Anyone who has known me for awhile knows that every year — sometimes in August, sometimes in September — Becky and I go on a multi-day backwoods canoe camping trip with our neighbours and long-time friends Marc Staveley and Kris Robinson (I’ve written about some of these trips before here and here). This year, we decided to camp on Copper Lake for three nights — a trip we did a number of years ago but for some reason I didn’t blog about at the time. Copper Lake is in the relatively new park called Kawartha Highlands, the second largest park in southwestern Ontario next to Algonquin.
Marc and Kris have a canoe of their own, and I took one of my kayaks (the lighter one, which is ten feet long and weighs about 40 pounds), and we rented a canoe for Becky and our friend Patrice at the Long Lake campground, where we’ve rented canoes a number of times before. It’s just a little ways down the road from Anstruther Lake, which is where the actual trip itself began. Anstruther is a fairly large lake and has a bunch of cottages on it, which turned out to be a good thing, for reasons that will become clear soon 🙂
We paddled for what I would estimate was about half an hour, through a bit of a drizzle, which put us about halfway to the portage from Anstruther into Rathbun Lake, and a motorboat went by and kicked up a pretty huge wake. I didn’t think much of it in the kayak, but Marc and Kris had a bit more trouble — which I didn’t find out until I heard them shouting my name. Since I was a ways ahead (kayaks are always faster than canoes) I thought maybe I was going in the wrong direction, and then when I turned around I saw Marc and Kris’s boat upside down.
I started paddling over to them, and so did Becky and Patrice, but before we could even get there a motorboat showed up from a nearby cottage with a man and woman in it, and they asked if we were okay. At that point I was planning to tow the canoe — which had several 50-pound backpacks tied together and tied to the thwart of the canoe — in to shore so we could right it, but instead the man in the boat (whose name turned out to be Ron Kendall) threw a rope and towed them to a nearby dock, then took us all back to his cottage so Marc and Kris could change out of their wet clothes.
After chatting a bit, we set out again, and Ron gave Marc and Kris both a rain jacket to borrow, since theirs were soaked, and his wife Elaine also gave us an old sleeping bag that someone had left at their place, in case some of ours were also wet. Ever since they got caught in a massive downpour while camping one year, Marc and Kris have always lined their packs with garbage bags and put all clothes and other items in ziplock bags, but unfortunately the sleeping bags were not in a pack where the garbage bag wasn’t duct-taped shut so they got wet (we wound up splitting a couple of the dry sleeping bags and using them as blankets.)
Anyway, after that little exciting interlude, we paddled off to the Rathbun portage, which is about 200 metres uphill and quite rocky in spots. Marc and I both took a canoe while the ladies brought packs, and then Marc and went back and carried the kayak back together (no one I know of has come up with a good way to portage a kayak — if you know of something, please drop me a line!). At the top we put in to Rathbun, which is a fairly small lake with a great jumping rock near the portage, if you are so inclined.
I also came across a survey marker, which are quite common across the country, although they carry different names and sometimes look different from this one. It was a round piece of metal bolted to a rock, and said “Pierce & Pierce Survey Monument.” Apparently the Pierce family was a fairly well-known surveying family in the late 1800s and early 1900s in southwestern Ontario (it also mentioned that the penalty for removing a survey marker was five years in prison). Anyway, after a quick stop for lunch, we put the boats into Rathbun Lake and t was a quick 15-minute or so paddle into a small bay where we found the portage into Anstruther Creek.
That portage is only about 160 metres, and it is pretty flat for the most part (it also has a wonderful waterfall about halfway along it, which is worth a look.) Then we put in to the creek, which is basically a meandering path through a large swamp. I know exactly when we did that trip last, because we stopped to watch a partial solar eclipse while we were paddling through the swamp, and it was incredible. I also remember that trip because after the eclipse, a man who got to the portage ahead of us tried to help by pulling my kayak up onto a root, which caused it to become extremely unstable and dumped me into the muck, so I reeked of methane for the rest of the trip 🙂
Anyway, after about a 15-minute paddle we arrived at the next portage up into Copper Lake. It is only about 375 metres, but it goes basically straight upwards for almost all of that distance, and it is rocks and roots the whole way. It is a real “goat rodeo,” as a friend of mine likes to call them. I tried to carry the kayak the whole way on my head, but eventually I had to give up and Marc and I carried it the rest of the way. Copper is a fairly small lake with just a single cabin on it, and I’m pretty sure it is a no-motor lake — we certainly didn’t see or hear any boats the whole time we were there. There is a lovely waterfall at this portage as well, which makes for a nice lunch and sitting spot.
We paddled for about 45 minutes until we got to our site, which was nice and protected in the trees — something that came in handy when we arrived, because it was quite windy and raining off and on. The last 15 minutes or so of the paddle was straight into quite a strong headwind, which was the last thing most of us needed after more than two kilometres of uphill portage hikes with multiple 50-pound packs, all of which seemed even more of a burden considering our advanced years (all of us are over 60). But we made it, and set about putting up tents and gathering firewood etc.
The next day was cool and drizzly off and on, so we didn’t do much of anything interesting, but the following day was beautiful and sunny and about 27 degrees Celsius, so we headed off to the portage from Copper into Serpentine Lake to do some hiking and have lunch. Getting to the portage required lifting the canoes over a small waterfall, and then paddling another twisty path through another swamp, where we saw lots of pitcher plants (a carnivorous plant that traps flies and other insects in its cone-shaped leaves and then devours them).
Unfortunately, the entrance to the portage into Serpentine had seen a lot of traffic, because it was almost entirely mud that sucked your feet in and in one case swallowed a sandal (we dug it back out again). But we made our way through regardless, and hiked the relatively short portage to Serpentine and had lunch sitting by the edge of the lake. Many decades ago we might have done the loop through these lakes, but not this time — the portage from Serpentine back into North Rathbun Lake is 1,400 metres long 🙂
Then it was back through the portage and back to our site, where we relaxed and enjoyed the view of Copper Lake, saw some herons fishing and some shooting stars (it was the peak of the Perseid meteor shower) and a beautiful sunset. The following day we broke camp, loaded the boats and then retraced our steps back through Rathbun and Anstruther — the portages were somewhat easier, in part because our packs were lighter and we were going downhill instead of up. But it was hotter, so we cooled off with a couple of swims along the way, and lunch beside the waterfall on the portage from the creek into Rathbun.
