Camp Site #19 at Poisson Blanc Reservoir

Further to my general description of the Poisson Blanc Reservoir as a great kayak-camping destination near Ottawa Ontario, here's a more detailed description of our campsite.

As you can see on the map of the park, campsite #19 is near the middle of the reservoir. That means that you'll need to paddle at least a couple of hours from the put-in before reaching your destination. Due to the distances involved, this availability of this site is likely better than easier to reach alternatives.

Contrary to what's shown on this map, there are two campsites (#18 & 19) on this island, not just one. We found this out when we were given a colour map by the park staff at the put-in. Luckily this didn't turn out to be a disappointment, given the considerable distance between the two sites. We never saw or hear anyone from the other campsite.

The campsite is located on the southern point of the island, offering a magnificent 270 degree view of the area. If you look closely at the picture below (click to enlarge), you'll see the top of our tent tucked away on the left side.

First impressions are good when you arrive at the site. Firewood is in a bag as promised, site is clean and magnificent chain-saw sculptured bench adorns the fire pit.

Apparently this site had an even more impressive table hand-built out of logs but it disappeared one night a while back.

You get quite a lot of nice accessible space from this campsite as you can see from the picture below.

This site is described on the park's web page as being suitable for 2 to 6 people. If everyone is in a small 2-person tent, that might be reasonable. If anyone has a medium or large sized tent, that could be a challenge.

In the pictures shown on their site, I never would have thought to set-up a tent in the area where they show a tent. I'm not saying it's a bad location, simply that it didn't look to me like a spot for a tent.

We set-up our tent near the area where a yellow tarp is shown in their pictures. This seemed to be the largest & flattest area on the campsite. It actually took a while before I could find a suitable orientation to fit our MEC Wanderer 2 Tent between the roots, rocks and trees.

If a second tent had to be set-up, the space shown on the left of the picture above would have been my choice. A third tent would have ended up as shown in the picture of a tent on the park's web pages or down by the beach on the west side of the point.

The path to the thunderbox is behind to the left of the tent shown in picture above. It's a bit of a climb but otherwise well located. If you keep walking past the facilities, you reach the top of a rock face on the west side of the island. Could be an interesting viewpoint when the sun sets.

One of the great features of this site is the great views to the east....

and to the west, next to a beautiful campfire...



As no site can be perfect, one of the slight disadvantages is the fact that fishermen seem to think there are a lot of fish in the area and many of them converge around the point. I have news for them, after watching them for 3 days, not a single fish was caught in the area...