I have never done the northern part,we’re planning an early September seven day trip.Does anyone have a favorite route or must see spot?
Grab a Quetico petroglyph guidebook
and base your trip around it. Some really nice stuff out there.
entering from where?
You kind of need a tentative plan, at least which entry point you will be using. Wouldn’t do much good for me to tell you to go see Sue Falls if you are entering at the other end of the park at French Lake. If you will have more than one vehicle and are willing to spend the time for a shuttle, you can leave a vehicle at French Lake, and start your trip at Beaverhouse,
which gives you the whole Northern part of the park to choose a route in. If you shy away from portaging, you can do a far north route through Cirrus, Kask., Batch. and thru Pickeral to get back to French L. Minimal protageing, with plenty of time for fishing.
Also depends on haw far and hard you want to travel, and how many layover days? Two to three days will get you in to the center of the park (Russell(“poet’s chain”-has a nice series of falls) ? Kawninpi?)with time for one layover day and then a return loop. If that is of interest, I’d say try to get an entry from Atikokan/Nym Lake, and you can go up or down via the "B"s or Lonely Lake/creek, or over to Quetico/Jean.
Easiest way to pick a route is to look through the guidebook (“A Paddler’s Guide to Quetico Provincial Park” by Robert Beymer is the one I’d recommend)- it dose a real good job of describing the highlights of each route.
entry point
We’re leaning toward beaverhouse with a shuttle back from French L.
Some more thoughts
Matt covers it very well. Some spots that I think are special in the area are: the cliffs on Quetico Lake and the pictographs, Jean Lake, Burntside Lake, the long cruise along the south shore of Sturgeon, the mid way point campsite on the south shore of Sturgeon on the sand spit, Sturgeon narrows area, and Chatterton Falls (Russell L). Not knowing how far your group travels per day, Chatterton and the other falls on the poet chain may be out of range for you.
range of group
they respond well to the lash