Review: Canoe-in Sites, Grundy Lake, Grundy Lake Provincial Park

Backcountry Site Map of Grundy Lake
 (From Park Tabloid, 2005)

Location:  80 km N of Parry Sound
Website: Ontario Parks
Map: Google Maps
Camping Facilities: Car Camping with some pseudo backcountry
Grade: B-
Stargazing: Good, in fact we saw the Northern Lights each time visit.
Summary: Some very easy-to-access backcountry but some sites close to beaches & railroad, eliminating any sense of wilderness
Thoughts: A last-minute interior camping trip from Toronto in August can be a challenging thing to arrange. Joeperry? Full. Frontenac? Full. Killarney? Full. Canisbay? Full. However, there's always Grundy lake; the paddle-in sites are non-reservable (first come, first served basis), and there are often plenty of sites available (twice I've found sites in the middle of the peak season, even on a Labour Day weekend).

Site 119 on Grundy Lake

Like I said in my review for Gurd Lake, Grundy's sites have it all:  short paddles, easy access, some isolation, nice sites, and its reasonably quiet. I would say that Gurd offers a bit more privacy than Grundy, as we found that Grundy is shared with both "backcountry" campers and car campers. But the fishing must be great on Grundy, because there were so many people out exploring the lake by canoe and kayak. Not that it's all that bothersome, since they aren't motorboats. But yea, expect lots of traffic. After nightfall though, it's a different story. On site 119, I would say that you can easily convince yourself you're in Algonquin or some other less densely populated park. As long as you're as far away from the car camping sites as possible, you'll get some peace and quiet.

Peaceful night on Grundy Lake

I can honestly say that you're not going to do much better than Grundy if you want to get a pseudo backcountry site on a weekend where you haven't done any planning. It's a shorter drive from Toronto than most Algonquin access points, and you never need to make a reservation (you can't make a reservation!). So if you find yourself in need of a campsite with some sense of being in the woods, Grundy is a great option. And the park itself has an interpretive centre for the kids, and both Gut and Grundy Lakes attract rock jumpers to their steep, rocky shores. When I visited in August of 2015, there were some issues with bears (we saw a juevenille running through the car camping area, my first bear sighting in a provincial park after 15 years of camping), so be diligent with keeping your site odour free.

All things considered, it's your last, best option for a spontaneous camping weekend in peak season. And it's a pretty good one, all things considered.

Update: the sites are now reservable, so the spontaneity has been cut out of this option. You're probably going to have to book in advance.

Review: Grundy Lake Car Camping

Location:  80 km N of Parry Sound

Website: Ontario Parks
Map: Google Maps
Camping Facilities: Car Camping with some pseudo backcountry
Grade: B+
Stargazing: Good, saw the Northern Lights both times I've visited.
Summary: Nice car camping with plenty of privacy and large sites
Thoughts: I was taking my chances when I pulled into Grundy Lake at 8pm on a mid-August evening. I didn't have a booking and I had planned to pull into one of the paddle-in sites on one of the three park lakes. It being as late as it was, my camping buddies and myself decided to take it easy and just grab whatever was available in the car camping areas. When you show up that late on a weekend in August with nothing booked, your expectations are low. Fortunately, Grundy PP doesn't do a lot of things wrong.

Huge car campsite in Radio-Free Area

The sites that we found were excellent. Not only were there sites in the radio-free area, those that were available were well-treed, sandy and private. We were stunned at the size of our site and that it was right next to the water. Lots of nice flat spots to set up a tent, amenities (water, toilets) were close by. And this was with zero planning.

View out on Grundy Lake from Radio-Free Area

The one problem the park seemed to be having at that time was a few rogue bears that were pillaging campsites. While there had been no dangerous encounters reported, the bears were having their way with any food that was improperly or semi-properly stored. It really just reinforces the need to ALWAYS lock your food away when you're done with it and keep your site free of food scraps and odors (including from toothpaste and deodorant).

We headed out on Grundy Lake to our canoe-in site the next day, but were pleased with the experience of "settling" for car camping. Great spot.

Review: Canoe-In sites, Gurd Lake, Grundy Lake Provincial Park

Location:  80 km N of Parry Sound
Website: Ontario Parks
Map: Google Maps
Camping Facilities: Car Camping with some pseudo backcountry
Grade: B-
Stargazing: Good, in fact we saw the Northern Lights from our site, but that was likely a freak occurrence.
Summary: Some very easy-to-access backcountry but some sites close to beaches & railroad, eliminating any sense of wilderness

Backcountry Site Map of Grundy Lake
 (From Park Tabloid, 2005)

Thoughts: My visit to Grundy Lake was an accident.  We'd booked a stay in the Massassauga Provincial Park a little south of here, but the winds were obscene.  Our group were not big on getting swamped and spending the remainder of our weekend drying off, so we hit the map books and found that Grundy Lake wasn't too far away.  We gave them a call, cause the paddle-in sites were non-reservable (first come, first served basis), and found out that there were still plenty of sites available (on labour day weekend, no less).

For pseudo-backcountry, Grundy's sites have it all:  short paddles, easy access, some isolation, nice sites, and its reasonably quiet.  We actually saw the northern lights on our first night.  Our group will exploit luxury when we can get it, so when we figured out that a vending machine and newspaper box were just a 500m paddle away, we took full advantage.  There's something about a cold Coke and a newspaper on a hot afternoon when you're sitting next to a lake listening to the wind in the pines.

I would imagine that if you're staying on Pakeshkag Lake, the level of seclusion would be on par with some of the larger backcountry parks in Ontario.  However, looking at the map above, you'll notice that the more secluded sites are generally closer to train tracks, which leads my discussion to the major issue with this park: the trains.  While they aren't that frequent, they're usually the long freight trains. So, in the wee hours of the morning, you'll hear them chugging along, often blowing their horns, and rumbling down the tracks for a few minutes at a time. I would be surprised if you don't wake up at least once during the night.  We stayed on Gurd lake, whose sites aren't even some of the closest to the tracks, and the sound of the trains brought to mind the realization that you aren't really in the backcountry, you're just faking it.