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May 11, 2025 - Hidden Lake

It was a very cold night and into the morning. Had all my clothes on while doing the morning routine of breakfast and packing. Deb's water filter froze. Fortunately the wind stopped though, so once the sun rose over the horizon, things began to warm up nicely.

We hit the trail a bit after 07:00 and immediately began climbing. The trail followed along a bench like feature high above the lake which was nice for walking. Porcupine creek was flowing too high for rock hopping so we put on water shoes to ford it in the knee deep water, though Deb with her shorter legs had a little more trouble than I did stepping across one deep and swift section. The hike along the top of Pocupine canyon was spectacular and well worth the extra mileage instead of taking the shorter shoreline loop trail. As we descended back down to Lake Temiskaming I caught a whiff of smoke, and upon arriving at the campsite along the lake we met the hiker that was in front of us yesterday taking a cigarette break. We sat down for some lunch, while chatting with the fellow who was planning on hiking all the way to Latchford. After finishing the smoke he hitched up his pack and continued on his way.

Porcupine Beach


Fording Porcupine Creek


Porcupine Canyon


We passed the hiker shortly after we got going again as we hiked towards Green Creek, which true to its name is actually emerald green colour. The trail followed the bank quite a way before an easy ford, and then followed on the opposite bank back Lake Temiskaming.

Alongside Green Creek


The final section of trail looked fairly rugged on the map and it did not dissapoint. It was getting late in the day and both of us were fairly tired now so it was slow going as the trail wound up and down many small but very steep hills. We stopped many times to catch our breath and enjoy the scenery. As we approached our destination of Hidden Lake, the copious amount of blowdown we had been crawling over, under, and around on the trail pretty much consistently over the course of the day ceased, with freshly sawn logs giving a clear path to follow. As I walked up to the Hidden Lake campsite, I saw it was occupied, which looked to me like a large and fairly well entrenched party. I had just passed a fairly open area of woods, so turned back, and when Deb came along we decided to camp there.

Bush camp by Hidden Lake


While preparing our supper along the lake shore, Les Wilcox wandered on over and sat down for a chat. He is the trail maintainer for the southern section of the OTHT and was camped out with a recently departed trail crew, hence the freshly cleared trails (and well setup campsite). After a long stretch of pleasant chin wagging, Les left us to our supper which was followed by a welcome crawl into the tents for glorious sleep.

Hike Time: 10.5 hours
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