The reserve, in context

Réserve faunique La Vérendrye covers 12,589 km² of contiguous land and lake across the Outaouais and Abitibi-Témiscamingue regions, about 180 km north of Ottawa. It is the largest contiguous wildlife reserve in Québec (the Assinica Reserve has a larger total area, but its territory is split into four non-contiguous pieces). Route 117 traverses the reserve from south to north. The small community of Le Domaine on Route 117 is where most SEPAQ services concentrate: permits, fuel, food.

The territory holds more than 4,000 lakes and rivers, two large reservoirs (Cabonga and Dozois), and 800 km of interconnecting canoe routes. This is Algonquin territory, and it is lived in, not just visited: two First Nation communities, Kitcisakik on Great Victoria Lake and Lac-Rapide (Rapid Lake) on Cabonga Reservoir, still make their home inside the boundaries and have for far longer than any of the names now printed on the map.

It is a réserve faunique first, and it shows. The territory carries one of the densest moose populations in Québec, along with black bear, grey wolf, beaver, otter, and loon. We shared the water with all of it, mostly at a distance: a moose and her calf working a far shore one morning, beaver lodges and fresh-cut poplar at the edge of the marshes, and loons calling across the lakes after dark.

The bedrock is Canadian Shield. The dominant trees are black and white spruce, jack pine, eastern white and red pine, and white birch. The reserve was established as a hunting and fishing reserve in 1939, the year the road from Mont-Laurier to Abitibi (now Route 117) was expected to open the territory to thousands of hunters and fishermen. It was renamed in 1950 for Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, sieur de La Vérendrye, the 18th-century French-Canadian explorer, on the bicentennial of his death. It gained the formal status of wildlife reserve in 1979.

Paddling Magazine calls it "a blissfully quiet alternative to Algonquin". That's the half of the appeal that the SEPAQ brochure undersells.

Choosing the route

SEPAQ's canoe-camping programme lists nearly 20 mapped circuits in La Vérendrye, ranging from gentle 3-day loops to 14-day expedition routes with serious portages. Their own description is unsparing: "most of the circuits are designed for an independent and experienced clientele." We wanted something between those poles. Long enough to feel remote, short enough to be safe with a two-person crew, forgiving enough that one bad-weather day wouldn't blow the trip.

After weighing four candidate loops we settled on SEPAQ's Petite boucle Chochocouane n° 61, a 69 km counter-clockwise circuit in the Chochocouane sector. The loop follows the eastern bank of the Rivière Chochocouane, which is SEPAQ route n° 60 and, per Paddling Magazine, "the premier whitewater river" in La Vérendrye with class I–III rapids. We don't have the whitewater experience for the river itself. The lake chain east of it gives us the same drainage on water we know how to read.

We picked the route against a fixed list of criteria. The Petite boucle Chochocouane n° 61 was the only circuit that hit all five:

• A loop. Put-in and take-out at the same parking lot near Lac Rousine. No shuttle to arrange, no second vehicle.
• Four nights. Five paddling days, 69 km, ~14 km/day. Long enough to feel remote, short enough that a bad-weather day doesn't blow the trip.
• No portage much longer than 500 m. 21 carries total, only two over 400 m. The 575 m on Rivière Denain is the one we'll truly remember, but it's not in another league.
• Remote. Once we're past Lac Rousine we don't expect to see another group all week. No cell coverage, no roads, no cabins.
• Reachable from Montreal. ~6 hours door-to-door via Highway 117. Put-in by mid-afternoon if we leave at first light, with margin for the SEPAQ permit office at Le Domaine on the way in.

Why July

The paddling season here runs mid-May through late September. The trade-offs by window:

• May–June. Spring wildflowers, peak wildlife (moose with calves, beavers building, the occasional black bear on the shoreline), and genuine solitude on the water. The cost is bugs (black flies in May, mosquitoes into June) and water still cold enough to make a capsize serious.
• July–August. Warm water for swimming, blueberries on every granite outcrop, the black flies finally gone. Wind on the bigger lakes builds harder.
• September. Crisp nights, fewer bugs, hardwoods starting to turn. Risk of cold rain that doesn't quit.

We went the second week of July and took out on July 11, with roughly 15.5 hours of usable light. That built margin into every paddling day. The water was warm enough to swim, and the wildlife was still out: one morning we watched a moose and her calf work the far shore. What we did not fully plan for was the weather. It swung from hot, still afternoons to cold, grey days within a few hours, and the wind on the open lakes was the real variable.

Bugs were the known cost. We carried head nets, permethrin-treated shirts, and a large free-standing mosquito shelter for the kitchen and camp. Water temperature was the second: the north lakes still ran cool, so PFDs went on before the canoe touched the water and stayed on. The rest was route discipline: hug the shore on the bigger water, no crossings if the wind was up, a dry change of clothes within reach.

Training

A trip like this is less about peak fitness and more about durability. We built a base over the previous 18 months. Nothing fancy:

• Running. Maintenance miles, two or three times a week.
• Pool dancing for Violette: strength and shoulder mobility, year-round.
• A lot of trekking. Weekend hikes with packs, mostly local to Princeton: Sourland Mountain Preserve, the D&R Canal towpath, Baldpate Mountain.
• A lot of canoeing. Local water week in week out: Lake Carnegie, the Delaware out of Lambertville, the D&R Canal. Bigger trips when we can: the Raquette River in the Adirondacks, the Delaware from Hancock to Damascus, the Hudson. Loaded heavier and pushed longer over the spring.

Permits & logistics

• Canoe-camping permit via SEPAQ for the Petite boucle Chochocouane n° 61 (Jul 7–11, 2026). Booked by phone with SEPAQ and paid in advance: the permit reserves the route, not specific sites. Campsites along the circuit are first-come, first-serve. The booking gives us put-in date, take-out date, and the right to be on the loop those nights.
• Canoe. Our own Mad River Explorer 17 in Royalex (~36 kg). Jim Henry design, shallow-V hull, rated for 500 kg of load. Heavy for portaging, but it bounces off rocks instead of cracking. Food barrel rented from the outfitter at Lac Rousine.
• Vehicle parking at the Départ/Arrivée lot on the SEPAQ tertiary road off Highway 117 (covered in the permit).
• Trip plan filed with a designated contact at home. One copy in the canoe, one at the trailhead, one with the contact.
• Garmin inReach subscription bumped to the Recreation plan for the trip (more tracking points, unlimited preset messages, and Garmin MapShare).

Food planning

Target: 3 200 kcal/person/day. The menu is mostly dried, freeze-dried, and dehydrated: Mountain House freeze-dried pouches for breakfast and dinner, plus home-dehydrated sides and dried trail snacks. Everything is shelf-stable, packs flat, and only needs hot water from the single-burner propane stove.

A typical day

• Breakfast. Mountain House breakfast skillet or granola pouch, plus instant coffee. ~700 kcal.
• Trail food. Bars, jerky, dried mango, GORP. Eaten in the canoe, no cooking. ~1 000 kcal.
• Dinner. Mountain House Pro-Pak entrée (beef stroganoff, chicken & rice, lasagna), with olive oil pushing the calorie count to ~1 200, plus a hot drink.
• Treat. Chocolate, or a single shot of whisky decanted into a Nalgene (weight matters).

Total food weight: ~5 kg for two people across five days, with one extra day's worth as safety margin. All of it lives in the bear-hung blue waterproof barrel.

Safety plan

Three layers, in order: avoid the situation, handle the situation, signal for help.

• Avoid. Wind plan (off the big water by 11:00), no paddling in fog, no crossings if it's gusting, PFDs on before the canoe touches the water and stay on. Walk the R3 rapids instead of running them loaded.
• Handle. One paddler WFR-trained. First-aid kit packed for cuts, infection, and a sprained ankle on a portage. Full repair kit for canoe, paddle, and tent. Capsize drills practised. Route memorised to the nearest two bail-out points.
• Signal. Garmin inReach Mini 3 with preset SOS, plus a custom "all good" check-in each evening at 19:00 EST. If a check-in is missed by 21:00 and not received by 09:00 the next day, our home contact escalates to SEPAQ dispatch.

What we're nervous about

In rough order. None of these are deal-breakers, but they're the ones we keep coming back to.

• Wind. Lac Bastude and Lac Laspron are the widest open water on the loop, and July afternoons can build 20–30 km/h sustained without much warning. We'll be off the big water by 11:00, even if it means a 5:30 wake-up.
• Mosquitoes. Black flies fade by July, but the mosquitoes were still thick. Head nets and permethrin-treated shirts handled the worst of it, the mosquito shelter at camp handled the rest, and some hours were simply a siege.
• Twisted ankle on a portage. The 575 m on day 3 is the longest of the trip, between two stretches of R3 rapids we'll be walking rather than running loaded. Wet roots, glacial erratics, fatigue. Two trips for gear, one for the canoe, and we don't push past the portage on the same day if anyone's gassed.
• A bad cut, and then infection. A laceration on day 1 looks very different on day 4. The first-aid kit is packed for it (irrigation, closure strips, broad-spectrum antibiotic ointment), and we don't push on with a wound that's red, hot, or weeping.
• Tipping the canoe and losing gear. Every dry bag tethered to a thwart. Anything irreplaceable (Garmin, phones, keys) lives on a body. Painter lines bow and stern. The barrel floats.
• Losing the canoe. Two short painters tied off at every landing, full painter clipped at camp. Two paddles wet, one stowed: never all three paddles in the canoe unattended.
• Swimming a rapid. Stan has done it once before. It is not an experience either of us wants to repeat. The R3 sections are walked, the loaded canoe lined or carried. No exceptions, no "we'll see how it looks".

Black bears are on the list, but low on it. A proper bear hang every night, the food barrel and anything smelly (toothpaste, sunscreen, wrappers) inside it, kitchen 50 m from the tent. Bear spray on a chest holster on the water and within arm's reach at camp. We'll be careful, not afraid.

Getting the kit ready

Three weeks out. The floor of the living room is covered in gear, and the mosquito net is hanging from the ceiling to check the tension points. Everything is going into the barrel one more time before the drive north.

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