Park Report: Wilderness waterway at the heart of the continent

Wilderness waterway at the heart of the continent

By: Craig Romano

Photos courtesy of Craig Romano

Quetico sits in the heart of the North American continent, a 475,000-hectare wilderness park abutting nearly one million additional hectares of wilderness in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and Voyageurs National Park. A major component to one of the largest and most pristine roadless areas on the continent, the hundreds of interconnecting lakes, streams, and rivers of Quetico offer supreme backcountry canoeing opportunities.

Within the park’s 100 by 60 kilometer boundaries canoeists can choose from a seemingly inexhaustible cornucopia of canoe routes. Many were once routes favored by Ojibway traders and the fur brigades. Quetico remains today much as it did two centuries ago. It has been a park for nearly a century and is managed as a wilderness area strictly prohibiting development. Aside from four access points on its periphery, the park’s only developed amenities can only be found at a small area on French Lake. Here casual visitors can get a taste of Quetico by camping at the Dawson Trail Campgrounds (electrical hookups and yurts available) and taking to a handful of hiking trails or lounging around the park’s interpretive center.

Most visitors however will use French Lake only as a launching area to points farther into the park. They’ll ply any number of Quetico’s hundreds of lakes. They’ll be soothed by reflections in placid waters, awed by rocky cliffs rising above, and mesmerized by the surrounding swaths of emerald forest. Within the park’s magnificent green cloak, stands of ancient red and white pines can be found. In autumn, birches, aspen, basswood and maple set the surrounding wilderness aglow in resplendent colors.

Quetico is home to one of the heaviest concentrations of moose in the province-nearly 2 per square kilometer, although recently deer have been moving in on their larger cousin’s domain. There are plenty of otter, marten, bear and bald eagles too. Wolves roam Quetico, and perhaps you’ll hear their eerie but beautiful howls while camped on a remote island.

Except for the Lac La Croix and Beaverhouse areas, motorboats are prohibited, making Quetico one of the premier places on the planet for wilderness canoeing. Paddling routes range from very easy to challenging. Many of the portages are short and easy allowing for long forays into the wilderness without a lot of leaving your canoe. Within the park’s sprawling array of lakes, over 600 in all, you can choose from over 2,200 sites to set up your tent. And while these backcountry sites are established, they aren’t developed, further enhancing your wilderness experience.

With dispersed camping and much terrain to set out on, encounters with fellow park visitors are minimal. But if you really want to get away, consider setting out on the Baptism Creek-Cache Lake Loop in the rarely visited northeastern corner of the park. This 123 kilometer route involves 18 lakes, and 20 portages including two brutal three kilometer portages to and from Cache Lake.

While winter’s white cloak brings calm to the park, more and more visitors are discovering Quetico for snowshoeing, cross-country skiing and ice fishing. There are no groomed trails and snowmobiles are prohibited.

The Dawson Trail section of Quetico Provincial Park is located 160 kilometers west of Thunder Bay.

For more information visit: http://www.ontarioparks.com/english/quet.html