We’ve never gone backpacking before. This summer, we thought that the Arkon Loop in Frontenac Provincial Park would be the perfect place to try it out for the first time! And we were right.

Frontenac Provincial Park has tons of trails, and lots of camping sites, but we wanted to hike something that was a little bit shorter. Not only was it our first time backpacking, but we were bringing our old dog with us. We didn’t want to try anything too crazy right out of the gate.

This trip report will focus on our hike of the Arkon Loop, but we promise we’ll do a follow up post about the experience of backpacking for the first time!

Getting There

Frontenac is an Ontario Provincial Park, located in Sydenham. It’s a two hour drive from Ottawa, and well worth the trip!

Before setting out, we stopped at the park office to register. You can use these coordinates to get there: 44.507715, -76.553491. Salmon Lake Road brought us all the way into the park office. We had to stop there because we were camping. It’s also important to stop there to get a parking pass for the day and pay the park admission fee when hiking.

In order to get to the start of the Arkon Loop, we followed Salmon Lake Road back out the way we had come. Where the road split, we turned to our right. We had to pass through a big green gate in order to get to the Arab Lake Parking Lot. It was the lot nearest to the main office. You can use these coordinates to get there: 44.518895, -76.540831. The parking lot was a good size, with room for at least thirty cars. There weren’t many people parked there when we arrived, even though it was a beautiful Saturday afternoon.

The road we followed to get there was gravel, and really well maintained. We had no problems getting there in our little car.

At the parking lot, there was an outhouse, as well as receptacles for garbage and recycling, including propane canisters.

The Trailhead

The Corridor Trail started from the parking lot, and would have eventually connected us to the Arkon Loop. We intended to start on the western side of the loop though, and so we walked back to the road, and turned to our left. We had seen the trailhead we would be using to access the woods while driving in, and we headed there.

Choosing to travel the loop clockwise made sense for us because we would be stopping at campsite 7, and the western part of the loop was shorter. We figured we’d complete the longer section on our second day, when there was less weight in our packs.

We had travelled along the road for about 400 metres when we saw the trailhead to our right. It was well marked, and would have been hard to miss.

Hopping onto the trail, we set out on a wide dirt path that was fairly flat. Truthfully, all of the Arkon Loop felt fairly flat. It really was not a challenging trail, which was perfect for our first backpacking trip.

We passed by a few cool bodies of water, including a beaver pond at the 1.3 kilometre mark that had a HUGE dam visible beside the bridge we were on.

Two Loops in One

The Arkon Loop is one big loop that has a smaller loop inside of it. There’s a trail that essentially cuts the loop in half, allowing hikers to choose if they want to complete the smaller loop, or finish the whole thing. This trail is called the Bufflehead Trail, and we passed the split for it after we had been hiking for 2.6 kilometres.

Up until this part, the trail had felt really well traveled, and we could easily follow the path just by seeing how it was worn into the ground. It was also REALLY well marked. Often, when we looked up we could see at least two trail markers letting us know that we were heading in the right direction.

Beyond the split for the Bufflehead Trail, the path became a little more overgrown. This tends to happen when there’s the option of a shorter or longer route- there are just more people out who want to complete the shorter route.

Even though the path was less travelled as we hiked along it, it still would have been really easy to follow even if there had been no trail markers. The trail is just so established and so well worn into the dirt that it would be very hard to lose. But there still were trail markers, and lots of them. So that helped too.

Getting to Campsite 7

Getting closer to our campsite, we hiked up a small ridge overlooking a really cool lake at the 3.7 kilometre mark. The lake was growing these really neat shrubs all through it, so we stopped to enjoy the view for a bit.

Half a kilometre beyond the lake, we reached a “historical plaque,” which was across a swamp from a small cabin. The plaque let us know about the Page homestead, and some of the struggles with farming in the area.

Immediately after, we crossed a short bridge and looked to our right for yet another beautiful view. We were looking out over Arkon Lake, so we knew that we were getting close to the campsite that we were looking for.

Looking out at Arkon Lake. Beautiful, AND it let us know we were approaching our campsite.When we reached the split in the trail to reach the campsites at site 7, it was really obvious. We had hiked 4.85 kilometres by then, and there was a sign that pointed us off to our left. We followed it downhill for about 300 metres until we reached campsite 7A. If you’re not camping and are just hiking the loop for the day, you would carry on straight at this point.

Completing the Loop

The next morning, we woke up and finished the loop to return to our car. We arrived back at the split in the trail that originally led us to campsite 7, and we turned to our left to explore the west side of the loop.

The west side of the loop, much like the east side, was easy and grassy. The forests in Frontenac are really unique in that their ground cover tends to be grass. Most forests that I’ve seen, the ground is covered in a combinations of weeds, small trees, or dead leaves. In Frontenac, there’s literally grass as far as the eye can see. There were a few rocky sections but for the most part the trail was not challenging at all. It continued to be really well marked, and anytime there was a split in the trail, there was a sign that let us know what was off in each direction.

The next split we reached was a split that could have taken us to campsite 8, at the 7 kilometre mark. To get the distances I’m discussing in this section of the report, I’ve subtracted the additional 600 metres that we hiked to get into and out of our camp. So, if you’re hiking only the loop, these distances will be accurate for you. We turned to our right to stick with the eastern loop of the Arkon Trail.

Next, after hiking for 7.65 kilometres, we reached a junction where the north side of the Salmon Lake Loop met the trail. Campsites 6 and 9 were in the same direction as the Salmon Lake Loop, but we carried on.

On the eastern side of the loop, there were more trees down, but only one that made the trail tricky to navigate. You’ll know it when you see it. It appeared to be blocking the trail completely. Luckily there was an open rock face beside it, so we took that route to get around the tree but not damage any of the surrounding vegetation.

A Baby Buck!

The absolute coolest part of this loop was when we walked up to a buck on the trail. We saw each other at the same time, and he actually walked a little bit closer to us, stopping on the trail. Our dog did SO well, just lying down and waiting for us to be ready to move on. I approached the young buck very slowly, and he seemed super comfortable with our interaction. I say that because he spent a lot of time snacking and licking his nether reasons-nature can be so magical… He actually let me get within 15 feet of him, and I THINK he would have let me get closer. I decided not to though, because at the end of the day he was still a wild animal that deserves his space. It was an awesome experience, and the closest I’ve ever been to a deer!

We arrived back at the Bufflehead Trail after hiking 8.15 kilometres. At the 9.45 kilometre mark, there was a split in the trail indicating that campsites 3 and 6 were down the path to our left. We stayed right to get back to Salmon Lake Road.

Just before reaching the road, we crossed two short boardwalks. Past this, the trail began to widen and we could tell we were getting close to the road. When we arrived, there was a sign indicating that the Corridor Trail was ahead of us. Again, we decided to go with the road, so we turned to our right. We only had to walk 300 metres along the road to reach the parking lot again.

More about the Trail

The entire length of the Arkon Loop Trail (including the distance we had to walk on the road) was 10.4 kilometres. On the first day, it took us two hours and ten minutes to reach the split for campsite 7. We covered a distance of 4.85 kilometres in that time. On day two, we left the campsite and arrived back at the parking lot having hiked for about two hours and fifteen minutes. The eastern part of the trail was 5.53 kilometres.

The western section of the trail FELT easier to us, but there might have been good reason for that. We were hiking earlier in the day, so it wasn’t as hot, and our packs were lighter because we had eaten almost all our food and drank quite a bit of water.

All in all, the Arkon Loop was absolutely perfect for our first try at backpacking. It was flat, easy to follow, and not at all technical. Not to mention, our campsite was stunning, AND our dog was able to come with us. We couldn’t have chosen a better trail.

I hope this trip report has enough info to get you there too. Let me know in the comments, or share and tag a friend to start planning your next adventure!

Map and Elevation Gain

Whenever I’m hiking somewhere new, I tend to wonder about who was on, and who took care of that land before me. I’ve enjoyed using this website as a place to start learning more about the indigenous people whose land I’m on: Native-land.ca.

Gear We Would Have Brought IF We were Hiking the Loop as a Day Hike