trip # 2: With Ivan on the Kawarthas Long Lake (The Kawartha Highlands Park) - Monday, June 6, 2011

Long Lake in Kawarthas (North of Peterborough on hwy 28) was my "point of interest" since 2010. I even printed out the satellite map, but at the last moment switched to another Georgian Bay trip for some reasons. This time I reread the description of the "Long Lake loop" in Kevin Callan's "A Paddler's Guide to Ontario's Cottage Country" and decided to go there. Ivan accompanied me looking for the good fishing.

We left downtown Toronto at 7:00 AM and adopt the fastest way: Gardiner-DVP-hwy 401-hwy 115-hwy 7-hwy 28-Long Lake Rd. It took us 2 hrs only!

Long Lake. View from the launch site.

The public launch spot is situated on the East end of the Long Lake in the very nice place, near the Long Lake Lodge. Due to Monday the parking lot was empty. In less than 30 min kayak was on the water and we were ready to go.
We went initially along the main left channel of the lake and then adopt right channel rounding the Brown Island. Northwest of the Island we tried to paddle a small channel to the North, but very soon were stopped by beaver dam and turned back.
Heading further to the West along the main channel we began to put our warms into any deep place at the rocks and have a lot of fun catching bass of various sizes (of course we released them immediately, because the season for it will begin only on 4th Saturday of June (June 25 this year). In such a way we arrived at the campsite 401 on the right (North) bank. Here we stayed for 1-2 hrs. Ate, swam, relaxed. We were agreeably surprised that there were no mosquitoes at all. may be it was partly due to light wind which came from time to time from the West.

Campsite 401

To finish our first exploration of the Long Lake we paddled 1 km more to another narrowing leading to the west end of the lake. There on the small island we've seen a sculpture curved from the big stone - a lady exposing herself to the sun.
From this point we turned back and followed another (South) shore to the launch spot.

Sunset. Before departure

At 7:15 we were at the Start point, dried kayak a little bit, ate a bit and at 8:05 start our way home. Same route, same speed, same time: In 2 hrs we were back home.