Every year for the last decade or so my wife Becky and I have gone backwoods camping with our friends and neighbours Marc and Kris — “backwoods” meaning places that require a few hours of paddling and at least one portage, which is a French term meaning to put a canoe on your head. If I’m being honest, the length and number of portages we undertake has dwindled as we have aged (we are all over the age of 60 now but I’m not saying how much). We used to think nothing of doing three portages of up to 300 or 400 metres or even longer, up a steep incline in many cases, but now we look for routes that have one or two short ones. The last trip to Crab Lake had a single portage of about 160 metres, and it was dead flat, and I have to say it was a real pleasure 🙂
This trip also started near where we live for half the year (when we aren’t at the cottage) near Buckhorn, just north of Peterborough, so we only had to drive about 20 minutes up the road to the Anstruther Lake road. We borrowed a canoe from a friend for Becky and our friend Patrice, Marc and Kris had their canoe, and since we were an odd number I brought my kayak, a 14-foot Perception Carolina (as an aside, someday I wish someone would invent a yoke or something that made portaging a kayak easier, the way canoes are, but so far I haven’t found anything — and I have tried a couple of DIY gizmos that never really worked; if you know of anything please send me an email!).
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