Five months ago I booked site 4A on Big Salmon lake, with the intention of going out on a solo camping trip using my (at that time unpurchased) kayak. An experiment to see how much camping gear I could squeeze into the boat. Karen and I know how much gear we can carry in the canoe (a lot) so this trip was to see how austere I was going to have to be.

We have camped and hiked in Frontenac extensively, the park is only twenty minutes north of Kingston. It is a unique park in many ways. Open year-round for four season backcountry recreation with 48 interior campsites, it boasts canoe routes through 22 lakes and over 100 km of looped backpacking and hiking trails. It is also unique in Canada as being the only park in which every campsite can be reached by canoe/kayak and by hiking. The only disappointment we have with the park is that all campsites are grouped in clusters, so depending on whom you chance to be neighboured with determines the quality of your experience. This feature is an advantage to those newly experimenting with back country camping.

An observation on the boat launch…..The parking is a fair distance from the launch, and I noticed several couples struggling with their canoes from the parking area, it is not clearly signed however the intent is to drive to the launch site and park once offloaded.

I mentioned my plan for a solo trip….As it turned out Karen felt that she was unable to tolerate spending even a few nights without me (as author of this blog, I am entitled to a small amount of artistic licence) So it was decided that Karen and Marcus would hike into the campsite while I kayaked (much more enjoyable form of transport) we were able to convince Bernie with promise of beer, radler and curry dinner to hike in with Karen.

The hike in took over an hour, the paddle less than 30 minutes, ice cold (still frozen) beer and radlers rewarded the effort.

If you book a camping trip at the site 4 cluster, try and reserve either site 4A or 4D, the other two offer much less privacy or room. We were blessed with a family moving into the site next to us. Most of the evening we were entertained with a very vocal marital dispute, followed by a 1 AM wake up call from what I believe must have been a nightmare for one of the children. you can imagine my disappointment when they left the next morning.

The next day we hiked out to cluster 5 at the far end of the lake, about a 7 Km stroll, the bugs were not as bad as last week, but you need a hat on, to keep the deer flies at bay. The trail feature is something Karen and I love about Frontenac, you get to paddle swim and hike.

we stopped at the Labelle lake portage to give Marcus a chance to drink and cool off (He tends to go for a quick swim) The views out over the lake were spectacular. Pity you cannot camp on that island. On the walk back taking a slightly different route (We were a tad geographically challenged as we left our campsite) we came across one of the largest beaver dams I have seen.

We have camped at 6 of the 13 clusters in Frontenac, so we have more to explore here. Other than the “Entertainment” from our neighbours on the first night, we had a great two nights at site 4A, the weather was excellent throughout.

Karen once again hiked back to the boat launch with Marcus, and I hauled all the gear back in the kayak. Karen did the return trip in just over an hour, faster than the trip in…….until our next trip.