Temagami Trip 3 Planning ~ Florence Lake
For our next trip we will fly in to Florence Lake with Lakeland Airways. We will leave from Temagami and take a 20 minute flight on this guy:
The trip follows the plans from Hap Wilson’s book. In Wilson’s book, he calls this route 2 ~ Florence Lake Loop. The entire route is described here, keep in mind we start half way through.
Day 1/Night 1 Fly into Florence Lake
Our version will start with a 2:30pm departure from the town of Temagami directly to Lake Florence. We are hoping to stay at the campsite with the table rock (see map below). The lake is very clear with visibility to 20 m deep. The lake has a suggested viewpoint up Florence Mountain we may have a chance to check out, despite the absence of a real trail. I hope I remember to use the lift over (LO on map below) that passes over a sand isthmus by an old log cabin.
The first section of the trip is in the Lady Evelyn-Smoothwater Provincial Park.
Night 2 South Lady Evelyn River ~ Macpherson Lake
Day 2 we will head north through Florence River towards South Lady Evelyn River. We will paddle 12–15km to South Lady Evelyn River and start looking for campsites then. If we have energy or don’t find great sites, we will keep pushing on towards Macpherson Lake until we find something fabulous!
Night 3 Katherine Lake
We would love to stay at the Shangri-La rapids which are between Macpherson Lake and Katherine Lake. From here we will head towards the south channel of the Lady Evelyn River.
Night 4–5 Lady Evelyn River South Channel
Not to be confused with the South Lady Evelyn River from earlier in the trip, this is the section of river that contains tones of waterfalls and rapids and even Hap Wilson’s Ecolodge. We hope to paddle, camp, play, fish and explore for two days. We will be in the lower section of the map below.
Night 6 Obabika River Provincial Park
This point in the trip we leave Lady Evelyn-Smoothwater Provincial Park and enter Obabika River P.P. Once we exit the South Channel we have a choice of a long paddle or a long 2 mile portage. If we take the portage, we will camp in Diamond Lake. We will probably opt for the longer paddle around. We will likely aim to camp in the cluster of sites that are between Indian Head Island and Lady Evelyn Falls near the portage into Diamond Lake.
Night 7 Lake Temagami or Kokoko Lake
Big day. We paddle through Diamond and into big old Lake Tegagami. We will camp somewhere between the the southern part of Ferguson Bay near Devil Mountain or push on to Kokoko Lake. Big day either way.
Night 8 Out of Park ~ Lake Temagami
From Kokoko Lake we will paddle south, pop back into Lake Temagami and then sneak away from cottages and boats once more heading to our campiste goal on Spawning Lake.
Night 9 Northeast Arm of Lake Temagami
We plan to paddle from Spawning Lake towards the town of Temagami. This will be our last night on the Northeast Arm of Lake Temagami. If we got held up by extreme fun or high winds somewhere else, we might skip this part!
Day 10 Take Out Day!
Home stretch baby! Head home and enjoy the joys of bed, shower, internet, refrigeration and people!
