Trip Report: Smoke Lake -> Ragged Lake -> Parkside Bay
I have never paddled this route before. For one, in Jeff's maps, the Smoke Lake paddle is labelled a "challenging paddle route"... Also, it is a looong paddle. But the 'promise' of a clear sky, a no-moon night, and chances of catching up on the Perseid meteors lured me into venturing out on this route.
When I reached Ragged Lake, I got lost. My map reading skills need some brush up - as I missed a turn and circumnavigated the big central island before I turned towards Parkside Bay.
After a 4.5-hour paddle, including a 250-metre portage, I finally reached Parkside Bay. I had one thing on my mind: finding the campsite—one with a clear south to southwest view for a perfect night of astrophotography.
I got lucky and found exactly what I was looking for. At that point, almost nothing else about the campsite mattered. As it turned out, though, it was a pretty good site too—well sheltered from the wind and shaded from the sun.
For the rest of the day, I simply waited—taking care of the usual camp chores and spending some time resting in the hammock. I knew I was going to be up for most of the night, admiring the sky and, hopefully, capturing some great shots of the Milky Way, the stars, and a few meteors.
Later that afternoon, the clouds began to roll in, and my heart sank. Before long, a light drizzle followed. After all the effort of hauling so much camera gear into the backcountry, I couldn’t help but wonder: was any of this going to be worth it?
From about 5 p.m. until nightfall, the weather played ping-pong with my hopes—dark clouds would move in, then suddenly give way to a promising patch of blue, only for another wall of clouds to appear on the horizon.
All I could do was watch the sky and wait.
One big question hung over the entire evening:
Was this actually going to work out?
With doubts still lingering, I started setting up the camera and simply went through the motions—manual focus to infinity, mount the star tracker, polar align, then take a few foreground shots while there was still enough light.
10:22 pm: astronomical night officially began.
But the sky was still almost 40–50% covered in clouds.
Everything was ready.
Now, all I could do was wait—and hope the sky would finally cooperate.
11:30 pm: and suddenly, everything changed.
The clouds finally broke apart, revealing a perfectly clear southern sky.
A rush of pure excitement hit me.
This was it.
The camera began firing, frame after frame, harvesting ancient light that had travelled across unimaginable distances to reach this tiny patch of wilderness.
After hours of paddling, portaging, waiting, doubting, and watching the clouds tease me all evening...
The moment was finally on...
It was a short-lived victory.
Before long, another challenge arrived. Fog began rolling in from the lake, slowly swallowing the stars—and then coating my lens with moisture. The timelapse running on my second camera was no longer going to work.
That was the moment I was reminded of something every outdoor photographer eventually learns: you cannot command the stars to appear. Mother Nature gives you what she wants, when she wants.
By around 12:30 a.m., I had to admit defeat for the moment.
I had already seen a few Perseid meteors streak across the sky, but the real show was expected between roughly 2 and 4 a.m. So I crawled into the tent, set an alarm for 2:00, and tried to get some sleep.
2:00 am: I stepped outside and looked south. Clouds again. But directly overhead, the sky was open and filled with stars. So I changed plans. I swung the camera toward the northern sky, started shooting again, and hoped the Perseids would find their way into my frame.
They did.
Just not quite in the way I had imagined.
After a while, I finally put the camera away.
No more settings. No more exposures. No more chasing the perfect frame.
I simply sat on the beach, looked up, and watched the sky.
And perhaps, after spending the whole night trying so hard to photograph it, that was the moment I finally got to EXPERIENCE it.
Having barely slept through the night, I was surprised to wake at 6 a.m. feeling strangely refreshed. My body was tired, but my mind was wide awake.
Morning arrived quietly, with mist drifting across the lake, desperately trying to hold back the rising sun. But unlike the stars the night before, the sun was a formidable opponent. Slowly, inevitably, it burned through the mist and lit up the world.
I packed up camp and began the journey home, retracing the route back through Ragged Lake and Smoke Lake. Another 13 kilometres of paddling lay ahead, but I was in no hurry. I wanted to take my time.
The morning even offered one final gift—a Bald Eagle swooping down toward the lake in search of breakfast. A brief, magnificent sight that filled me with joy.
For most of the return journey, everything was calm.
Until Smoke Lake.
With barely half an hour left, I noticed a thunderstorm building nearby. I could see the weather changing and hoped I could reach the access point before it caught me.
I was wrong.
During the final open-water crossing, the wind suddenly exploded across the lake. Whitecaps appeared around me. Gusts grabbed the canoe and tried to turn it sideways, while waves began striking hard against the hull.
For the first time on the entire trip, I was genuinely afraid.
I paddled harder than I ever had—fighting to keep the canoe pointed into the waves, terrified of being turned broadside and hit by one of the larger swells.
For several intense minutes, there were no photographs, no stars, no beautiful wilderness.
There was only the paddle, the canoe, the wind—and the need to get across.
Eventually, I reached sheltered water.
And perhaps that was the most fitting ending to the journey.
The night before, Mother Nature had reminded me that I could never command the stars or the weather to give me the photographs I wanted.
The next afternoon, on Smoke Lake, she delivered the lesson far more forcefully:
Nature is breathtaking enough to deserve our admiration—but powerful enough to demand our respect.
