Six Days Alone on the Ottawa Temiskaming Highland Trail

[@mattj801]

Wow, looks like you had an amazing time on the trail. Weather and scenery both amazing. I hiked the small section from Latchford to Roosevelt Lake and hoping to get back for more in 2023. Thanks for sharing the video as well as your other gear breakdown video. Cheers!

[@Ottawa9one9]

Thanks for watching! Perhaps we will cross paths on the trail some day. Cheers.

[@kinguq4510791]

Thanks for taking me along on your hike. I agree that this is a surprisingly tough trail. Murray made a point of routing it so it climbed every hill possible. Also the ground is so rough in most areas that nearly every step requires planning at some level. I do shorter daily distances than you do, and for me, 12 km is a good day for this trail. I have to do the extreme south (Thorne to Opimika) and the extreme north (Latchford to Fat Lake) to complete the trail, and I hope to do that next year. Thanks also for clearing some fallen trees off the trail: every bit helps!

[@Ottawa9one9]

Thanks for watching Daniel. Thanks also for working on the trail crew. You all make this trail possible. In most sections, I'm hurting by about 10km and then it's dig deep time to keep going. My conditioning is decent, but I want to up my game for next year's adventures, including doing an end to end without resupply.

[@kinguq4510791]

Enjoying following along. Just watched the Copper-Little Mountain section. When I did this, a couple of weeks before you, it was pouring rain, and all the lookouts were shrouded in fog, so it was nice to see them in the video. It rained every day of the seven I was out, and I don't mean just a little...

[@Ottawa9one9]

That was a lot of heavy rain earlier September. Sorry it worked out that way for you. Try again next year! In the logbook at the Sugar Shack, there was an entry by a couple of hikers from Toronto who went end to end in one hike around that time. They were stuck in that monsoon rain from Thorne to Grand Campment, but powered through it to continue to the end. I really lucked out. Of my 13 total days on the OTHT this year, all I had was one overnight shower.

[@philippebourdeau2281]

What an awesome journey, thanks for sharing and big congrats. I myself hiked through the Alps for 66 days this summer and am looking at this one possibly next year for the true wilderness experience. A few questions for you if you don’t mind- was the trail well marked throughout and were you able to navigate using markers alone, or did you absolutely need the GPS at any point? Also curious, were any other hikers out there? Is competing for campsites something one would worry about in the early fall in the last 2 weeks of Sept.? It seemed very isolated (which is the appeal). Last q: did you bring enough food for the whole 6 days or did you have a resupply drop anywhere?

[@Ottawa9one9]

Sorry for the late reply. You might want to check out my video of my end to end hike a few minths ago of the OTHT for some additional information and tips. The trail is well blazed, but you will step off it occasionally, but it's easy to retrace and find the markers. You probably won't ever need the GPS except to Check where you are relative to Campsites. I didn't see anyone this fall until day 7, but you I've also done weekend hikes and seen a few pairs of hikers. I haven't had to adjust Campsites because one is used, but it's going to happen one day. In many areas the sites are spaced with pretty large gaps, so my hope is that someone would be ok to share. I would. Be ready to be in forest almost the whole time and to be good with that.

[@Ottawa9one9]

Regarding the food, I did not do a resupply on my 6 day nor my 8.5 day hikes. Some people do, but logistics aren't very easy to set up a cache.