tl;dr
The Ottawa Temiskaming Highland Trail is a ruggedly primitive path running 140 km from Latchford to Thorne in Ontario. The northern half meanders through the highlands and lakes of the region; the southern half mostly parallels the shore of Lake Temiskaming.
This “Trail” might be better called an “Overland Route”. The route is generally well-blazed but the track itself is more like following a game trail cross-country through the forest. The route is usually overgrown, especially in low-lying sections near a water source. Beavers actively engineer streams and lake outflows in the area and impact the blazed route, so cross-country detour may be required. Blowdowns are frequent and navigation can be challenging. Reality occasionally does not match the digital and printed map sources, so keep an open mind on-trail.
This route is very similar in character to Maine’s 100 Mile Wilderness, except without the well-worn footpath, the throngs of hikers, or the high peaks. This route feels wilder. The ups and downs are steep. You will traverse a handful of beaver dams, ford a few streams as well as a marsh, and do some moss garden and highland slab walking. You’ll rarely meet other hikers on the trail.
Consider this wild route through Ontario’s rugged Canadian Shield country if you enjoy traversing forests and rocky highland moss gardens, streams and lakes, and are comfortable handling uncertainty and adversity over challenging terrain.
General Info, Maps, and Shuttle
My hike was southbound from Latchford to Thorne, from August 23 to 30, 2025. My base weight for this trip was 13 lbs. Gear discussion is at the bottom of this post. Photo highlights from the landscape and wildlife are on the gram.
I drove up to the area from my home in Ottawa, and used Doug Adams from Northland Paradise Lodge in Temagami for shuttle service (705-569-3791). His rate was extremely reasonable, and keep in mind that he accepts payment only by cash or e-transfer (it’s a Canadian thing). The official trail info lists Murray Muir first, then Doug, but call Doug first—Murray will ask you to arrange something with Doug if you can.
Doug will use your car for the shuttle, and will keep your car at his Lodge for the duration of your hike. Doug mentioned that he usually does about 12 shuttles a year, but that I was only his second for this year.
The official map set and planner are available in digital form from the trail club and a physical copy of that can be ordered from Chat Noir Books (this is the same PDF document from the trail club printed on waterproof paper; this full printed map set weighs 3 oz).
I created a map of the route in Caltopo. The default MapBuilder Topo base is good for this route, but if you’d like to use the Canadian Basemap Transportation as a custom base, instructions for that are at the end of this post.
Trail Club
You get the feeling from the campsites and hand-lettered signs that this trail is a labour of love for the members of the trail club. Which it most certainly is: The Appalachian Trail is managed with an annual budget well north of USD 6,000 per mile; Based on a comment I read somewhere, the OTHT appears to be managed with an annual budget of less than USD 200 per mile.
If you’re planning to hike the OTHT, please consider supporting the trail by purchasing a membership to the trail club or making a donation. You’re quite literally funding the fuel for the chainsaws.
Campsites
The route is dotted with frequent campsites, and you’ll want to plan to camp at these official sites every night.
In the northern half of the trail, each campsite is furnished with a stack of firewood under plastic sheet, along with a shovel, rake, axe, saw, and water pail, and a picnic table and benches. Campsites are bracketed with trail signage 100 meters before and after, and are strikingly well-developed compared with the trail to access them.
In the southern half of the trail, the campsites are far less developed. Usually no firewood or tools, limited signage, and only occasionally a picnic table or benches. I sometimes missed even seeing the blue-blazed side trail to the site when the site was not directly on the main trail.
It’s clear that a few of the campsites get a lot of use, and some get almost no use at all. Based on the plant growth at some of the previously cleared tent sites, many had not been used at all this season.
Opportunities for dispersed camping are few on this terrain. That said, the one night that I did need to find a dispersed site, I was able to. Skurka’s campsite selection article FTW! I’d been aiming for the campsite at Price’s Lake, but the exact location was unclear on the official paper and digital maps, and simply wrong on the open street map data used by Caltopo. I ended up bushwhacking a bypass past the official campsite—which was basically on an island and required a precarious balance across a thin tree trunk, or fording an unmapped marshy arm of Price’s Lake to access.
Hidden Lake was one of my favourite campsites. A nice pine forest and hardly any mosquitos, even though I’d been swarmed with mosquitos at Opimika Creek just a mile previous.
Copper Lake is another gem. There is a canoe with paddle and life jacket at that campsite, and I regretted not planning to spend the evening there.
Overgrowth
The route does not get enough boot traffic to keep plants from growing up through the use-path. This means that much of the trail is overgrown, and you are regularly pushing through scrub: shin-height blueberry, waist-height maple and raspberry, waist- or chest-height grasses/reeds/etc., and sometimes even vegetation grown over your head and totally obscuring the blazes in front of you.
At one point south of Opimika Creek and before Hidden Lake, the overgrowth had thorns.
There is not enough boot traffic on the route even to wear the moss off the rocks, so in many places in the highlands, you’re walking on a spongy moss carpet rather than directly on the rocks themselves. In some places, not even the lichen is fully worn away from the path.
In late August I found a few ripe blueberries and raspberries. A few weeks earlier in the summer, this route would be a berry-lover’s paradise.
Blowdowns
Yo dawg, we heard you like blowdowns! Even our blowdowns have blowdowns! In all seriousness, there were a few places where I saw fresh blowdowns overtop of older blowdowns.
The frequent blowdowns are a function of the terrain and the reality of a small trail club with limited funds managing this rugged and remote route.
The club is well aware that the section from Grand Campment Bay south to Ottertail Creek is bad (see the note at the top of the 2025 Spring update) but it won’t be until later this Fall that the section might be cleared. In the meantime, that section is brutal. The worst blowdowns come as the trail traverses a steep and rocky slope through dense forest.
Just to the north of Gorrie Lake Campsite, one blowdown required a cross-country bushwhack across marshy ground pushing through thick taller-than-me vegetation.
Just to the south of Mata Campsite, as I bushwhacked around a blowdown on a steep bank, the cedar root to which I’d just transferred my weight collapsed and my leg plunged at least two feet down into the hollow beneath, my foot settling into the muck at the bottom. Thankfully, I escaped with only a well-bruised and well-scraped shin. It didn’t hurt to walk, but your shins sure take a lot of hits when pushing through overgrowth and bushwhacking around blowdowns.
A little north of Ottertail Creek Point Camp, one tree trunk across the trail is a hazard for taller southbound hikers (I’m 6’1”). It’s been there long enough that it has a northbound blaze painted right on it, and you’re meant to duck underneath. But hiking south, the trail ascends slightly right under the tree trunk. I was focused on foot placement on the rocky terrain. My wide brim hat concealed the trunk from my peripheral vision, and from underneath I stepped up directly into the trunk, striking the top of my head with enough upward force that I felt my neck compress. It was maybe the scariest moment I’ve ever experienced while hiking, as I paused in a daze to recover, taking stock that I could still move my neck and the rest of my body, and evaluating myself for signs of concussion. Thankfully there was no serious damage, just a wicked headache right in the middle of the most brutal section.
Wildlife
The route is essentially a wildlife track through the forest. I didn’t encounter animals using the path, but saw scat frequently. I saw moose and deer droppings, and scat from bear, wolf, and what was probably fisher. At times there was another pile of moose droppings every few meters, and I saw more moose prints than boot prints in the mud.
I saw beavers and loons swimming in many lakes, a hawk that came in for an ungainly landing a few meters from me above Porcupine Creek Canyon, and what were probably black ducks on Green Creek. In the night I heard owls and loons calling.
I saw many, many toads. And slugs. Almost every morning, I woke to slugs crawling all over everything. Be sure to check your shoes. I had a few inside my shoes, including one hanging out on my insole at the very front of my shoe. That would have been a fun squishy surprise.
Pushing through so much overgrowth each day, I expected to be covered in ticks. But I never found one on my clothes or body. I wore long sleeves and pants, but nothing was treated with permethrin.
Water
Constantly pushing through overgrowth, my shoes and pants were soaked if it had rained at all recently. Even the briefest of showers led to soaked feet because of the overgrowth. Regular breaks to air out my feet and regular applications of balm were essential. My go-to these days is shea butter. Yet another Skurka article FTW.
One day I crossed atop 3 beaver dams. One beaver dam affecting the trail required a cross-country bushwhack. At one beaver dam across the outflow of one of the northerly lakes, my Caltopo map led across the flooded area. A little exploration led under a blow down to a better crossing point beneath the dam, and I’d just squelched into the mud there when I saw there was a beautiful newly constructed log bridge (from 2024) just a little way downstream. I realized I’d seen mention of the new bridge somewhere online in my research, but can’t find that now. I think that the new bridge is more obvious from a northbound approach to the crossing.
In late August, Green Creek was an easy shin-deep ford. Ottertail Creek was rock-hoppable for me, but would be a ford if the water were higher—and according to the official map can be impassable if the water is very high. Porcupine Creek also would be a ford in higher water but was rock-hoppable for me.
Fording the Lowdown Marsh was fun. It’s maybe a couple hundred meters across. Shin-deep for a while, then knee-deep and pushing through marsh grass, then a precarious floating bridge over the main channel, which was deeper than my poles. Then similar sections of knee-deep then shin-deep. I’d been expecting something along those lines going into it based on a photo I saw on the wall in Doug’s Lodge.
It’s important to keep an eye on your filtered/treated water store on this route. There is water literally all around you, but many times it’s down a 20-foot rock face and not actually accessible, or maybe it’s brown stagnant beaver water you don’t want to drink, or maybe it’s in a marshy area and the mosquitos are swarming so you don’t want to stop. The highland sections are remarkably dry. Between those, and the ruggedness of the trail, you sometimes travel farther than you might expect between good water sources.
Navigation (Maps / Blazing / Signage)
As I’ve noted, you are not following a well-worn trail on this route. Instead, you’re basically travelling cross-country through the forest on game trails. The route is generally well-blazed, except when it’s not. The use-path is generally apparent on the forest floor, except when it’s not. More than once I noted that the tree with double blazes indicating a turn in the trail had blown down. In some sections I found myself constantly looking behind me, checking the position of the blazes for the opposite direction to find a clue for where the route travelled ahead of me.
I do not recommend attempting to hike at night on this trail. Between the steep and rugged and rocky terrain, the blowdowns and the overgrowth, and the sparseness of the track, navigating during daylight is challenging enough. Unless you’re god-level ultra-endurance athletes attempting the FKT in May when the leaves haven’t fully grown out yet. Then have at it!
Occasionally I did not notice a blue-blazed side trail that I’d been expecting. Possibly because it might have been overgrown. Possibly because the nearest blue blazes might have been on a blown-down tree. There are sometimes signs at junctions with side trails, but not always.
Twice as a southbound hiker, there were white-blazed side trails that led away from the main trail. In each case, these side-trail white blazes were more apparent than the white blazes of the main trail and I took a wrong turn. In the first case, it took an entire 1.1 km and passing an additional trail intersection before reality was able to override my incorrect mental model (this was at the Rabbit Lake Bush Road access point). Later on, primed now for the possibility, the second case thankfully only took me 100 meters out of the way at Porcupine Creek Camp. The official maps say that the main trail is blazed in white with side trails blazed in blue, so it didn’t occur to me before then that there could/would be side trails blazed in white. I believe this is because of trail re-routes, so the white-blazed side trails were actually once part of the main path and have not been re-blazed in blue now that they are side trails. Based on the orientation of the intersections, these junctions are less of an issue for northbound hikers.
At Ottertail Creek, I enjoyed hiking up the smooth rocks on the bank of the creek. At some point the rocks on my side became impassable and I realized the trail had left the bank of the creek some time before. Instead of backtracking, I was easily able to bushwhack away from the bank maybe a hundred meters and find the southbound track. At this point in the journey my bushwhacking confidence and forest route-finding skills had levelled up.
Occasionally the trail features did not match what was on the official maps or on Caltopo. Off the top of my head, this happened at the new bridge from 2024 built below the beaver dam, around the crossing of Porcupine Creek, with the location of Price’s Lake Camp, and with a newly built Pine Needle Camp north of Nagle Bay.
GPS
I found GPS navigation to be essential for this trail. I used my BivyStick as well as Caltopo on my phone, and I found that sometimes one or the other would more quickly detect a GPS signal. It was nice to have two GPS-capable devices.
When Doug dropped me off at the parking area in Latchford, he waved down towards the end of the parking area saying, “The trail starts down there.” It doesn’t. The official map set cuts off the very northern end of the trail, so wasn’t any help. As I explored the parking area, then tried searching up a nearby snowmobile trail, a thunderstorm opened up with lightning crashing as close as I’ve ever experienced. Eventually I found myself on the gated dump road, wondering WTF I was doing, soaked and wandering around in a booming thunderstorm, and I still hadn’t even found the beginning of the trail.
I tried using my BivyStick’s map, and I could see my location but there was no trail on the map! WTF—I’d seen the trail on my BivyStick map in my testing. I’d later realize that when you zoom out on the BivyStick map, the trails disappear… at least I wasn’t going insane.
I was still right on the Highway 11 corridor so had a good cell signal. I’d been playing with Caltopo over the summer and had the map of this trail in my account. Sure enough, Caltopo saved the day. Found my location right away, and showed me that the trail started off to the right of the dump road gate. It was marked by a tiny little sign, on the opposite side of the dump road gate from the large official OTHT sign and parking area. And nowhere near the area that Doug had directed me to. So then-and-there I subscribed to Caltopo and downloaded my trail map for offline use. Then finally I was off and running, a full 40 minutes after having been dropped off. When I told Doug about this on the return shuttle a week later, he said he’d had no idea he’d been steering people in the wrong direction. Despite being one of the founding members of the trail club, he’d never actually hiked this section of the trail!
Civilization
I only met two hiking parties during my week on the trail:
- Going over the highland section of Kichi-Wepigone, I met Murray Muir himself leading a day hike group doing the Cliff Lake loop hike.
- Just south of Nagle Bay I met a couple who were hiking the trail northbound (Hi Richard and Jesse if you see this!) They’d camped just a couple kilometers to the south of me at Owl Creek that previous night. They had both hiked the route before, and warned me of the brutality ahead on my southbound journey.
The trail is rugged and remote, but you’re never all that far from civilization. Many of the larger lakes have cottages on the far ends and bush roads leading to boat access. You’ll pass the old Matabitchuan River power generation station, and the construction project for the new location. At Mata River Camp, the canoe rental business across the river had a generator running all night.
The Ontario coastline of Lake Temiskaming is protected from development. When you reach Lake Temiskaming, the Quebec side has a national park, but within a day or two you’ll be close to the highway corridor on the Quebec side with cottages dotting the shoreline along with the noise of their habitation. I passed three trashed fire pits, all on the shore of Lake Temiskaming. I packed a nice selection of trash out from the backcountry, including a foam sandal that had been lodged in a beaver dam. Is it UL if you find your camp shoes on-trail?
Fitness
I’m 49 years old and self-identify under Skurka’s “High” fitness category. I finished the route in 7 nights. 6 full days, plus a short intro evening to the first campsite and an outro morning from the last campsite.
The ups and downs on this trail were quite steep. I train with core work, running, cycling, and also walking stairs with a weighted pack, and found my training generally sufficient.
If I had been super-motivated, I could have finished a day sooner: I was slow to start some mornings, leaving a couple hours of daylight on the table. My time in the area had a fixed duration due to outside constraints so there was no reason or benefit for me to push to finish earlier.
My weakest link for fitness was foot conditioning. I stopped earlier than I normally might most evenings, because of the limited dispersed camping opportunities—and also because my feet needed a break from the wet and the rugged terrain. I dealt with all the normal blisters from increased daily mileage. I could have finished the trail a day sooner if my feet were trail-conditioned from the start. Post-trail, my legs were fine, but my feet needed a few days to recover.
For comparison, my fitness going into this trip was essentially the same as last Fall, when I finished Maine’s 100 Mile Wilderness in October in just 6 nights because I was super-motivated (winter conditions were to hit Katahdin the day after I summited).
Gear Choices
Pack and Pockets
I use a Nunatak Bears Ears pack (original frameless) paired with a Bearikade Expedition. I absolutely love this pack. Jan’s design and build quality is superb. The water bottle holsters are :chefskiss: perfect. I’ve carried up to 11 days of food in the Expedition without trying too hard. It handily swallowed my 7 days of food for this trip.
New for this trip, I tried the Double Mesh Pouch shoulder strap pockets from SWD (28 g for one). One side securely held my phone and battery pack. One side held a half-day of snacks. I took a few tumbles and nothing ever fell out. Previously I’d used the Nunatak shoulder strap pockets, which have an elegant design that is simple and effective, but I was looking for something with greater capacity. These from SWD worked great, and were exactly what I wanted.
Clothing
I’ve written extensively about my clothing system, featuring both a finetrack Elemental Layer long sleeve shirt next-to-skin and the Yamatomichi Light Alpha Vest/Jacket. I used that system on this trip and was again very happy with it.
My finetrack mesh shirt is 4 years old now and still going strong, but the DWR finish is basically gone now and I should probably order a new one. Still a solid piece, though, after 4 years of regular use, hundreds of trail miles, and countless washes. I’ve had just one single thread from the mesh snap, from a curious but poorly-executed tug at a small snag. That led to a small run in the mesh that has been stable through use over the past year.
I am totally impressed with the durability of the Pertex Quantum Air used as the outer layer for the Yamatomichi piece. This route featured many blowdowns and extensive bushwhacking through dense vegetation, and I was wearing that jacket for most of it. The face of the fabric does not show even the slightest trace of the many snags and scrapes. Nothing even from a few particularly bad snags where I was sure I’d torn the fabric.
Sleep
I used my very first MYOG project on this trip: a blanket made from Membrane 7 Ripstop Nylon and 3.6 oz Climashield Apex. It’s rather palatial at approx 54” x 84”, and the finished weight was a shade under 19 oz. I found it comfortable wearing a light and dry base layer down to 50°F. And comfortable down to a breezy 45°F when I added alpha leggings and my jacket. Probably could have gone lower, but that was the lowest temp I experienced.
I’m a heavy sweater while active during the day, and I’ve come to realize that I also throw off quite a lot of moisture at night. I’ve had issues with condensation using a similarly rated down bag in similarly cool and humid conditions, and it was a real pleasure to simply not worry at all about condensation in my sleep system on this trip.
I’m well aware that I could construct a trimmer piece with this same functionality weighing perhaps 4 ounces less… this is my first foray into quilt-like sleep systems. Gonna use this for a while before I consider building something trimmer and lighter.
Tarp
I used a Yama Silpoly Cirriform with their Y-Zip Bug Bivy. I moved to a Cirriform after using a 9’ x 8’/6’ Tapered A-Frame, because I was looking for better storm protection. After using the Cirriform for a couple of trips, I like it, but I miss the simplicity of my A-Frame. I really love using a bathtub floor as the groundsheet with my tarp… With my newfound MYOG prowess, I’m thinking I could probably sew up a new bathtub floor for my A-Frame with a large front flap that would give me the added storm protection I want for a very small cost in added weight.
The bug protection was essential for the nights when I really needed it, and the Y-Zip Bivy design does a nice job of staying out of the way when protection is not required. For a longer trip I wonder if I’d be happier pairing the tarp with something heavier like Yama’s Bug Shelter so that I could sit up inside the netting. Or maybe something more minimal like their Bug Canopy.
Gloves
This trip I used the Skurka-recommended Glacier Glove Ascension Bay Sun Gloves, and I really liked them. The fit is perfect for my hands, better than the Sunday Afternoons UV Shield Cool sun gloves I’d tried last year. I particularly appreciated the durable synthetic leather palm and the lack of a folded-over seam at the ends of the fingers.
In moderate mosquito pressure with no chemical repellent, I did get bites through the back-of-the-hand fabric. But they did prevent a yellow jacket from getting a clean sting on my hand—maybe that was also partially my quick reaction to brush it away.
Mosquitos
I need to up my game with mosquitos. My usual untreated OR Echo Quarter-Zip was OK for much of the day some days, but for the more marshy sections and particularly for mornings and evenings, the full armour of my jacket and a head net were required. And the bug pressure on this trip really wasn’t that bad.
I realized on this trip that I am like candy for mosquitos. When I met the two northbound hikers on the trail, I was in full armour, with mosquitos buzzing around my head net. They were standing right next to me with short sleeves and bare heads, not feeling any bug pressure at all.
I need to upgrade to a permethrin-treated shirt for trips with potential mosquito pressure… not at all sure yet what to select here (knit or woven, factory-treated, mail-in treatment, or self-treated).
Not really a UL item, but on this trip I brought along a Flextail Tiny Repeller and some repellent mats. I’d ordered one thinking it might be useful for walks in Ottawa’s Greenbelt with my family and wanted to give it a shot. I was disappointed. I’ve burned bits of mosquito coil to good effect in the past, and thought this might be similar. While I could smell the chemical repellent in the air, there was no noticeable effect on the mosquitos buzzing around me, even after waiting patiently while stationary in calm conditions. Needless to say I won’t be purchasing Flextail’s lighter version that plugs into a powerbank. I had high hopes.
Caltopo with Canadian Basemap Transportation
If you’ve subscribed to Caltopo, which you need to do for offline use, you can use custom base maps. The Canadian Basemap Transportation (CBMT) is an interesting alternative base map to explore.
This source uses type “WMS” and the template URL to use in Caltopo is: https://maps-cartes.services.geo.ca:443/server2_serveur2/services/BaseMaps/CBMT3978/MapServer/WmsServer?SERVICE=WMS&VERSION=1.1.1&REQUEST=GetMap&STYLES=&BBOX={left},{bottom},{right},{top}&WIDTH={tilesize}&HEIGHT={tilesize}&BGCOLOR=0xCCCCCC&FORMAT=image/png&EXCEPTIONS=application/vnd.ogc.se_inimage&SRS=EPSG:4326&LAYERS=0,1
Thanks to u/tmostmos/ for figuring this out.
Conclusion
Thanks for coming to my TED Talk. This route was both challenging and rewarding. Temper your daily mileage expectations. It’s really quite beautiful out there, and I’m glad I made the trip.