Bowron Lakes. 5-8 days. FW + Class I river. Portaging. Central BC.

Bowron Lakes Canoe Circuit

We made this trip in late August, 23-30. It is a 116km circuit to the west of Jasper National Park in British Columbia. The circuit is world-famous among canoers. The circuit is generally done in 5-8 days, and we took 8. It features mostly lake paddling with a few easy portages between lakes; however, it does have one river section on the Cariboo River. It has one class II rapid, but that can be portaged around (in fact you have to go out of your way to run the rapid). This is classified as a wilderness route, but I would put wilderness in quotes. Unless you go in late-fall or early-spring, you will see people every day. All the campsites are designated and are developed with fire rings, tent platforms and pit toilets. Some sites have cooking structures and on each big lake there is at least one public cabin for drying out and such.

In a nutshell: Very beautiful and classic canoe route. Don't expect solitude in high season (June-August).

Getting there:
It is a 10 hr drive from Seattle to Quesnel (south of Prince George). From Quesnel, it is another 2 hrs east to the Bowron Lakes Provencial Park.

Canoe rental:
There are a couple big lodges that do most of the rentals. They have good canoes and canoe carts (wheels). The two lodges are Becker Lodge and Bowron Lake Lodge. We rented with Bowron Lake Lodge. The canoes from this lodge were fine but their wheels were very heavy (like 25+ lbs) -- albeit indestructable. Next time, I'd try Becker Lodge which has lighter wheels and the same types of canoes. If you canoe much at all, I strongly suggest buying your own good paddle. Rental paddles are always heavy and not very nice. My light wooden bent-shaft paddle was highly coveted by all paddlers in my boat.

Reservations:
If your are a group of 6 or fewer, you can try the drop-in spots. Each day, there are 4 spots for drop-ins. These are lottery distributed, I think. Otherwise, you can get a reservation and if you are a group of 7+, you must have a reservation. Search for Bowron Lakes online and you'll quickly find the reservation info. It is very easy to do over the phone. You need to get reservations well in advance. I made reservations in March and there was only 1 group spot available in the 2-week window we had for doing the trip. Being a group had its pluses and minuses. The minus was that we were assigned a schedule (7 nights) and were required to stay at our designated group site each night. The pluses were that a) we had a big reserved site all to ourselves and didn't have to compete for sites, b) we were forced to slow down a bit and take 8 days instead of 6 that we might have otherwise, c) the groups sites were generally away from others and quite nicely situated.

Maps and books:
No need for detailed maps for this trip. You can use the one given to you when you make your reservations. There is a good guide book for the route: THE BOWRON LAKES A Guide to Paddling British Columbia's Wilderness Canoe Circuit  Link to website for guide book
Camps:
Get the guide book. It describes all the camps. Also in our photo album you'll see pictures of some of the camps.

What skill level is required:
Although most of the paddling is lakes, you need some decent paddling skills and a healthy dose of common sense. 1) Flipping in many of the lakes would be bad since they are cold (like the temp of the ocean here in WA). 2) You must paddle the Cariboo River. The river has a handful of class 1+ spots although it is mostly gentle. Although the river is not hard, it is wicked cold (MUCH colder than the ocean in WA) and there are snags all over and a few tight bends to negotiate. Flipping would be bad news -- however that said, the river is not wide and you would quickly make it to shore but sans gear and hypothermic. This route sees a lot of beginners and we saw 2 recent flips; 1 was from the night before and we helped collect their gear. There is a radio at the end of the river and a ranger boat that does rescues. We saw both boat and helicopter rescues during our week on the circuit.

Weather and bugs:
This route gets a lot of rain and wind. Every trip report I saw described paddling in the rain with wind. However, we really lucked out as we often had glassy water even in the afternoon. But normally the wind kicks up every day at around 2-3pm, so if you can manage to get an early start, you will avoid most of the choppy water. It rained about every day on our trip, but we rarely paddled in the rain and had plenty of blue sky. This area is known for bugs, but by late-August when we did the route, they were all gone and we rarely saw mosquitoes. If you come earlier in the summer, be prepared.

Portage:
There are lots of portages, but they are all maintained for canoe carts.

Bears:
BC Parks is rather paranoid about bears in this area, so I suspect that they do have some (black) bear problems. We saw no bears but other parties did see some. We saw tracks near one camp which was on a creek. All camps have bear bins.

Dogs:
Not allowed.

My thoughts:
Bowron Lakes is a "must-do" trip because of its stunning setting, variety, and circular loop.  However it is not a trip that I will repeat unless I'm taking friends from overseas (who I want to make sure have "wow" experience) or am going in the shoulder season (September).  For me, there were just too many people, too much regulation (needed due to too many people), and too many rangers.  Even when there was no one around, it was clear from the campsites that this area gets a lot of use.  The camps were in great shape, but just clearly lots of people go through them.  I prefer trips where we are more "out there", where the portages are rough, the camps rough, and no cabins or fire grates.  However, those precise features of the Bowron are what attract others and don't get me wrong, the trip is stunning, really stunning.

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