INTRODUCTION TO CANOE TRIPPING: Part 1 (Equipment)

Canoe tripping is an art to itself. You can bring a lot more gear than if you are hiking or backpacking, but a lot less than when you are car camping in the front country. Its back country nature (if you are more than one portage in, you are "back country" even in a provincial park) creates challenges and risks that have to be managed. To help members who have car camped, canoe day tripped, or even never camped at all transition to canoe tripping the club will be offering an Intro Canoe Tripping course this summer. The course will focus on skills and gear suitable to canoe tripping.

While there is a considerable knowledge and theory component to the course, the course is very “hands on” and centres on the planning and conduct of a weekend trip in Algonquin Park. Two in-town evening sessions will be held at the RA prior to the trip which will leave town Friday at noon and return Sunday evening.

Participants should come away from the course knowing what personal gear to bring, how to pack it, meal planning and preparation, pros and cons of various tents, sleeping bags, packs, stoves, water filters and other gear, camp sanitation, and campsite selection and set-up.

Prerequisites
No tripping or camping experience is required. Participants should have had experience day tripping on sheltered water, but only basic paddling skills will be required to paddle from the put-in to the camp site.

**Registration will be on the RA Centre website using PlayRA at https://www.racentre.com/canoe.html**
Course ID: 403235

This course will be in two parts. Part one consists of evening sessions dealing with Navigation (May 14), food/cooking (May 21) and Equipment (May 28).

There will also be a trip planning meeting where the detailed arrangements for the trip will be made (TBD). All of these sessions will be at the RA Centre.

Part two will be a camping weekend at Stratton Lake in Algonquin Park on June 6-8, 2025. It will leave on Friday at 1:00PM. The first evening will be about using a map and compass for navigation. The second evening will be about selecting meals, preparing food, packing it and stoves and cooking. The third evening session will be a discussion and demonstration of gear. This will include personal gear such as clothes, sleeping bags, tents and packs and group gear such as paddling safety equipment water filters, tarps and cooking equipment The fourth evening will be devoted to actually planning the trip: tenting, food and cooking, transportation, selection of boats and reserving and sign out any club gear required. The actual trip itself will be from the Stratton Lake boat launch to sites about 4 km away on Stratton Lake. Camp set-up, camp sanitation, cooking, knots and tarps, portaging, risk management and expedition behaviour will all be discussed. Time will be also spent on improving paddling skills as needed.