The Happy Camper: Best Lost Canoe Route
A few years back, I wrote a canoe route guidebook titled Ontario’s Lost Canoe Routes.
My publisher didn’t like the idea very much. He wondered how many books would sell that dealt with “lost”canoe routes. I said he owed me. I had just written three books on some very popular canoe routes that really didn’t need any extra promotion—and if I didn’t promote the routes paddlers knew little about, they would soon disappear under the onslaught of forest management.
He agreed… and the book was a success. Many of the routes are no longer “lost.”
There is one, however, that remains less-travelled than ever. There’s good reason. It’s mostly upriver. It’s one of my favourites, though, and always will be.
The Ranger Lake loop is in Ontario’s Algoma country and was extensively used in the 1930s and ’40s. Now, it gets less than half-a-dozen paddlers a year. The difficult trip is an amazing True North adventure—one that definitely won’t disappoint the true adventurer—and the brook trout fishing is amazing.
Check out the old video I did of the route—and then look up my out-of-print Ontario’s Lost Canoe Routes book for details.
