After a one year hiatus, the Mallory-Chris trip was back this August. Mallory has a couple more years as a wilderness guide and activity coordinator under her belt and I’m two years older and frailer. Yeesh. Good time to take on the Lady Evelyn River and the Diamond Lake Death March, wouldn’t you say?
In my defense I will say that Mallory’s done tougher trips and I really think I, as her parent, owe it to her to introduce her to other parts of our trippable wilderness. And she’d never been to Temagami. Now she has. With any luck she’ll forgive me. Have I teased this enough? Shall I get on with it?
The tl;dr
- Day 1: wherein we drive to the Wanapitei public parking lot on Red Squirrel Road and paddle to Diamond Lake via the Napoleon and Sharp Rock Portages, convinced of our invincibility.
- Day 2: wherein nothing disabuses us of this notion as we wend our way north on Lady Evelyn, Peanut Butter and Banana Bay, Willow Island and Sucker Gut.
- Day 3: wherein we teeter along cliff edges, scramble up scree and mountain goat down perilous descents as we do 16 portages, including the famous Diamond Lake Death March down the Lady Evelyn River and onto Diamond Lake.
- Day 4: wherein the route to Ferguson Bay through Bob, Stiles, James and Virgina et al provides us a calmer, if long day
- Day 5: wherein we paddle across the bay, hop in the car and head home
Admonition against risk
This is a harsh route. Especially Day 3. There are lots of ways you can get help and support to do this sort of thing: an outfitter, a guide, a club. Avail yourself of some or several before heading out. This is not an advice site. I’m telling a story. If you look down towards the put-in at Fat Man’s Falls and cry, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Many thanks
To Irene for trusting me with the safekeeping of our daughter and allowing this dalliance once again like so many times before.
Pre-trip selfie
Day 1, August 7, 2024: Diamond Lake, east end
We got rolling from Ottawa around 7am, stopped for lunch in North Bay and were on the water around 2pm. The waves — driven by a south wind — on Ferguson Bay and Sharp Rock Inlet were significant, splashy and not helpful as we headed west. There were quite a lot of people out paddling and camping. Both of us got a bit nervous about finding a vacant site.
Temagami’s very big but lake-per-lake, there are fewer campsites, I think. Something about being a combination of crown land and un-managed park, I imagine. And there are a lot of tripping camps operating in the area. One group of which we found ourselves racing against as we pulled in to Sharp Rock Portage. The fact is, it wasn’t even close. There was just the two of us and we don’t faff about whereas a group of kids is always going to struggle a bit saddling up and putting in at portages.
Not sure who has the KOM. Maybe us?
We nevertheless grabbed the first site we found. It was maybe an unnecessary compromise. The tent pad was fine. There was a thunderbox. But there was no kitchen and nothing to use as a kitchen. I hasten to add that by ‘kitchen’ I mean ‘flat rock that’s big enough to hold an MSR Dragonfly and its fuel bottle’.
I understand why they build fire pits — to keep the campers from freelancing and making a mess or causing a root fire — and they supply grills to aid in cooking. But surely camp stoves are a more common modus operandi than cooking fires these days. Don’t we stove users deserve some lovin’? Ah well. A flat-ish patch of rock had to do.
Dinner was a Northway special recipe. “Fresh Dinner” they call it — mashed actual potatoes, carrots, onions and vegetarian hot dogs. We should have brought a generic spice pack: garlic powder, salt, pepper. But I still loved it. And we ate it all.
Diamond Lake. The west end
Day 2, August 8, 2025: Sucker Gut Lake
I think the people who name the lakes were trying to send canoeists a message with this one: stay away. The cluster of sites at the north end of the lake are all terrible. We’re here on the one closest to the start of the Lady Evelyn River. It’s pretty good. But we passed on about four before we settled here.
We were both moving by about 7am. Breakfast was another Northway tradition — Eggels and Beggs. Pan-fried fresh bagels, scrambled eggs and bacon (for Mallory). It was yummy but it took a long time as we basically had to cook it twice. Once for the vegetarian and then again for the carnivore. And the cleanup was brutal with all the bacon grease. As it happens we had lots of time.
The eggs (cracked, bagged and frozen), bacon (frozen, bagged and in tin foil) and butter (frozen in a Nalgene) were all still fine, despite spending a night and a day outside of a refrigerator.
We saw a huge moose on Lake 296, the nameless body of water between Peanut Butter and Banana Bay and Willow Island Lake.
My graduated lense glasses are great for paddling — I can read the GPS and still scan the horizon — but they’re terrible for portaging. I look down at my feet through the lense meant for reading and see a blur. I noticed this on the 30m lift-over between Diamond and Lady Evelyn Lake which required some funky footing. I felt like a dottering old man. Whether or not I actually am, I have to find a way to keep them with me and yet safe tomorrow. Because it’s not safe to wear them.
We moved quickly today as the wind was from the South and we were heading north. The downside is it’s a change wind which means today’s cloudy-with-sunny-periods and warm will be going away. We had three portages, none over 500m, and about 18km of easy lake paddling.
Dinner tonight was couscous with fresh feta, almonds, dried apricots and dehydrated vegetable mix. This one is always a hit. “We could even have this at home,” Mallory remarked.
Bridal Veil Falls
Day 3, August 9, 2025: Diamond Lake, Chay Island campsite cluster
That was the hardest canoe trip day I have had in a long time. Quite the ordeal.
And I can’t imagine doing it with anyone other than Mallory. She was amazing.
I have paddled through this stretch of Temagami before — 22 years ago with Irene. But we did it over two days. My tagline for the day was “Where we realize that portages can be cliffs.” I had a lot of the same reactions, thoughts and ideas as I did this time. The terrain has changed. The geographical feature I called “Twin Sisters Falls” is now called Cabin Falls and is the home to Hap Wilson’s much-expanded cabin, which is now an eco-lodge. Comparing what I wrote about the portages back then and what I experienced this time, I would say that at least two of the portages have been re-done.
The Cabin Falls portage no longer goes right past the cabin. I have to say, the portagers are the losers on this one. The current Cabin Falls portage is arguably the nastiest along this stretch. The portage around Centre Falls is an improvement, though. When I went through in 2004, the bridge had just been removed and the trail just went through the gully (you know, the thing they built the bridge to avoid). This time the trail went somewhere else. It was plenty harsh but in 2004 I had more than a few moments where I didn’t think I was going to make it.
The biggest problem with these improbable portages we encountered wasn’t their ferocity, though. With a little daring, some leg strength and reasonably good balance, you can do them. No, the problem was freelance trails. You see this all the time when a portage trail crosses some sort of obstacle. A fallen tree. A seemingly impossible hill or rock. Travellers reckon “That can’t possibly be it. There’s no way I can do that.” Then they seek another route.
On the Cabin Falls portage we took someone’s freelance trail because it seemed much more plausible than the actual trail, and found ourselves teetering on the edge of the cliff, with no way forward. “Up” was a hands and knees climb. “Down” was a 6 or 8 metre drop to the rocks below. “Back” was significantly harder to do with a canoe on your head. Mallory took the canoe off. I tossed the paddles and life jackets up over the edge, climbed up, then came back around to get Mallory and we suitcased the canoe back to where we could safely put it on and walk again. If I could impart anything to anyone doing this portage, I would say “take paths that lead away from the river.”
There were a few moments where we suitcased the canoe to get it around tight corners or to reverse out of wrong turns. And there were a lot of take-outs and put-ins where we didn’t do our usual one-touch method. To start, we’d take the packs out of the canoe and drop them on land. Then we’d take the canoe out of the water and walk it to somewhere you could roll it up with two feet on flat, stable ground. Then we’d load up and go. At the other end, we’d put the boat down on land, feed the boat into the water and carefully load the packs. More effort and a bit tedious but after the first few portages, the acrobatics required to do ‘one-touch’ portaging were taking a heavy toll — soakers, scratches and bruises — we figured something more serious was bound to happen.
There were, after all, 15 portages on our route down the Lady Evelyn River, which Jeff’s Map innocently refers to as ‘The Trout Streams’.
We were elated when we got to the end of The Trout Streams. We’d agreed we would skip the Diamond Lake Death March and do it fresh in the morning. We were a bit behind schedule because we’d had to wait out an early morning thunderstorm and it was getting late. There were a few campsites at the mouth of the Lady Ev and on Willow Island Lake. We reckoned one of them would be fine.
Nope. All dark, claustrophobic, overgrown things that looked like bug traps.
And as we paddled toward the portage, we saw the last of a camp group — boys in their early teens we guessed — starting in on it. The conversation went like this.
“Ya know, after what we’ve been through someone should build us a goddamn palace tonight. And these sites aren’t palaces.”
“Agreed. And if that lot can do the portage, so can we.”
And so the decision was made.
Nigel Ward once said of the Willow Island -> Diamond Lake portage: “Duct tape your shoes to your feet or you will never see them again.” On my other trip through here a Northwaters trip leader had referred to it as the “Diamond Lake Death March” and that name has (not surprisingly) stuck with me. It’s marked as 2200m on Jeff’s Map. That doesn’t seem ridiculously long. But as the previous few hours of travel reminded me, it’s not necessarily about the metres.
So with more than a bit of trepidation we started walking. And for about the first 1.5km, it was fine. A few mushy bits, a couple of narsty little knolls, but it wouldn’t have been out of place in Algonquin or Killarney. We were counting on two hours to get through it. But we were going much faster than expected. “Where does this start getting hard?” I asked myself, realizing that to even allow such a thought into my head was to invite the worst possible answer.
As it happens, it never did. Though I could easily see where it would. The Diamond Lake end of the portage is about 5 or 600 metres along a marshy creek that is slowly being overgrown. There was a trickle of water down the middle of it and a path on ‘shore’ to the proper mouth of the creek and Diamond Lake itself. When we walked it, the path was through long, trampled grass growing on slightly squishy ground. There was the occasional patch of easily-avoided mud. Once I felt like the ground clung to the heel of my shoe as I stomped by. But that was it. We were through it in about 50 minutes. I imagine earlier in summer, or after a rainy spell, it would just be a massive mud pit.
This was good. As it meant we had a shot at Not-Making-Dinner-in-the-Dark™. We paddled eastward on Diamond toward the Chey Island cluster of sites and grabbed the first one. I am pretty sure this wasn’t the first time I’d stayed here. Great view. Thunderbox. Nice tent pad. Not an awful kitchen — some rocks worked kind of like shelves.
Dinner was gnocchi with pesto. Simple and fast. And tasty. Creaky and sore, we set up camp, cooked and ran for the tent.
Peshabo’s Point
Day 4, August 10, 2025: Peshabo’s Point, Ferguson Bay
I don’t know who Peshabo was but I reckon they camped alone in a tiny tent and never shat in the woods. The lesson for today is that a campsite in hand is worth several kilometres of paddling. Or something like that. Maybe “don’t pass on a good campsite just because it’s a little far away from tomorrow’s destination,” would be a better moral to this story.
But I’ll back up. We woke a smidge later than normal and decided to have the rancho-relaxo breakfast and take the shorter route back to Diamond Lake. I think yesterday left us both feeling a little beaten up and fatigued. However the chocolate chip pancakes seemed to revive us. Sure they were leaden because the mix was about a decade old. But they were so sweet and we dumped so much maple syrup on them and fried them in so much butter. Suddenly energized we decided to go for it and do the route as prescribed: south to Bob Lake, then east via Log, Stiles, James, Virginia and Thunderhead Lakes. A bunch more portages — including a couple over 1000m — but no obvious geographical warning signs — and a longer overall distance but probably easier paddling.
Off we went. This is probably the most Algonquin-like stretch of the trip. Small-ish lakes, flat-ish portages. The further we got from Bob, though, the more the portages needed maintenance. Deadfall, over/undergrowth etc etc was starting to swallow up the trails. We could feel a strong wind but it didn’t really affect us until after we’d portaged from Thunderhead Lake into Sharp Rock Inlet. There the wind was across the starboard beam, making for a lovely bouncy castle session. We made it into the shelter of the lower narrows and out again, hitting our last portage: 400m into Pickerel Bay. You don’t have to do this portage. You can paddle south a few km, pass around the point of land and head back north again into Ferguson bay. But that would have been a big chore for us, with a strong wind in our faces. And the portage isn’t difficult.
We started looking at campsites in Pickerel Bay and the one we saw looked kinda nice from a distance. But we reckoned we could get closer. It was still early (well, by yesterday’s standards) and we had energy. So we paddled on, figuring something on Ferguson Bay would fit the bill.
The wind picked up some on Ferguson, though it was more or less at our backs. We surfed and paddled toward my favourite site eyes straining to see — from 1.5km away — if it was occupied. We couldn’t tell. But the bay was dotted with all manner of people engaged in all manner of water activity. Windsurfers, sailors, kayakers, canoeists and indeed houseboaters.
As we got closer, we realized that one of the houseboaters had pulled up in front of the site we were heading for. They’d put a bunch of their stuff on shore and daddy was making ready to take his kids for a swim. I gave him serious stink eye and wouldn’t say hello as we passed the plainly visible campsite marker on a tree. However I had second thoughts as my daughter and I thought about our next move. Technically, we weren’t in the provincial park any more so people can stop and ‘camp’ anywhere they want, regardless of what manner of water craft got them there. And I can be a canoe snob all I want but the guy was just taking his kids camping — same as me — just in a different boat.
So really, we weren’t entitled to the site any more than they were. But I was still annoyed. They could stop anywhere I reckoned. Their boat is their home, after all. We on the other hand, needed solid ground.
We kept going, still with the wind, along the north west shore of Ferguson Bay. There were other sites behind us and across the bay and possibly sites on the beach, just down from the trail to the parking lot. And there was Peshabo’s Point. We decided to try Peshabo’s because we reckoned campsites with names are generally good ones. And we didn’t fancy crossing the bay into the wind in the hope of a free campsite. And the beach is usually busy.
We spotted another party of paddlers steaming toward Peshabo’s. We were moving faster than them but they were much closer.
“We don’t know they’re after the site. They could be heading to Napoleon’s to do the lookout trail or portage to Sharp Rock,” I said. Mallory started pulling harder. So did I. We were relieved when we saw the boats pass the point and keep heading west to Napoleon’s.
But our victory was a smidge bitter sweet. Peshabo’s was empty and it was easy to see why. There was flat tent pad on a tiny exposed point. Another flatish area tucked a bit behind some trees might do for a sitting/eating area. The rest of the site was bush and very recent blown-down. And here we were on the windiest day of the trip.
We decided to camp there. The chop on Ferguson Bay was looking more like ‘swell’ and the wind wasn’t dropping. It was almost 5pm and we were tired.
We put in and found all the rocks we could and attached them to the tent with every piece of rope we had. The tarp stayed in its stuff sack.
The Dahl, naan and rice was great. We went to bed with a blood moon rising and the sound of crashing waves.
Day 5, August 11, 2025: Ottawa
A quick breakfast and a careful pack-up (we had a bit of carry back to the car) and we were off on a 1.5km paddle back to the put-in. It’s a bit hard to spot. Especially when it’s obscured by two massive houseboats. But find it we did. And we carried our stuff about 800m up to the car, tied the canoe on the car, changed and drove off. You can get closer to the water (like 300m) but I didn’t have the nerve. The road to the gated part of the portage is horribly pitted and I didn’t think our car could make it. The ‘parking lot’ — such as it is — is a bit in limbo. It’s not in the park. I don’t know whose land it is. I think Camp Wanapitei uses it for overflow parking, but I don’t think it’s theirs. I don’t know if anyone maintains it. It keeps expanding, though, as driver after driver looks at the deep ruts and says “I’m not going near that” and then pushes into the bush somewhere else.
I understand not wanting to have a big ass parking lot next to a beautiful wilderness space like Ferguson Bay. I expect that’s why they keep the trail up to the lot un-marked and have a gate up to prevent people from driving down to the shore. But I feel like someone should cut the environment’s losses and make the sprawl of mud road and impromptu parking spaces into an actual organized lot. I have to imagine it would be better than the chaos that’s there and fewer people would freelance.
Such things you think about as you crawl down the road at 5km/hr desperately hoping to keep your muffler attached to your car.
We stopped in North Bay for Starbuck’s all-day breakfast and sped home, arriving mid-afternoon. Just enough time to hang up the stuff, put in a load of laundry and wash the kitchen bag.
Photos
