Sept. 4th, 2019 Day 5 Petawawa - Five-Mile Rapids to Lake McManus

Day-3: Upper Natch

Day 2: Below Big Thompson

Day 2: Lining Little Thompson

We took our time after this wet night and spent time to let our tents, and everything else that needed it, dry somewhat. We also had our last breakfast of this paddle tour (at least we were pretty sure that this would be our last day). Then we packed everything up and paddled the remainder of the Five-Mile Rapids. I had to hop a few more times into the water to navigate some stones, but so what.

I had to steer the canoe through a rocky section of Five-Mile Rapids.

Somewhere on Five-Mile Rapids

Exiting Five-Mile Rapids.

We did have a decent break in the middle of Lake Whitson. My very first paddle in Algonquin with Steve and Zandra was actually a Petawawa upstream paddle to Lake Whitson. We had seen this area before. Lake Whitson is very boggy and very scenic and totally different from what we had seen before on the Petawawa.

Having a break on Lake Whitson

Lake Whitson near the island.

Pulling the canoes along a flat section of Lake Whitson

After Lake Whitson we leisurely paddled all the way downstream to Lake McManus. We paddled some swifts and we even doused a smoldering fire that prior folks had left burning (we noticed some smoke and investigated). We were not able to douse everything. So we called up the Provincial Park folks 2 hours later when Steve had cell phone coverage and I observed their helicopter doing the rounds and dousing the fire further from Lake McManus when waiting for Steve to come back with the car.

Lake McManus: Our end point.

Some of our luggage is waiting for the car ...

Misc: No portaging today.

What else?

We had a super trip and I hope I (or better some of us) will paddle this section of the Petawawa again (maybe when the water levels are a bit higher). Something I greatly enjoyed was the frequent change of scenery. We pretty much saw everything that back-country canoeing has to offer: Nice swimming lakes (Lake Travers and Lake McManus have some nice campgrounds), narrow rocky valleys, eskers, boggy river valleys and boggy lakes, the Natch, and plenty of white water stretches. It still feels good having done this section of the Petawawa. Everything went relatively speaking well. The only major inconvenience was the flooding event the prior night.

While the pictures might show plenty of lining jobs and sections with stones, it is fair to say that we also encountered some nice white water sections. None of us has a GoPro type device. And normally there is no nice stop at the river shore offering picture taking opportunities of the other canoes. The paddle simply goes on.

Lake Travers is a decent sized lake and a destination of its own. It offers some superb campgrounds with super sand beaches.

It was the first time for Margaret to go white-water canoeing and she did very well. Toby and Anna also had never done any white-water canoeing before practicing the prior week for two days in Palmer Rapids. They also did amazingly well on the water. Tobi (and Steve) also became more and more creative how to hoist up our food bags: Kudos. Zandra and Steve despite having little outdoor activities this year and just being back from a long long drive to home also adjusted super nicely to their usual self and did especially the canoe lining in style when Steve wanted to avoid a heavy portage! Little me preferred to portage my canoe in a number of places ;-).

From a logistics point of view Steve used his car to shuttle all of us and the luggage to Pembroke to the Husky gasoline stop. By the time he was done, Gongyu thankfully had arrived from Ottawa to pick up one half of us and everyone was well feed. Also thanks to Hani for driving one half of us and a lot of luggage to Lake Travers and helping shuttling Steve's car to Lake McManus. I hope we will paddle the Petawawa together one day.

We used the usual back-country map from "The Friends of Algonquin" on the trip and for planning purposes. We also used the "Petawawa Whitewater Guide" from them on the trip and for planning purposes. I did watch a number of YouTube videos showing snippets of paddling this section of the Petawawa. However most of them were done by much more experienced whitewater folks when the water levels were much higher (probably up to 1 meter higher. The measured Petawawa discharge level in Pembroke during our travel time was between 5 and 6 cubic meters during that time and likely at its lowest in 2019). The river is a very different animal with high water levels. I also read a few blogs (similar to what I am describing here) that were very helpful. Judging from the pictures some of the blog folks were our age group and also paddled the river later in the season.

The Petawawa campgrounds were well maintained during our travel. Most campgrounds had relatively new thunder-boxes.

Gear: We weren't really sure if we needed a big noodle pot in the first place. But it turned out that this was exactly what we used most. We cooked every evening noodles in the big pot for 6 people. Hansi's gasoline burner operated by Tobi complemented this. The Trangia's had their uses too, but the main cooking always happened with the big pot and the gasoline burner.