Big Crow Lake Camera

Hogan to Lavieille 9 Day Canoe Trip – Algonquin

With Lake Lavieille open for camping, and a strong desire to go back to Hogan Lake- we decided to cover both in one trip. We knew it would be no easy feat, but with a little bit of planning and a glutton for punishment we were all in.

Trip Summary

Date: July 31 to August 8, 2022

  • Night 1: Catfish Lake
  • Night 2-3: Hogan Lake
  • Night 4: Big Crow Lake
  • Night 5-6: Lake Lavieille
  • Night 7: White Partridge Creek “The Forks”
  • Night 8: Radiant Lake

Distance: 125 km
Area: 403 sq km
Ascent: 3400 m
Descent: 3398 m

Highest Elevation: 463.9 m – Hogan Lake Portage
Lowest Elevation: 251.2 m – Petawawa River Portage (Devils Chute)

Guide Map

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Day 1

Portages: 5 – 3,610 m
Travel Time: 9 hours

Travelling from Cedar Lake to Catfish Lake

The trip begins at the Cedar Lake access point. After an early start we managed to arrive at the beach access point around 9 AM. After getting situated and loading up we were on the water by 9:15. A beautiful sunny start on the last day of July.

Cedar Lake Access Point

Cedar Lake Access Point

Accompanied by my buddy Justin for this trip, we tore through the first 715 m and 315 m portage around the Petawawa river from Cedar lake en route to Catfish. By portage 3 we start the 2345 m. (aka “Unicorn Hill”) We’ve done this leg a couple times before in the past, but with our food and fuel full, it was as challenging as I remembered. Fortunately, we decided to do this trip in early August, instead of bug season. It paid off, and there were far less bugs.

I’ll never hesitate to jump right into the river after a unicorn hill portage. With everything I had on, walked straight into the river for an amazing relief swim. As did Justin, and then the next guy, and the next guy.

With the hard part out of the way and then another 170, by 3:23 we were leisurely making our way down Narrowbag lake. We brought our fishing rods with us this time, so we took some time to fish at the next 80 m portage. After catching (and releasing) a couple small trout we were running out of daytime, so we proceeded to Catfish Lake.

Catfish Lake Camp

Catfish lake is a beautiful winding lake with some island campsites. Every time I go through I think it would be a nice place to stay for a couple days. For me It often becomes a pass-through lake because it has excellent access to other areas of the park.

Arrival to the campsite was around 6:00 PM, just enough time to get setup and do some cooking before dark. The campsite itself was on a point around the middle. A steep climb from the put-in to the site, our tents were up high. We had great views of the lake from a campfire above the steep rock face.

I had no trouble sleeping on night one, happy to be underway and waking up to what appears to be another day of great weather. A bit of a late start, but eventually got into gear and left camp by 10:50 AM.

Day 2

Portages: 3 – 3,700 m
Travel Time: 8.5 hours

Travelling from Catfish Lake to Hogan Lake

Making our way down the lake and passing only one paddler, we continued south. I setup my new experimental camera mount on the canoe to get some stable video footage. It was a bit of extra weight but worked out great for paddling and recording video simultaneously.

It’s now August 1st, and the water level was lower compared to the last time we travelled through here. We ended up missing the path through the weeds that would take us through Sunfish lake. After getting our bearings we made a U-Turn and found our way. Navigating through the weeds we ended up in Sunfish lake. A subtle, but big beautiful field of wild rice (I think) on the north end of the lake made for a great panoramic photo.

We took a few minutes to enjoy the lake and cast a few lines while we waited for a group to finish with their portage. It’s now 12:30, so best to get moving on this 1,105 m, 750 and finally the 1,845. Normally I’d consider this to be pretty reasonable. That’s not what I was thinking when we hit the highest elevation of the trip (463.9 m) on the last portage. We had done it before, but it was in the reverse direction.

It’s a great feeling of accomplishment to complete these difficult portages. For one, we are now at Hogan lake, my personal favorite lake if I had to name one. Also, the feeling of being in a place only accessible by canoe, and a minimum of 2 days to get there at that. It’s an incredible accomplishment for average guys like us.

Hogan Lake Camp

We got lucky- I was hoping for this campsite, and even though we rolled in at 7:20 pm, it was vacant. This will be camp for two nights. Last time we were at Hogan this is where we stayed, and regretted not planning for stay an extra night. Now we are here for a couple days to enjoy!

The campsite is on the south side of the lake on an island facing the Hogan Lake cliff. We are on a bit of a point of the island, if you walk out to the rock beach on the north side you get a full view west, north and east of Hogan lake. When the stars are out It’s incredible.

We tried our hand at fishing for most of our day off, aimlessly getting our lures in deeper areas because it had been rather warm this time of the year. Evidently we had better luck just fishing from the campsite. It was still worth it to get paddling around exploring Hogan.

Fishing on Hogan Lake

Hogan Lake

Day 4

Portages: 1 – 3,750 m
Travel Time: 5.6 hours

Travelling from Hogan Lake to Big Crow Lake

With not far to travel today, the only problem is that it is mostly on foot. On the bright side, we are well rested from chilling at Hogan but are ready to move on to our second half of the trip. Getting started at 10:50 am seems to be a pattern for us so we rolled with it. There’s not really any turning back now. Once we complete this portage, we will have to complete the entire loop as planned to get back to the car.

I will say that this 3,750 m portage was not as frequently steep as the previous one. In fact, there is an extended option at 6,745 m if you have a canoe cart. We don’t have a canoe cart, and we are doing double carries, so in reality the 3,750 m becomes 11,250 m. I do recall muttering several times that next time if I ever do this again I be doing single carries. The last quarter of the portage for us is also part of the cart trail so it was easy going near the end despite some fallen trees.

Big Crow Lake

Big Crow Lake

We got on the water at Big Crow by 3:45 pm. It took us about 5 hours to complete this portage. Suddenly, the weather took a turn for the worse. In a matter of minutes the wind and waves picked up to a nearly unmanageable level for us. With white caps crashing into the boat, the map flew out and we had to turn around fight to get it back. I recorded this on video until the rain came as well.

Thank you to the campers on shore who saw us struggling in the waves and let us know where the nearest vacant campsite was. They waved us down from the eastern side of the lake and pointed to the campsite on the southeastern side of the lake.

Big Crow Lake Camp

The small campsite sits up a hill from a rocky shore. The rain stopped as we set foot on land. After setting up camp, I went down to collect some water. Without realizing, the water was rather turbid I guess from all of the waves mixing it up. I filled up my gravity filter and the water went from a litre a minute to a litre per hour. This was my mistake, I probably should have walked out a bit for more clear water. For the remainder of the trip we ended up running the filter at all times to satisfy our needs. Thankfully it did not come to a complete stop.

Big crow lake is more commonly accessed from the south, because of its proximity to Opeongo, in our case we came from the north, so we did see more activity here then we had throughout the trip. Across from us we could clearly see the old fire watch tower that had been struck by lightning about 10 years ago or so. It was an interesting spot.

Day 5

Portages: 7 – 2,485 m
Travel Time: 8.75 hours

Travelling from Big Crow Lake to Lake Lavieille

We will be spending a good deal of time along the Crow River over the next few travel days, but first we’ll be taking it to Lavieille. One of the most sought after lakes in Algonquin; there’s no easy way in, or out.

Overall, the weather has been great for us this trip so far. We are given another sunny day for travel down the crow river. After leaving at 10:45 am, we knocked off the first three portages by 1:00 pm. I had time to go for a swim.

Once I got out of the river I cast one of my spinners, and pulled a couple Speckled Trout one after the other! I was surprised because my swimming did not seem to scare them away. That was the first time I had caught a brook trout before, and at that point I was happy I had the fishing rod with me. I did not see any more speckles on the trip after that, it was the right place at the right time.

Algonquin Speckled Trout

Algonquin Speckled Trout

Making our way down the winding crow river we saw many frogs, and some amazing Jack Pine forests, as well as old growth White Pine in the distance. At this point we had 4 portages left, but it was super hot now. We tackled the 385 going over some huge fallen trees, and went for another swim. For the first time this trip we had to filter water mid day to stay hydrated.

Crow Bay

Crow Bay

We arrived at Crow Bay by 6:00 PM, but had to hurry because we still had the massive Lake Lavieille to paddle across. After paddling through the narrows we finally reached Lavieille, the main attraction if you will. The decision was made to paddle directly across the massive lake, we were confident and the weather looked okay.

With not a lot of daylight left we made our way across the lake, paddling hard. The waves did not look so big from the shore. We did have to deal with white caps in the lake but we maintained a steady pace, kept a straight heading and made it across in 45 minutes. Looking back now, it felt like a lot shorter. We found an open campsite on a small island just west of Crow Island.

Lake Lavieille Camp

The campsite appeared largely untouched, and that may be due to the camping ban that had been lifted just this summer. Blue Green algae had caused a camping ban on the lake for a couple years. It makes the water toxic to drink so it’s better to stay away when that occurs. This year campers got the all clear, so we were there.

Lavieille is one of the bigger lakes in the park however, harder to get into. It is a vast lake and when you’re there it feels like you have the entire lake to yourself. For me I found it fascinating, and amazing to be on such nice lake with no motor boats running around. It was surprisingly very quiet and peaceful despite its size.

There was a large hawks next right above our campsite near the thunder box. The call of the hawk resonated across the entire lake whenever it came in. There were chicks in the nest as well. I had time to take pictures as we planned to stay here for two nights.

During the day we paddled around the famous Island campsite just to the north of us. We would have camped there if there weren’t people there yesterday. Now that they vacated, we went to check it out. You could tell the site was more heavily used but you can see why. Stunning views of the lake from this Island campsite. Not far from where we were.

Once again we had our lines out, as deep as we could but got no bites in Lavieille. It’s either a skill issue for us or the fact it had been 30+ for at least the last week. Typically on bigger trips we leave the fishing gear at home but this time I figured I had to considering where we were going. I took the no bites as a good sign there’s no bad weather in store. After sunset we went out for a moonlight paddle and fish as well. Calm as glass, it is a good reminder why we put ourselves through those gruelling portages.

Day 7

Portages: 9 – 2,730 m
Travel Time: 6.5 hours

Travelling from Lake Lavieille to The Forks

To make the trip a loop, our exit strategy is to go east following the Crow River and to stay at The Forks where White Partridge Creek meets the Crow River. Then the following day we will keep portaging up the crow river until we meet back up with the Petawawa. Initially I had intended to book the Long Rapids campsite, but that exceeded Ontario Parks maximum single day travel length. Now I’m thankful that I didn’t try to adding that extra 2.4 km portage. Though maybe not so much the following day.

As we pushed ourselves through the 9 portages, we ran into one group of three who were doing the full length from Radiant to Lavieille. I couldn’t imagine doing it ourselves. Looks like they were doing single carries and had a lightweight Kevlar boat though. I said to Justin that I’d never do these portages again unless I had a Kevlar boat only did single carries. A lesson learned I suppose.

The portages were not necessarily the hard part today because they were all relatively short in retrospect. It’s the constant in and out of the boat with the gear at the sketchy put ins that was most difficult for me.

During our travels we came across a couple small lakes. I thought they would be really neat to stay at, it’s feels very remote and there’s nice little swifts for swimming, fishing. It would be a cool experience to stay on one of those small remote lakes.

Camp at White Partridge Junction (The Forks)

This campsite is right between two portages, with the creek separating them. It’s a makeshift campsite, but it feels super remote. You can hear the strong rapids of the Crow River in the background which makes a nice white noise for sleeping and drowning out the silence of the forest. A perfect stopping point before continuing on the next morning.

Day 8

Portages: 10 – 5,025 m (Who planned this??)
Travel Time: 9.75 hours

Travelling from The Forks to Radiant Lake

The day begins right on the first 2,475 m portage. Since there’s no paddling to start the day we pickup and go right from where we left off. We’re going to need any time we can get because this will be our longest day yet. At this point we have a pretty good system on who carries what, and we each have our own methods. I carry the canoe as far as I can, drop it, go back for the pack. It’s definitely not ideal to be doing double carries but it has been working for us over the years. The canoe is too heavy on its own to have any pack, so opting for double carries becomes a requirement.

This portage felt long, but it is one of the most scenic I have done in Algonquin. It runs parallel with the Crow River’s dangerous rapids. On a few locations the portage trail runs alongside a small cliff face that oversees the rapids. A couple sketchy corners with the canoe past, and I was able to take a few minutes to enjoy the path on my way back for the pack. I didn’t manage to take any pictures here, just enjoyed the moment and took it in while catching my breath. Once done, I laid face-first flat in the water to cool off. At the end of the portage it’s only about a foot deep.

We continued up the crow river with the longest portage of the day out of the way. Lifting over the odd beaver dam, and ducking under some branches we found that we could skip two of the portages if we walked through the river.

Blueberry Falls

Blueberry Falls

It did not matter if we were wet because as soon as we got to Blueberry falls, the rain started. It was at this point it was clear the rain was not going to stop either. Once the torrential downpour slowed, we launched at Blueberry falls and continued until we met the Petawawa river. At last, we have finished with the Crow river.

Bass Hole

Along our route we found a bass fishing hole where we landed more bass then I ever have in my lifetime. I was nearly catching a bass on every cast. I’m sure the weather taking a turn has something to do with it, but it was awesome. With a long way to go for the remainder of the day, it was all catch and release.

Paddling, portaging, paddling, and portaging continued until it became clear we were getting closer to civilization. We saw more canoeists, some park staff, and some retired logging remnants. Even though we were still over a day’s travel to get out, it did not feel as remote as it did one day ago.

Camp at Radiant Lake

The relief of completing our most challenging day was on us. Feeling quite accomplished at this point, we setup camp in the mist, and once the rain tapered off for a bit Justin got a fire going and we chilled out until the rain came back and it was time to go to bed. Radiant lake is our camp for the night.

We setup on one of the north east side campsites, where the shoreline is very shallow and sandy. I caught a glimpse of a pickerel in the water as we were coming in. It’s a really nice open beach campsites towered by tall pines. There would be plenty of room if it were a group. Quite an upgrade from the night before. I would definitely consider coming back here with a group, since it’s only one travel day.

Radiant Lake From Tent

Misty Morning on Radiant

Day 9

Portages: 3 – 2,505 m
Travel Time: 6 hours

Travelling from Radiant Lake to Cedar Lake

For the last day, we packed up our wet gear and were on our way by 10:30. Making our way against the Petawawa we only had 3 mid size portages to tackle. The trails were well marked, and it’s clear this is a more heavily used area.

There were three rapids we were portaging around. “Devils Chute” (Class 4), followed by “Surprise Rapids” (Class 4), and “Cedar Rapids” (Class 3). It appears that someone may have been caught by surprise rapids, as we came across a destroyed ultralight Kevlar canoe at the bottom. What a shame, I could have used a lighter boat for this trip! Jokes aside, why someone tried to run an ultralight down class 4 rapids is beyond me. On our way in at the start of this trip we noticed the warning signs at the Cedar lake put-in, now we know what that was all about.

For the last portage we encountered heavy rain, but given the amazing weather we had for most of the trip it was welcomed. I was starting to think it was getting a little too dry in the park, raising concern for possible fire bans. At this point we were on the home stretch, so we waited a bit, and then paddled across Cedar lake from the east end, back to the put in.

Loop complete!

I can leave knowing that I completed what we set out to do. I knew it would be a challenge, and it was. Would do it again? Maybe. I think I’ll rent a ultralight boat and invest in some lighter gear before I start thinking about it. For now, I’ll continue exploring canoe routes and places in Algonquin, but at a more reasonable pace.

Thank you for following along! Stay tuned, I have an abundance of video footage to go through and at some point I’ll release a Video Log as well.


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