McLean Lake where it emptied into the Anima Nipissing River through a culvert under Red Squirrel Road. There is a roadside campsite there, and if it wasn't occupied, I would end my trip there, stash my canoe and gear behind some bushes, and walk the three kilometers along the road back to my parked vehicle at Red Squirrel Lake. This would allow me to avoid 1710 meters worth of portaging. Lucky for me, the site was empty and that was exactly what I did.
It was a pleasant walk with the high waters of the Anima Nipissing River crashing through its narrow channels parallel to the road. Only two trucks passed me along the road and graciously gave me a wide berth.
I reached my car in about 30 minutes, found it unscathed, and drove back to load my canoe and gear in a cloud of biting black flies. It was about 9:30 AM at that point and this was the first time on the entire trip that the temperatures were approaching the 20-degree mark; the black flies were coming out to play and I was getting out just in time.
Despite the horrible rain on the first day and the incessant headwinds, I had a great trip. Temagami is an area of unbridled beauty and any amount of time spent there is time well spent. Although I didn't feel 'rushed' in the truest sense of that word, my one regret about this trip was that I wish I had more time to explore. The portages were long and demanding, and in the amount of time that I had to complete the loop, there was precious little downtime to do the 'extras' like more fishing, hiking lofty viewpoints like Eagle Bluff and Napoleon Rock, and exploring the corners and bays of the gorgeous lakes -- the little things that make canoe tripping ultra special. For this reason, I would recommend spending at least 5 days to complete this loop, allowing canoeists a good proper whiff after having time to 'smell the roses'.
Hello Canoe Trippers and Wilderness Lovers. Canoe tripping in the Canadian backcountry is a strong passion of mine. I thoroughly enjoy writing about my experiences and sharing them so that readers can benefit in their own trip planning. However, publishing these trip reports takes an enormous amount of time. Kindly consider buying me a coffee for my next trip out! Thank you for your readership and happy paddling!
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