Seymour,

There are several sand beaches in eastern Beaverhouse and Quetico Lakes.  There are also several campsites on eastern Beaverhouse and western Quetico Lake.

I agree with DB about crossing Pickeral Lake via Lookout Island.

Westwood

There sure has been a lot of support for your idea of taking an 11-month old baby on a wilderness canoe trip, so (as another noob on these boards) I hope I don't get blackballed by being negative.

The issue of emergencies has already been brought up, so I won't go over that again. Instead I'll focus on "expecting the normal".

I know you and your partner are prepared to be watching your kid every single second you're out there too, so I also won't bring up obvious things like fire pits (and flying embers), poison ivy, poison berries, spiky logs, etc.

Babies need a lot of protection from the sun. An open canoe on a sunny day is an invitation to heatstroke. With so much radiation being reflected from the water, protecting your kid effectively is going to be nearly impossible. A sun hat and UV60 won't do it.

Babies need regular potty breaks. At 11 months, your child is probably not yet close to being toilet trained. Are you planning to carry disposable diapers (full ones) around for your entire trip? You weren't planning on rinsing cloth diapers out in the lake, were you? I know you weren't planning on just burying the disposables.

Babies also puke. If they puke at a campsite, are you prepared to completely clean everything up so it's clean for the next party?

Babies can't swim. Assuming you can find an effective baby pfd, how do you keep your 11-month old in one place while you are canoeing? You can't strap him down, since he would drown if the canoe overturned. If he starts to crawl around, there is a real possibility he will either fall overboard or slip and whack his head on a gunwale.

Which leads me to the next thing. Babies cry. They cry when they're hungry. They cry when they're uncomfortable. They cry when they're tired. They cry when they're sick. They cry when they're bored.

Assuming you can deal effectively with hunger and fatigue, and assuming illness (including things like simple gas pains) doesn't need to be re-addressed, how will you deal with the other two? Canoes and wilderness are pretty boring to infants, so you will need constantly to keep them occupied. And comfortable? Even if they're shaded from the sun, you still have the potential for wind and rain. And cold - better plan on bringing lots of blankets, just in case. And you'd better not accidentally splash your baby with an errant paddle either. They don't like cold+wet, especially not surprise cold+wet.

Perhaps you're not bothered by a little crying from your little bundle of joy. But sound travels very easily across lakes, and there's usually not much background noise in Quetico to mask things. What might seem to you to be "a little quiet whimpering" at the next campsite is "someone else's screaming brat" - the exact thing they came to Quetico to get away from.

So for the sake of your child and for the sake of the other campers, please put Quetico on hold for a few years.

Greetings, Joe.
Have you ever had kids????
You make it sound like it is more trouble than it is worth and a real problem for anyone within 10 miles. Get off it. I will take a baby or little kid over some of the slobs that come into the park all the time and make a racket and leave a mess expecting everyone else to pick up after them or just ignore them. Those people are the ones that should stay home not an 11 month old kid. I am sure that the parents are more than responsible, given the amount of effort that they have already put into research and thinking about bringing a little kid into the park.

It was one of the best things that I did for my kids, introducing them to canoeing at an early age, ( 4 months was my youngest ), they are all adults now, and love the wilderness. We never left any mess in a camp.
I carried a "diaper pack" for 2 weeks that weighed 65 lbs at the end of the trip, and I would do it again in a heart beat. Our kids never got sun burn once, there are plenty of good hats and other clothes to cover them up and protect them. At that age they still sleep a lot. Do you really think that a little kid can have that much trouble in a canoe? If so you haven't been around little kids much. IMHO they are easier to take care of in the woods than at home. So much more for them to be interested in that is good for them than the crap at home in the city.
Yes it is a lot of work taking a young child to Quetico, but when is it not a lot of work raising kids? The kid will be fine and no one will be "disturbed" by him.
Sorry for the rant, but where are we going to get paddlers from if we don't get our kids involved? At least then we can teach them good wilderness etiquette and hopefully they won't turn into canoe slobs that are a "real" problem.
GeneM

 Having no kids, I don't have a "dog" in this discussion.
However, from my personal experience, its the adults that either cause the problems or allow them to occur

The two worse incidents that I ever experienced was a group of adults that were camped across Jean Lake from me. They were obviously imbibing heavily and long after dark were yelling and carrying on at the top of their lungs. The worst part was they had a "lady" with them who laughed like a African Hyena at every thing that was said.  I thought about paddling over, but knew it would be just a exercise in frustration on my part. I fell to sleep way after midnight and dreamed my revenge
A .308 sniper round from 1/2 mile away finally silenced the Hyena

The other incident involved some boy scouts and their leaders. They were coming across the portage from Conk into Jean lk. They could be heard way before I saw them. Yelling and talking at the top of their lungs. When I got to the Conk side, they had gear and canoes scattered all over the take-out. I dropped my gear in the woods and walked down to see what was going on?

When I mentioned to one of the leaders how LOUD they were and did he realize how sound carried, he told me that the wilderness was the place for boys to be boys, and that meant being loud and rude! I asked them how they were going to learn a respectful wilderness ethic, IF the leaders didn't teach it too them? He gave me a dirty look and I walked back and let them clear out.

 I give kudos to anyone who takes kids or newbies into a wilderness setting as long as they teach them the right way and clean up after themselves. Unfortunately age doesn't guarantee good behavior or self control.

Joe_Schmeaux wrote on Apr 13^th, 2010 at 4:58am:


Wow.  That's really insightful, Joe.  I bet the parents of an 11-month old had NO CLUE about any of this!  Thank goodness you came to the rescue and informed them of these facts.

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Yeah, the sterile insides of a playpen with the same old boring toys will probably stimulate a baby a lot more than some crappy wilderness setting.

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So nice to see you assume the worst of the kid, the parents, and their parenting skills.  What this really comes down to, Joe, is that since you and your kid weren't up to this challenge when your kid was at this age, it's very intimidating to you to possibly interact with parents and child who are willing and able to handle the situation.

I know who I'd much rather run into in the wilderness between this family and you...and it ain't you, pal.

Thanks for one of the most self-centered, ignorant and small-minded posts I've ever seen. 

Edit information:  I'd forgotten to include "self-centered" in the executive summary section of my post.  How thoughtless of me.  My apologies to anyone who read this post with that omission.