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By Les Wilcox
The
Ottawa-Temiskaming Highland Trail features majestic lookouts, big trees,
sandy beaches, rocky ridges, log-cabin ruins, abundant wildlife and great
campsites. You can day-trip or do an overnight from any access point.
There's a spectacular 20-kilometre loop trail at Grand Campment Bay, another just-as-spectacular
22-kilometre loop system on Rib Mountain near Friday Lake, and a 12-kilometre loop around Roosevelt Lake.
From the Matabitchuan River you can day-trip southeast about three kilometres (and 200 metres up) to the Beaver Mountain lookouts or follow
the river north to the Fourbass Lake Ridge lookouts and lakeside campsite.
The end-to-end journey from Ottertail Creek to Latchford takes eight to
ten days.
The trail is well signed and marked with white-painted blazes on the main
trail and blue blazes on side trails.
The surface is rugged (unimproved) with many steep grades and some
side-hill walking so you'll need to be in shape or go slowly.
All campsites have good water sources and much time has been spent
leveling tent sites and building proper rock-ring fire pits.
The only bridge crossing is at the Matabitchuan River.
Volunteers are maintaining the trail, but you should always expect a
few blowdowns.
There are currently 134 kilometres of trail on the ground and a proposal to
extend the trail, south along the Ottawa River, another 26 kilometres from
Ottertail Creek to the Town of Thorne where Highway 63 crosses the Ottawa
River at Temiscaming, Quebec.
The proposed southern extension features the Opimica Narrows lookouts, an
old-growth maple forest and the little known, but truly remarkable,
Porcupine Creek Canyon with 60-metre rock walls and old-growth red and
white pine along its rim. The creek flows out of the canyon and into the
Ottawa River, about nine kilometres north of Thorne. There's an excellent
campsite and log cabin ruins at the creek mouth.
There is drive-in access with parking at Ottertail Creek (McLaren's Bay),
Grand Campment Bay (end of Rabbit Lake Road), the Matabitchuan River (end
of Highway 567), South Roosevelt Road to Friday Lake, North Roosevelt Road
near Roosevelt Lake and the Latchford Dump Road right at Highway 11.
The average walking distance between access points is about 20
kilometres. Lakeland Airways
will fly in to Ottertail Creek, Grand Campment Bay or any other accessible
point on the Ottawa-Timiskaming shoreline.
Local outfitters provide vehicle shuttles.
Back in April 1999, a small group of local Temagami trail enthusiasts came
together to form a loose-knit organization called the
Nastawgan Working Group.
In June, the
MNR hosted a trails meeting at the Temagami Welcome
Centre. The
Nastawgan Working Group presented its vision of what it was then
calling the Trans Temagami Trail.
There was also a presentation by
Discovery Routes and two
other local trail groups. At
the end of the meeting six people came forward to form a trail group under
the direction of
MNR and Ontario Parks.
This group, also called the
Nastawgan Working Group,
incorporated as Nastawgan Trails
Inc. (NTI) on May 5, 2000.
Charitable status came a year later.
The current version of the Temagami Land Use Plan (TLUP) became public in
1997. It took a while to sort
through it; to read all of the fine print.
And there it was! In
the zone prescription for area
CR4a and the adjacent area
4, was the
requirement for an “adequate trail corridor” along the Lake Timiskaming-Ottawa
River shoreline. This became
known as the Temiskaming Trail
Corridor, which has since been developed into the
Ottawa-Temiskaming Highland Tail
(OTHT). With only
one exception, all of the zones in the
TLUP allow for new hiking trail
development. Viewscape
management is written in as a strategy for the protection of trail values,
but the struggle to achieve
adequate trail buffer zones is ongoing.
NTI members began extensive field and documentary trail research, but it
wasn't until a political change in 2004 that the
MNR requested the
submission of a Proposal to Develop the Temiskaming Trail Corridor.
The proposal was submitted in 2006. It was reviewed and accepted by
the
MNR, but there was never any formal approval.
Construction was well underway at this point with the trail opened between
Grand Campment Bay, on Lake Timiskaming, to the Town of Latchford on
Highway 11. All of the
Temagami-Temiskaming area hiking trails promoted by
NTI, including the
OTHT, are Crown land trails that constitute the free use of Crown land
within the context of the
TLUP and other land-use documents.
NTI has no tenure what-so-ever.
Downloadable, printable,
PDF trail maps (zoom in, print current view) and
GPS tracks are available from
nastawgantrails.org (click
GPS icon).
Guidebooks by Murray and Vicky Muir — Discovering Wild Temiskaming
and its supplement — are available at local outfitters and bookshops and
contain the only written description of the
OTHT.
All wholesale profits go to Nastawgan Trails to support trail work.
If you're just beginning your backpacking adventures The
Complete Walker, by Colin Fletcher, is valuable reading.
Maximum pack weight should be about 40 pounds.
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Guiding Spirit Lookout from trail above Lake Timiskaming. LES WILCOX
Posted 03.14.2011
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Maps and information herein are not intended for navigational use, and are not represented to be correct in every respect. All pages intended for reference use only, and all pages are subject to change with new information and without notice. The author/publisher accepts no responsibility or liability for use of the information on these pages. Wilderness travel and canoeing possess inherent risk. It is the sole responsibility of the paddler and outdoor traveler to determine whether he/she is qualified for these activities. Copyright © 2000-2014 Brian Back. All rights reserved. We do not endorse and are not responsible for the content of any linked document on an external site.
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