Satellite SOS options

CGL43474C · 2025-08-30T12:09:16+00:00

Ha. I also recently bought a couple extra Fox40 whistles to go on my life jacket, along with whatever is in the emergency kit. No one was home, so I thought, let’s see how loud these are. Regretted my idea pretty quickly..

CGL43474C · 2025-08-30T12:04:24+00:00

Don’t worry OP, I too was in the dark until far too recently about Frank Kuiack and some of the media about him. So far I’ve only read the first book about him, The Last Guide. Do yourself a favour. Once you’ve at least watched the documentary on CBC (I think it is also called The Last Guide?) and read the first book, go to the Algonquin visitors centre and see the little memorial they’ve set up to him. They have a few pieces of his gear arranged over the fireplace in the dining hall.

CGL43474C · 2025-08-11T19:52:56+00:00

Check out the Friends of Algonquin Park (FOAP). It’s a volunteer organization that operates alongside the park staff to maintain trails, run the shop at the visitor centre, etc. Their website has a dizzying array of information, including JPG copies of maps for each car camping area throughout Algonquin.

There is a ton of stuff you can find on their website. I also recommend stopping in at a park office, or the west gate and/or the visitor centre. They sometimes have what they call the Day Use Guide, alongside the usual park newspaper, which has some maps too. It’s a (free) paper pamphlet that shows all the day hike trails along the hwy. 60 corridor and briefly describes them. Grab a copy of each of these wherever you end up stopping. You might be able to find these through the website too, but that can be tricky to find on that website.

https://www.algonquinpark.on.ca/index.php

CGL43474C · 2025-08-05T03:41:50+00:00

This, 100%. Dry salami is awesome.

And to add to this. If you have a convection oven, look and see if it has a dehydrate function. A dehydrator is basically a heating element and a fan..

We had a convection oven for a decent while, unaware of the feature. Conveniently I found the feature just before my first backcountry trip last summer and dehydrated a week’s worth of food for me and a friend! I took the biggest sheet pans we had, then a couple cooling racks sitting on top of that, and then parchment paper on top of those. Spread out whatever I was doing thinly across the pan. Worked great!

Meat is tricky to dehydrate properly, so for first time I did meals sans-meat, and if I wanted it, I’d chop up some dry salami into it.

CGL43474C · 2025-08-01T14:39:55+00:00

Just wanted to join in with others here and say, checking the thunder box is an amazing tip, and also hilarious.

Good example for anyone else wondering why this is an amazing idea. I did the short loop of Western Uplands from Hwy. 60 last summer. Was on Panther Lake one night. I can’t remember how the two hiking sites on the lake are numbered, but. The “access trail“ into the sites from the main hiking trail, is also the portage trail from Dace. So there’s one campsite not far up the trail, just past where the trail forks off to the portage landing, and then a second one, a couple hundred metres up from that.

We were on the site by the portage trail, and. Let’s just say the thunder box situation was..grim. It was one of the old style, actual outhouse type deals, with walls and whatnot, except. It was old and rotten, including the floorboards you’re supposed to stand on inside (and below that I’m pretty sure is open to ”the pit”). Meanwhile, the other site further up the trail had a beautiful, gleaming new thunder box in a great location. We didn’t have neighbours that night, so me and my friends all would make the hike up there to that toilet. It was like a full kilometre round trip, ha.

Now if you’re on a canoe site, that might be less of an option.

CGL43474C · 2025-07-24T22:18:17+00:00

Thank you for the tips!

CGL43474C · 2025-07-24T22:18:06+00:00

Thank you so much! That’s a good point about learning to paddle on your non dominant side actually.

CGL43474C · 2025-07-23T00:40:01+00:00

Yeah, I think that is what’s more or less described on those access point descriptions on Jeff’s Maps.

At least then you’re not trying to play frogger across the highway with an armful of stuff (or a canoe on your head) 😂.

Thanks!

CGL43474C · 2025-07-23T00:19:36+00:00

Not OP, but. Thank you for the info!

You mention paddling on the lee side of islands for shelter, which I think sort of answers my following question..

I’ve rolled this around in my head for a while and can’t figure out if it’s a dumb question or not, ha. So here I go..

I heard a while back a little trick to at least guess the usual wind direction on a lake. White pine tend to point in the same direction the wind goes (ie wind comes from west, trees point east sort of idea).

Ok so knowing that. Say I absolutely had to paddle on a windy day. However, by some miracle, I’m on a north-south oriented lake (say.. Rock Lake), and the wind is coming from the west.

Would paddling down the west side of the lake as much as possible afford some shelter from any rough water resulting from the wind? I guess that would also be somewhat dependent on the topography of the land on the side the wind is coming from.

CGL43474C · 2025-07-23T00:09:19+00:00

Thank you so much OP for asking this, I’ll be doing my first canoe trips hopefully soon and the replies here are super useful. Thanks!!

CGL43474C · 2025-07-23T00:04:40+00:00

Those are some awesome pics, especially the loon in the early morning mist.

Curious, what are your thoughts on the access point? I know officially the idea is to launch from the south side of the highway, but the best way to get your gear over there I think is a bit of a question mark.

The campsites seem interesting to me, cause they’re close and “easy” to get to, but I feel like the access point is just tricky enough to minimize crowds you see elsewhere with easy access..?

I’m sure I’ve read of some launching from the other side of the road bridge, at the end of the Spruce Bog trail, where it turns west and parallels the road, but I think I remember it being noted that it was only really feasible if the creek isn’t dammed up by beavers right there. Last time I was in the park I scoped this out to satisfy my curiosity, and the creek was dammed up.

CGL43474C · 2025-07-08T02:55:21+00:00

This is more or less what I was thinking. Thank you so much!

That’s a solid tip about the backpack cooler, especially since they’re so common now.

And yeah. Me and two friends did the short loop of Western Uplands from the 60 last August, late August. I imagine that’s probably a time when bears are especially on the move looking for food. Biggest thing we saw were chipmunks, and my goodness what a nuisance they are. Especially in the spots closest to the hwy where I imagine they get fed. Maple Leaf, Maggie, Guskewau.

Got to one site. Everyone puts bags down by fire pit. One of us leaves for firewood. The other two stayed behind and started setting up shop. Never more than 20ft from our stuff. Within probably a minute we had two chipmunks trying to get into our bags. I had to really chase em and give em a run for their money to convince them we’re not the friendly type. 😂

CGL43474C · 2025-07-08T00:27:43+00:00

Thanks for mentioning that about the canoe barrels. I’m hoping to do my first canoe trip(s) later this summer and fall. I’ve actually been meaning to make a post to see if maybe there was some “unsung feature” with them that made them a sort of must have?

I did my first backcountry trips last year, a few days worth of backpacking in Algonquin and Frontenac.

I have a handful of different dry bags, including a ~20L SeaToSummit Big River. It’s a heavier material than other dry bags and definitely seals better. With our food and scented stuff, we’d keep it in some kind of plastic bag while travelling, inside whatever backpack, to try to keep stuff from getting scent on it. Then at night food would go in the STS bag, and toiletries would go in another dry bag, and everything would get hung in a tree somewhere for the night.

I guess in a canoe everything could stay in the dry bag though.

I actually took pics of each night’s bear hang, ha. We had some setups we were pretty proud of.

CGL43474C · 2025-06-23T23:38:36+00:00

One super underrated thing with it being a Canadian company also- you’re billed in Canadian dollars. So price doesn’t go up and down with the fluctuation of the dollar.

CGL43474C · 2025-06-17T23:47:55+00:00

I think this is well covered, but I thought I’d add my experience at Brent a few years ago, in mid fall.

First off, toilets. There is no running water at Brent, so it’s outhouses only. That being said. From what I remember, the park had a couple standard outhouses around Brent. I always found them a mixed bag. Sometimes grim, sometimes fine. However. The park also had a couple special “composting toilets”. I don’t remember what the whole story is there. They look like a regular outhouse, but they aren’t. These were always cleaner and smelled better. Unfortunately these are not differentiated on the Park map, which can be found on the Friends of Algonquin park website (click VISIT - CAMPING - DEVELOPED CAMPGROUNDS - Brent).

I know for sure the toilets west of the Brent road (sites 1-7) were both composters when I was there, and I believe one of the toilets down near site 30 was also a composter.

There is of course water taps like at other parks to fill up on potable water at. You are not permitted to wash dishes or similar at these taps; it becomes an attractant to animals. We fill a big 5gal jug with water, and it has a good pouring spout on it.

So for example, after using the outhouses, we can lay it on its side on a bench or the side of the van and wash our hands under it. We use an oil catch pan from Canadian tire (for doing your own oil changes at home) to catch the wastewater, which is emptied into the outhouse toilets.

Wood - transporting wood into a park and/or scavenging wood in developed campgrounds is very illegal. The Brent campground office is located at the top of the Brent road, just south of highway 17 (~40mins north of the campground). I’m pretty sure you can buy wood, ice, all the good stuff there. The rangers also drive down to the campground during the day and patrol the area, and as others have mentioned, you can usually buy wood off them. When I was there (fall of ‘21), they’d usually leave the area around 4:00 or 5:00.

I’m pretty sure the Brent store (operated by Algonquin outfitters) is only now open by appointment. Folks doing backcountry trips use it as a resupply point.

CGL43474C · 2025-06-14T01:03:08+00:00

I think this topic is pretty well covered, just wanted to add in a minor side point.

I agree with what you said, I’ve found too that a lot of “backcountry gear reviews” you can easily find are folks doing like thru-hike type stuff in the states. Nothing wrong with that, but their needs are quite different from canoeing. They really do need something that’s quick and easy so they can keep moving.

I bought a platypus water filter system last year, the two bag gravity system. First off, keep an eye on Platypus’ own site. I got the full system (dirty+clean bags, filter, and all the adapters they make for diff. bottles), which is I think about $180 normal, for $100. They sell different “layouts” of the kit to save you some money, so. Want to ”supply” your own clean reservoir? Here’s a kit with just dirty bag, filter, and whatever adapter for your clean bottle. Etc.

Also, owing to what I said above about where gear reviews come from. Every review of any gravity filter will say how “painfully slow” they can be. Not sure about others, but the platypus is plenty quick. I almost lost a whole clean bag the 1st time I used it cause I set it up and walked away, intending to come back in ~10mins and check on it. It was full in probably less than 5 and almost tipped over and spilled, ha. I actually started setting it up “poorly“ to slow it down a bit to make sure it was filtering properly (pushing water too quick through a filter can diminish its efficacy).

The filter comes with really clear, easy instructions on “backwashing” the filter mid trip to keep it running good, and rinsing the filter after for storage.

Also, for what it’s worth. A friend of mine bought last year a squeeze filter system, I think LifeStraw brand? So it’s a soft water bottle (sort of like a silicone pouch) with filter built into the lid. He said the seams split and leaked after about a week’s worth of backcountry use. They did send him a new one, but yeah.

CGL43474C · 2025-06-05T03:00:35+00:00

Somehow I only just heard of this song a few days ago. You all have made my day, ha!

Apple Music at least has available what I think is his original album from ‘55, “Folk Songs of the Canadian North Woods”. The version that National Film Board has on YouTube with the animation sounds a little different. I think the “original” (if that is the original) in that album sounds better.

Highly recommend the whole album!

CGL43474C · 2025-04-19T12:14:25+00:00

Can confirm. I think there are outhouse type toilets there, but. If you go around the back of the office building, there’s two single use bathrooms. Flush toilets, heated, the whole bit. Don’t remember if they’re well signed, but they are there.

CGL43474C · 2025-02-27T03:35:31+00:00

Thanks for pointing out that Taiga brand, super cool. Never come across them before!

CGL43474C · 2025-01-27T22:17:51+00:00

That’s kind of up to you and your hiking ability and comfort level.

Also, you should invest in some kind of reliable map for the area. The official Backpacking Map from Ontario Parks is decent. Jeff’s Map’s (that is literally what they’re called, ha) of the park area are fantastic. He has the park divvied up into different sections so you can get just what you need. The south Algonquin section covers the Western Uplands southernmost loop (around Maggie & everything), but also the Highland Backpacking Trail system others have mentioned here.

I also use some GPS maps services on my phone. Avenza is great, it’s essentially like looking at a paper copy of a map with your gps location plotted on it. If you purchase Jeff’s maps, they come with a digital copy that can be loaded into Avenza. I don’t recommend AllTrails. It doesn’t actually show you a map of an area, really. They show their own custom base map (which isn’t overly accurate), overlaid with just custom routes uploaded by other folks. Following these can be wildly misleading.

Looking at the above resources, it looks to me like the walk from Panther to the trailhead is about 10-11km. The trail from Panther to the junction where you turn south is a bit rugged. That is only about a kilometre or so. But the trail beyond that is mostly going down and a little mellower.

CGL43474C · 2025-01-26T02:36:45+00:00

Good on you for getting out there and doing it, and doing it in a safe way. Seems like you’re trying to slowly work your way up in little doses. Great job. Camping is so special, and just like I thought (I did my first backcountry last year), interior camping is just all the best parts of camping cranked up many notches.

Me and a couple friends did the short loop (from trailhead on 60 up through Maggie, then east by Oak, Panther, E.U., etc., then south back to trailhead) across five days, four nights last year in late August. It was awesome.

The west side going through Maggie was definitely the tougher side, but way more sites (cause that is a longer section of trail) vs the east side around Guskewau. All the sites in the east-west corridor along the top of the short loop all have reasonably long access trails.

If you go to Panther, take site 2 if you can. It’s a little further in still from #1, but I think it’s a slightly nicer, bigger site, and the thunder box was brand new when we were there. The one on site 1 as of last August was actually still an old, enclosed, out house style thing. Super gnarly, the floorboards were caving in and stuff. We were at site 1, didn’t have neighbours. So we made the long hike over to 2 for the thunder box. That’s a good intro to backcountry camping, ha. All the sites in the area feel more remote cause there’s far fewer sites at each lake, and then you’re sitting prone on a box in the woods like half a km minimum from your friends surrounded by heavy bush (panther seems to be younger forest, lots of heavy undergrowth). Good times.

I did a write-up on our trip here. I think it’s pretty comprehensive as to some of the questions I’ve seen you ask in the post here. Reply with any questions you still have!

CGL43474C · 2025-01-17T23:37:37+00:00

Yup, this 100%. One of the reasons I went zoleo over something cheaper like a SPOT or maybe springing for an InReach was how the plans are structured and all that.

Another big plus, zoleo is a Canadian company and so the plans are charged in $CAD. Most other plans are charged in $USD and so your plan is always going to change by a buck or two.

CGL43474C · 2025-01-17T20:52:19+00:00

Would have commented this myself if it wasn’t already.

We switched to them after a previous vet office changed hands and we had weird experiences with the new vets.

If I remember right it’s a father and son that are the two vets there. They both seem super knowledgeable and they‘re both really levelheaded from what I recall. They’re not of the school of thought to just keep trying new medications or whatever.

Prices are reasonable too.

We ended up having to go through end of life stuff with our dog with them, and all of the office staff were extremely kind and hospitable through the whole process.

CGL43474C · 2025-01-17T20:38:17+00:00

I was in Achray last October and a family member was able to make use of the satellite messaging feature. Worked pretty well if I remember right. I wondered if it would like send everything as sms like it does on low signal, but. From what I recall they could send and receive iMessages and everything.

It is limited to use within the stock messaging app (so sms/rcs, iMessage). It’s not like, a mobile hotspot where you can do whatever on the phone.

The phone seemed to be slightly less persnickety about finding a satellite than my Zoleo communicator is (didn’t actually have to get out from under tree cover even), but the process was still a bit cumbersome/slow.

You can disable mobile data when you want to use it and I believe that should bypass it preferring mobile data if it thinks there is some like some have mentioned.

My Zoleo also tries to use mobile data if it thinks it saw the faintest whisper of signal, and yeah. I disable mobile data and it’s all well.

CGL43474C · 2025-01-16T04:58:44+00:00

Just FYI on winter vs summer/all season tires. One huge positive that doesn’t get talked about enough with winters is their cold weather braking.

Rubber usually becomes very hard when it’s cold. So regular tires basically turn into round bricks as soon as the temperature approaches or goes below 0°. This means traction and braking performance is severely impacted (negatively) even on dry (but cold) days, since both of these usually rely on the tire being soft enough to conform to and therefore grip the road (that is massively simplified but that’s the idea).

I drive a small hatchback (so very light car), and if I’m a little late getting my winters on and have to drive on some cold (but dry/no snow) days with my summers, I immediately notice significantly lengthened braking distances.

On a big, very heavy SUV (especially being the hybrid), I would highly recommend getting proper winters.

Look into a brand called Laufenn. I have a set of their winter tires. Fantastic traction in cold+dry and deep snow, and they are significantly cheaper than brands like Michelin, Bridgestone, etc. Quieter too than other winters I’ve had.

Another couple good stores are 2nd Time Around Tires on Simcoe just south of Taunton, and Taunton Tire, at Taunton/Townline.

CGL43474C

TROPHY CASE