Canoeing in Wabakimi PP, ON, CANADA

The WORLD"S Largest Wilderness Canoeing Region ... and Gerry caught fish every day!

LOGISTICS 
Private Vehicles: All our homes to Armstrong, ON

First Night's Accommodation:
Air Charter: Air Mattice
Planes: Single Turbo Otter & Beaver
Pilot(s): Don Elliot, unknown
Tandem Flatwater Tripping Canoe(s): some CI+, high water, some travel on the Allan Water & Caribou rivers
Paddlers: Karen, Gerry, Heather, Fred, Helen, Dann
DVD Available: Get copy from Store

We booked an air charter with Mattice Lake Outfitters and flew into Granite Lake. Flight time was 08:45 am. First time in a single-engine Turbo Otter for both of us. We found out at the end of the trip that this plane was built in 1956. The two Beavers used by Mattice Lake Outfitters are built in 1951 and 1953. All aircraft are in fine shape.  The flight in was about ½ an hour.  Staff load all the gear and secure the boats to the aircraft pontoons. We’re with Fred & Heather and Karen & Gerry will fly in one of the Beavers. The flight in gave us a good aerial perspective of the type of terrain we’ll be paddling through over the next 2 weeks …… the Northern Boreal. Gear and boats were offloaded on the water – a first for me. Thankfully we had calm conditions.

We set up and then did a short paddle south on the lake and then around the point where we were camped and into a backwater channel with a short lift-over back to camp ...

Wikipedia: Wabakimi Provincial Park is a wilderness park located to the north-west of Lake Nipigon and north-west of Armstrong Station in the province of Ontario, Canada. The park contains a vast and interconnected network of more than 2,000 kilometres of lakes and rivers and is considered to be the world’s largest wilderness canoeing region. The park covers an area of 8,920 km² and became the second largest park in Ontario and one of the world's largest boreal forest reserves following a major expansion in 1997. Paddlers often travel the Allan Water, Flindt, Pikitigushi, and Ogoki River during the summer months. Wabakimi Provincial Park's waterways straddle a height-of-land from which water flows either to the Atlantic Ocean via Lake Superior or to the Arctic Ocean via the James Bay/Hudson Bay basins.

Wabakimi PP Photography