Today, Paul Trudel and I ATVed down the access road to the park. I had heard the road was in rough shape and had been asked by canoers what it was like. Not being down there for years the best way to find out is go. The road begins at the Beauty Lake Rd at Longpoint Lake on Highway 560 and goes south to a branch in the road about 12Km. south of Longpoint Lake. You take the east fork to go to the park.
There are three bridges on this route to check. About 15 kilometers down, south of Kaa Lake is the first bridge (set of culverts). It appeared in good condition and would be passable without 4 wheel drive. There were some canoists there that had just received their resupply of food and were going south on the North Lady Evelyn River. They had come from Temagami, by way of the Sturgeon River and Smoothwater Lake and were on there way back to Temagami.
The second bridge was only passable with a four wheel drive truck as you can see by the hole Paul is standing in. Some of the views here are quite nice and the water is very clear. Further along the last bridge was in good shape. We had hoped to get to Gamble Lake which is a good access point for starting a trip. About 2 Km. below the bridge we run into a beaver dam which had backed the water right over the road, we estimated that it was more than a meter deep, a little deep for us to continue. We were over 20km. down the road and only 1.5 Km. away from Gamble Lake. This was all the info. I needed to be able to tell the canoists if they ask.
All in all a good trip, good weather. On the way back we stopped in at Southbear Lake to see if there was any remains of the sawmill that was there, I will save that for tomorrow.
1 comment:
Nice pics Bill. I know you have more. Looking forward to tomorrow's pictures. That big chain we were looking at, at South Bear, is called a Jackladder!! I knew it would come to me sooner or later (sometimes it's much later)
Paul.
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