Last summer we headed out on a Canoe Camping trip in Park Papineau Labelle; little did we know what we were getting ourselves into. We left a Friday morning (June 19th) with a group of 7 people three of which have never practiced the sport. It was a 3 hour long trip to get there...crammed in a minivan. When we arrived it was time to decide which loop to do; the more zealous people opted for the 42km (longest route available). And so it was we headed out on the lac des Sept-Frere, the elongated starting lake.

DAY1:

We didn't paddle very hard that day. People were busy enjoying the scenery. The starting lake was 7km long we paddled until our first portaging site and we spent the night there. This day was easy sailing :). We knew that if we were to finish the loop on time we had to make up for the lost time in the morning.

DAY2:

Nothing could have prepared us for what was in store. The route picked contained class IV and III rapids; we got to experience those that day. In the begining we thought that the most experienced of us could manoeuvre them but we were wrong. After experiencing a couple of wet exits in the middle of the rapids we knew we had to attack the problem from a different angle. In the rapids we lost an MEC paddle and a member of our group called Di lost his prescription glasses which rendered him legally blind for the remainder of the trip. The portaging routes were horribly maintained so we had to resort walking the canoes down the rapids. Let just say that it was a very wet day. I was never so glad in my life to build a fire.

DAY3:

We still had 20km's to do before closing the loop. So we woke up along with the sun (5:00 am) we had yet one rapid to navigate and our longest portage (4km) to execute. The rapid wasn't too hard however the portaging was hell. The route was so badly maintained that we got lost in the woods with the canoes on our shoulders :). We were able to find our way after group leader Chris used his compass and map. The 4km portage turned into a 7 km one. We got back to base camp at 8:00pm it was already dark. We were back amongst civilization by 11:00pm (Montreal)

Overall the trip was much harder than expected. However many lessons were learnt that will not be forgotten anytime soon. We went there armed with 5 full bottles of DEET however none of it could save us.