Algonquin - Eastern Pines Backpacking Trail - Ontario, Canada

This is called a backpacking trail, and indeed it can be used for that, but it is a rather short trail.  I did most of this backpacking trail as a day hike – a long enough one, about 19.5km.  I didn’t really do all of the trail and omitted the north side of Johnston Lake, on account of the late-ish start and the vicious mosquitoes in late June.

It starts at Achray on the lesser used East Side/Barron canyon area of the park, and makes it’s way around a few lakes in the Pine forests nearby.  I would rate this as an easy to moderate trail – not too much steep up and downs.  The trail is scenic visiting the lakes and waterfalls, but no real lookout vistas at the same time.  The trail is easy to follow, but I wouldn’t exactly call it well maintained.  There were at least 30 large tree windfall/deadfalls across the path.  Some look relatively recent, others looked like they had been there for quite a while.

At the far end of the trail near the tip of Stratton lake, there’s a worthwhile short sidetrail to High Falls, which also passes by two backpacking campsites.  High falls is a few cascades between Stratton Lake and High Falls Lake.  One part of the falls, about halfway down is known as ‘The Jacuzzi’, it’s a basin shaped rock, the water goes down that is used by many backpackers and paddlers as a natural water slide to cool down.  It actually looks more dangerous than it really is.  It’s shallow where the falls meets the pool and there is even a rope to help climb out on the slippery rocks on the right side.  Great place for lunch and a dip.  I even saw a large snapping turtle laying eggs nearby.

There’s apparently a tall waterfall just downstream from the Jacuzzi that we missed, didn’t go exploring too much as the thunderstorms were rolling in when we were there, not to mention mosquitos and we had been hiking for pretty far by then anyways.

The Bucholtz Lake portion of the trail looks rarely used.  Some portions are quite overgrown but again, easy to follow.  The mosquitos near Bucholtz lake were insane this time of year.   Bucholtz lake is a very pretty lake, although swampy.  An interesting point is the glacial boulder garden at the north end of the lake, boulders strewn everywhere in the forest, covered with ferns.

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