Jimbo wrote on Jul 30^th, 2010 at 1:19pm:

nctry_Ben wrote on Jul 30th, 2010 at 3:55am: There is no way a fair amount of the sites listed are suitable. Amen to that!!!  We spent 12 days in the park further north.  MAYBE 40% of the campsites shown in park literature even exist!  Either that OR their standards for campsites are incredibly low in WCP.  Their campsites are smaller, further apart, & often don't exist.  As a hammock camper, it doesn't much matter to me; just give me two suitable trees & a decent flat rock to land my canoe.  However, if you are tent-camping in WCP, think small tent pads and be prepared to clear out spots from the brush, especially if you get off the established canoe trails.

I must admit to having done a bit of campsite research before I departed.  One avenue I used for this was to read as many trip reports as possible from   (You need to Login or Register  This gave me a little insight into at least one campsite on each lake I was planning to visit ... that, plus my route this year (Leano to Mex Hat) I'd traveled last year.  In addition, with my anticipated late start this year, I specifically asked the WCP Staff about campsites on western Bunny and the no-name lake just beyond.

So, based on my experience from this year, the only campsite I had to spend time "brushing out" was my exit campsite on Hjlarmar Lakes (which I assumed would be iffy).

But a warning to the wise!  The park staff has not formally released their campsite map.  Their plan is not to do so until they have CONFIRMED the identified campsite.  Thus, you should anticipate availability at something like the level of the PCD where the only reference to the campsite comes from Legacy Forest.  These I would call "historical" campsites ... sites that might have been identified in the past 100 years ... and by now have no resemblance to a campsite that we would recognize.  I found this to be the case with a campsite I stayed on in a no-name lake just north of Hurlburt in Queticio.  You could find a few scattered rocks that were once a fire ring, but other than a partially destroyed small tent pad, the site was covered with 6 inches of raindeer moss (and that stuff doesn't grow very fast).

So, based on my knowledge of the campsites within WCP, I made the conscious decision not to press on into late day travel unless I was absolutely certain that I had a campsite to go to at the end of that leg.

dd