Day Zero: "The anticipation got the best of us"

Two months earlier, after reading about trophy speckled trout in the Nippissing River, I’d convinced three of my friends that this was a plausible trip and the four of us struck forth en route with two canoes. Paddling against the wind across North Tea, we stopped for a break at 3 pm. One of my companions, a sixty-five year old ex-British commando, said he didn’t feel well and insisted in setting up camp. After lying in the tent until the next morning, he awoke and said he felt no better and that we’d have to head back. Such was the end of our first quest to reach the Nip. It turned out a month later the gent was hospitalized with a ruptured mitral valve due to a previous heart attack somewhere in the preceding six weeks. Whether the winds on North Tea were too much for his heart, we’ll never know.

My best friend Dave and I couldn’t give up the quest. So, the last weekend of September that year of 1996, we decided to give it another try with just the two of us to reach the Nip River, do some fishing and get home three days later. It always amazes me when I sit at home with a map; the distances look much shorter and less intimidating than on the ground. To improve on our last venture, we decided that we would travel up to South River the night before and get a good night’s sleep and a fresh start in the morning. Packing instructions were simple. We’d do the usual, in that I’d bring the whisky and Dave would bring the food, which should normally be equal cost to both of us. We arrived at a comfortable motel around 10 pm Thursday night, and thought we’d go down the street to the local tavern to have a beer and firm up our plans. At 1 am, after closing the tavern and chatting about all the fish we’d catch, we settled in for a restful five hours sleep.

Day One: "The best laid plans o’ mice and men"

6 am came very early that morning. Dave tells me it took over ten minutes to wake me, even with the motel alarm clock blaring. I’m a night owl, he’s a morning riser. Bleary eyed from the previous night's celebrations, we were relieved that all our gear was still in the back of the truck where we’d left it the night before. The bumpy ride to Kawawaymog Lake helped us both to wake up, even without a morning coffee, and we hit the lake around 7 am according to plan. The vehicle for the water trip was my Dad’s old Sportspal, a veteran of many expeditions, equipped with a new (used and untried) Johnson 2.5 hp motor to make good time on the motor allowable lakes to the end of North Tea. The plan had been to make it to the Nip by end of day one.

As poet Robbie Burns once wrote, "the best laid plans o’ mice and men oft go awry." Nowhere is this truer than trips I’ve undertaken in Algonquin Park; I think that’s part of the appeal, to be able to finally get it right. After getting the motor going, we could make it no further than 10 yards at a time before it died out. Back we went to South River for breakfast and managed to get the fuel line repaired for a second run at our trip. As we recommenced our journey at 10 am on Kawawaymog, I told Dave we’d have to really push it to make our destination by evening. He looked none too happy, knowing I’d been jogging and working out regularly all year and this was his first exercise beyond occasional walks to the store.

Enjoying some sunshine and spectacular fall colors, we zipped across the first lake and into the winding Amable du Fond River in record time. The Amable was a longer affair than we thought, having to stop numerous times to clear the propeller of weeds. Double portaging across the few small portages on the way to North Tea, we still felt strong and enjoyed the waterfalls for a few seconds at Hornbeam Lake. The trip down North Tea was beautiful, with the wind and big waves in our face, the Johnson 2.5 performed without hesitation. We had surpassed the previous attempt and felt optimistic about reaching the Nip. We were paddling Biggar by mid-afternoon.

Locating the creek out of Biggar to get to the next portage to Loughrin Creek presented a bit of a challenge and cost us time, as we had trouble finding it in the midst of a boggy area. Finally entering the creek, we had the first of many moose sightings (I stopped counting at ten) over the trip and nearly ran into a big bull as we rounded a corner in the narrow stream. Fatigue was starting to bear down on us as we loaded up the gear for the 2040m portage to Loughrin, the first major one of the day. Still giddy with excitement, we hadn’t taken any breathers, nor had we eaten since breakfast many hours previous. Nonetheless, we decide there was no time for food or rest and on we pressed.

The portage to Loughrin will go down in my Park memories as one of the toughest I have ever done although by no means the longest. With canoe on my shoulders and pack on my back, I followed Dave ascending a terrible, long slippery gravel climb. It was so steep and slippery, I deliberated whether crawling up on my hands and knees would have been easier. Dave, with a pack on his back, had equal difficulty. Reaching him at the top, he said he mumbled that he didn’t feel well and promptly fainted, knees buckling and landing backwards on his pack. Not to have our quest interrupted by this minor incident, I told him, "Get up and get moving or we’ll never make it before nightfall" when he regained consciousness.

Soldiering on, disappointment was evident for both of us when we arrived and saw how little water was in Loughrin Creek. Completely filled in with heavy weeds, it felt like paddling through pea soup, made worse by never ending meanders to the point where we didn’t know if we were making progress or not. Later in Loughrin Creek, the weeds were interrupted by innumerable beaver dams, none of which we were able to paddle over. Following the beaver dams, the water came up too shallow to paddle and we both hopped out and walked the river. Three endless hours later, we were off the creek and back on the portage trail.

The 560m portage to Lawren Harris Lake was notable only for how rarely traveled it looked with grass growing freely along it as if nobody has walked there for some time. Years later, I had my first bear scare on this portage with a big bear sniffing at us less than 15 m away. The 20m into Loughrin Lake was a non-event as was the paddle down the lake and on into Barred Owl and Nod Lake.

Nod Lake was a strange green colored body of water and, with darkness upon us, we surrendered to the Park gods and set up camp to do the final portage into Nippissing in the morning. Dinner was a terrible disappointment as Dave revealed to me he had taken this trip as an opportunity to lose a few pounds and only packed two sandwiches per day for each of us. By this time, it was getting awfully cold and we rounded out our gourmet dinner of a ham sandwich each with hot instant coffee and a couple of whiskies.

Day Two: "The best fishing ever"

Morning of day two, I woke up at sunrise in an anxious state wondering how I was going to get through the day on my ration of two sandwiches. The weather had turned so cold over night, there was ice in the coffee pot yet we did get a fire going to have a morning coffee. I was ravenous and couldn’t resist having one of my two sandwiches for breakfast. Deciding to head into the Nip for a day trip and leave the camp where it was for our return that night, we headed off to the 1480m portage to the reach our destination, albeit one day later than hoped for.

Arriving at the river, the water looked crystal clear and we decided to head downstream and troll as we went, with a few casts at what looked like good spots. Using a gold and silver small Williams, I had some nice speckles on board prior to Dave getting his first hit. After letting Dave get a few, the panicky feeling from hunger set in so we stopped ashore and fried up the specks in margarine.

We continued along the river catching trout every ten or fifteen minutes or so and keeping enough to augment our otherwise dreary diet of ham sandwiches, coffee and whisky. The 350m portage along the route was a worthwhile endeavor as at the end of it, the river opens up into a spectacular large pool at the end of a shallow rapid run. We spent quite some time there resting and fishing in the pond from shore with many caught and released.

Before dark, we turned back having caught over fifty speckles over the course of the day with the majority returning to the water for another day. Worn out and not too alert, we paddled right past the portage back to Nod, realizing it only about an hour later. Finding the portage and then navigating it in pitch dark conditions was rather tricky to say the least. Back at camp with a few drinks later, we turned in for the night, having had our best fishing experience in the Park ever.

Day Three: "Two satisfied Park customers"

The final day was the return home and a day of steady soldiering back along the route we’d just taken two days ago. The return trip was peaceful and uneventful; I usually find the trip out tougher than the trip in but this time the reverse was true. Well rested and with continued sunny weather, we were back at the vehicle by 7 pm even stopping for the odd break and fishing along the way.

Later Dave told me it took him two full weeks to recover from the exhaustion and muscles aches of this ambitious, fast trip to the Nip. Six years later, I managed to rewrite my mental history and convince myself it was not that difficult so I went back again with a fellow who couldn’t carry a load as well as Dave. Forced to double portage, I physically "hit the wall" around Lawren Harris Lake after falling into the muck at the end of Loughrin Creek and never actually made it into the Nip that time. Sighting a bear along that portage did not make for a restful night’s sleep either.

We have since entered the Nip from the other direction through Indian Pipe Lake but never had the scenery or the fishing action as previous. I did learn one important final lesson, always double check the canoe tie down when tired. Motoring down the highway, I glanced in the rear view mirror and saw the Sportspal flipping end over end on the road. Fortunately, there was no traffic on the road and surprisingly enough, only a couple of rivets popped out of the canoe, barely a scratch otherwise.