Anima Nipissing - Temagami - Lady Evelyn Loop Canoe Trip

July 1992

Bill, Barbara, Rich, Lorna, John & Mary Anne

We met at Latchford. John & Mary Anne came directly from North Bay, wile the rest of us drove all the way from Ottawa.

We still had not figured out how to manage the 3000-yard portage to Anima Nipissing Lake, but John came up with a brilliant idea. We would skip it by leaving a car at Latchford and shuttling to the boat launch on Anima Nipissing at the end of the trip.

So, we drove to the boat launch, unloaded, and left our other 2 cars there. By then, it was getting well on in the afternoon, so we made our first camp on the beautiful big lake. It was a very clear lake, not unlike Big Cedar.



Our route took us south on Anima Nipissing, through two sets of narrows and into McLean Lake. Then it was portage time to Carrying Lake and over to Red Squirrel Lake, crossing the infamous Red Squirrel Road. Here we made our second camp.




We took the north-east arm to the exit creek, which we paddled and portaged down to Lake Temagami at Camp Wanipitei. We paddled across the north end of Ferguson Bay and portaged to the North Arm of Lake Temagami.



We paddled across the to the Sharp Rock Inlet and over the Sharp Rock Portage to Diamond Lake where we camped for the night.



The next day, we paddled up the north arm of Diamond and lined into the very south end of Lady Evelyn Lake. A couple of portages on the east side took us into Willow Island Lake. Here we camped and Rich baked some buns on his reflector oven.




Then it was north to a south-east arm to Frank Falls. We played here for some time and also hiked up to Centre Falls. Next, we portaged into Chris Willis Lake and dragged our way into Hobart Lake where we camped before tackling the Maple Mountain hike.




We returned to Lady Evelyn Lake and paddled through to the sand eskers where we camped and Bill caught a rather large pike.




The following day, we portaged around the Mattawapika Dam into the Montreal River and turned south. There was one more camp before we reached our takeout in Latchford

We were sure glad of the shuttle that John had thought of at the start of the trip.