The Algonquin backcountry is a wilderness treasured by many people, sometimes too many. Your quiet backcountry escape can sometimes feel more like a car camping site than a rough backcountry site. As a result of this, I wanted to know if it was just because I was bad at picking lakes to camp on or if there was something else behind it. To answer this question, I wanted to know which lakes were the busiest and which were the quietest in any given year. I filled a Freedom of Information request with the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks to get the booking data for each “booking zone” for 2024 and 2025. A booking zone is what you see online when you make a reservation. This data provides a lot of information. Easy access lakes are the busiest, while hard to access lakes are often the most quiet ones in the park. The data also shows that lakes such as Burnt Island, which has 43 campsites, are more busy than lakes such as Frank, which only has 1 campsite on it. To try to u...
I spent a day hiking a cluster of trails off of the Basin Depot Road in Algonquin Provincal Park. My day started at the Charles Lafleaur Homestead trail and ended at Buck Lake, which is a drive-in backcountry campsite. In between, I hiked three more trails and stopped to check out a historic building at Basin Depot. The Charles Lafleur Homestead The first trail of the day was a short 0.88km round-trip trail, accessed just off of Basin Depot Rd. There's a small grass parking lot right off the road, the trail itself is cut grass that runs from the parking lot to the historical homestead. At the homestead, there are a few decaying buildings alongside two log cabins that are being maintained. The buildings are locked, and there isn't anything to see through the windows. A few dozen signs scattered around the homestead, telling you about the history of the place. Historic homestead building. Whispering Winds (Egg Rock) The second trail of the day was Whispering Winds (Egg R...