April 28, 2025 • 47 mins
Jeff McMurtrie returns to our podcast with exciting news about his meticulously crafted wilderness maps that have transformed how paddlers experience Ontario's backcountry. Having spent over 700 days exploring these waterways, Jeff brings unparalleled expertise to his cartography – revealing hidden gems that most travelers miss and preventing potentially frustrating navigational errors.
The newest additions to his collection include updated Killarney and French River maps with 50% more detail, innovative portage elevation profiles, and an extensive catalog of points of interest. Perhaps most exciting is the announcement of a refreshed Temagami map coming this summer and a new East French River map that completes the coverage from Georgian Bay to Lake Nipissing when combined with his other maps.
What makes these maps special goes beyond their accuracy. Jeff's thoughtful design elements – like showing creek width proportional to reality and using distinctive "penciled in" styling for extremely challenging routes – reflect his deep understanding of what paddlers actually need on the water. The maps document everything from waterfalls and swimming holes to historic sites and spring water sources, creating what Jeff calls "that extra dimension" that transforms a good trip into an unforgettable one.
Each physical map purchase includes digital versions in five different formats (high-resolution JPEG, Avenza Maps with GPS functionality, Garmin GPS, Google Earth 3D, and GeoTIFF), ensuring paddlers can use them however best suits their style. Jeff shares that user feedback has been invaluable in refining these resources – from identifying changed conditions to suggesting new features that improve usability.
Whether you're planning your first backcountry trip or your fiftieth, these maps provide both essential navigation tools and unexpected discoveries. Check out mapsbyjeff.com or visit your local outdoor retailer to get your hands on these game-changing wilderness guides before your next paddling adventure.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello and good day.
Hey, welcome to the Super GoodCamping Podcast.
My name is Pamela.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
I'm Tim.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
And we are from supergoodcampingcom.
We're here because we are on amission to inspire other people
to get outside and enjoy campingadventures such as we have as a
family.
Today's guest is a gentleman wehad the pleasure to chat with
just over a year ago.
Feel free to go back and listento that episode.
He loves to camp, particularlyvia canoe, and he is excellent
(00:27):
at his chosen profession.
Please welcome our Vigor deDeity in the Ontario backcountry
community, jeff McMurtry.
Of Maps by Jeff Yay welcome.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Good morning.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Good morning.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Thanks for stopping by, man.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Yeah, I love it.
What a beautiful Sunday morning.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
So the first thing I would like to do is correct an
oops that we made last time, atleast I'm pretty sure wrecked
and oops that we made last time,at least I'm pretty sure I.
We talked about maps and, andin particular you had spanky new
algonquin, the, the purple ones, but I don't think we listed
all the parks that you havemapped.
Do me a favor, tell us, tell uswhat you've mapped out before
(00:58):
yeah, yeah, I mean.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
So, as you're saying, it's been a long time, lots of
maps, uh.
So, as you said, there's abronco to start.
And then I've got Killarney.
That was, I think, the secondplace I ever did.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
I've got French River , kortha Highlands, massasauga
and from a long time ago,tamagami, right.
Okay, so there's my secondquestion.
That's sort of what tweaked inmy brain, because I didn't
realize you had a Tamagami map.
It's digital.
(01:29):
Why is it only digital?
Out of curiosity, oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
No good question.
So when I first had released itthere were waterproof printed
copies too, but unfortunatelythat was kind of around the time
I had some business partnerproblems, had to leave Jeff's
Maps that's where I had createdthem at that time.
After that, I still owned, Icame to understand I still owned
the copyright to the map, but Ididn't have any more waterproof
(01:54):
ones around.
Some actually exciting news isthat this summer there should be
some new waterproof ones.
I'm doing some updates andcorrections and that sort of
thing.
Again, I don't have a firmtimeline.
That's kind of what I'mactually about to start working
on, but July-ish.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Looking forward to it .
That's excellent.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
As you were listing the different ones.
I know him and his eyes likecheck, check, check oh need that
one Check.
Check.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Yeah, very true, because him in it's how he's
like check, check, check.
Oh, need that one.
Yeah, very true, because I do,I have, I have everything except
the tomogami one and I was Iwas looking at it going 2014.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
I wonder if he's gonna update that yeah, no, I
mean, it's been something I wantto do for a long time and you
know there's just always so manyprojects.
So for all those years it wasthe Algonquin one, and then you
know I've been working onupdating, like the Killarney and
stuff, to add some of thosefeatures I'd added a year ago,
and so you know that's where theTomogami map was sort of on the
(02:58):
list for after.
So here we are, you know.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Sweet, sweet.
So we've got the tomogamy mapto look forward to what?
And if you're tweaking otherones, what?
Give us all the news?
What's what's happening?
What's happening with yourstuff, man?
Speaker 3 (03:16):
yeah, no, hey, um, so uh, I've got uh coming out very
soon a new calorni map as wellas west River.
So I've had both those for anumber of years.
But I've added the features Iadded to Algonquin First, to
these guys.
So I've got things like for theportages there's a little side
view showing where the hills are.
I've got more points ofinterest.
(03:38):
I've zoomed them in about 50%.
So I've done that withAlgonquin first, where
essentially, rather than havingthe map on a single side and a
bunch of text on the back, nowI've got a map on both sides.
So I've done that for theKillarney and French River too.
And really especially, I guesswith that extra zoom it's both
allowed me to sort of spacethings out a bit, so stuff isn't
(04:00):
quite as crammed in, but alsoit's, let me add, a lot more
detail, a lot more informationthat otherwise there wasn't
space for.
So that's pretty exciting.
And then on top of the Killarneyand the West French River I've
also now got an East FrenchRiver map, so essentially the
West French River.
(04:20):
One had gone from Killarney inparticular there's Point Grandin
, kind of on Georgian Bay, sothey'd gone from there to
roughly Highway 69, just alittle bit past that, and so
then the East French Riverclicks into that.
It goes from essentiallyHighway 69 all the way up to
Lake Nipissing, and so then itcovers the whole French River.
(04:41):
And actually, if you do end upgetting all three maps, you get
like digitally you get a singlefile covering Killarney and then
the whole French River.
And actually, if you do end upgetting all three maps, you get
like digitally you get a singlefile covering Killarney and then
the whole French River.
So you're going all the wayfrom Lake Huron across the whole
Northern Georgian Bay and thenup to Lake Nipissing.
So yeah, that's the currentvery exciting thing.
I had just finished that aswe're recording.
(05:02):
It's at the printer right nowand I think when this is
released it'll be pretty darnclose.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Sweet, sweet.
I have to make a point ofgiving a shout out to, or give a
shout to, alex and Jess.
They've got sorry Tents andTimber.
Yeah, we've been talking aboutdoing a trip together and one of
the things they're trying tocombine it into cause they've
got a.
They've got a block of timethat they can.
(05:30):
They can get out and paddle.
They were talking about doingthe French river from Nipissing
and I pulled out my French rivermap and went oh, it doesn't go
all the way Now.
Now, now they can spend moneyand they can plan it better.
That's awesome.
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
So one question I had was when you're mapping, is it
every single inch of the areathat you're mapping, or are
there parts where you're likethis is really too rough, it
doesn't really have anywhere forpeople to go, or it's a
protected area, or it's asensitive area we don't really
want people to be traversingaround in there, is it?
Do you kind of pick and choosehow much detail you go into in
(06:13):
certain areas or you just thisis the whole thing oh, that's a
really good question.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Um, you know, I am certainly receptive to concerns
about particular spots or issues, but, uh, speaking again, other
than, I guess, very, very, veryparticular situations, it would
really just be, you know, addall the info this right yeah, um
(06:38):
, yeah yeah, yeah, just so.
You want people to know,everywhere where they're going
out, the options of places to goyeah, I mean, that's where I
guess kind of an add on to thatis one of the things I've
learned over time is.
Well, in a sense it's obvious,right, but different people have
different things.
They want to experiencedifferent sort of levels of pain
(06:59):
they're willing to go throughto get there, through to get
there.
And you know the maps I make,they're certainly very paddling,
specific, right, so they're notfor, you know, snowmobiling or
ATVing or that sort of thing,but within the paddling realm I
certainly do try to covereverything from maybe what a
first timer might want to do allthe way up to somebody who's
(07:21):
into bushwhacking and exploringoff trail.
And so that certainly is achallenge in terms of presenting
the information to make surethat, again, like you know, the
new person or the person who'slooking for a nice relaxing trip
isn't finding themselvesbushwhacking through the middle
of nowhere and so on.
(07:42):
Some of the previous maps, theUnlostify ones, I'd first added
these color-coded rootdifficulties, right, so there
was yellow, orange and red andwhite as well for sort of
first-timer stuff, but the ideabeing that it was typical,
challenging, very difficult, andone of the things I found at
(08:04):
one point is that some peopleyou know, had a different
understanding of what does verydifficult mean.
Right, because when I had donethat, when I added that, first I
thought, oh, this is great,right, because I can show stuff
that maybe some people don'twant to do Because, see, it says
right there very difficult inred, right.
But yeah, like I said, somepeople have a different
(08:25):
understanding of very difficultand I guess, in particular, I
really remember there was areview of the Kortha Highlands
map, an old version, on the MECwebsite, and this person I feel
so bad for them, right, but thisperson was very upset because
they had done one of these red,very difficult routes and I
(08:45):
guess, to put it mildly, it wasnot what they were hoping for,
because they had done one ofthese red, very difficult routes
and I guess, to put it mildly,it was not what they were hoping
for, right, and it was funny,right, because I'm like, oh,
I've had friends who've donethis, in particular, brad
Jennings explored that country.
He had done that, had a lot offun, and then a couple other
people have done it, but again,it's a mindset thing, right, and
(09:07):
so what I'd done, I guess, tosort of address that is,
starting with the Algonquin maps.
I decided well, again, I stillwant to show these routes
because I enjoy them, some otherpeople enjoy them, but again,
you want to make sure that theright people are doing them.
So rather than putting them asred, I decided to show them as
like penciled in and there's bigwarnings on them saying you
(09:33):
know, this is really tough andyou probably shouldn't do this
Right.
And so if somebody wants to doit, great, they can.
But you know they've beenwarned and I guess the key of
the pencil sort of style look isit doesn't look like the other
roots.
So there still are the yellow,orange and red.
But essentially, if you'redoing one of those normal routes
, there's degrees of pain,degrees of difficulty, but
there's still a trail right andyou don't have to know anything
(09:54):
about.
You know bushwhacking orwhitewater or whatever right, if
you put one foot in front ofthe other, you will get there.
So I thought that was kind ofan interesting sort of problem.
And certainly since I'd donethat with Yogantham once first.
Now on these new ones, I'vecertainly not heard of anybody
accidentally doing one of them.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Yeah, that's good and you're absolutely right,
different people, differentperspectives, but also, as like
I remember, I remember, you know, go go back a bunch of years,
um, that, uh, what, what?
You know, if I, if I did one ofyour yellow routes, you know,
it might, might have been alittle bit of a challenge at the
(10:37):
time.
Now it's like I don't even, Idon't even think about it, other
than looking at that.
That's a four kilometer portage, maybe not, not not
particularly the interestputting that kind of miles on,
but as far as difficulty goes,it's like, yeah, I can do that
in my sleep.
So there's always that, there'sthat as you gain experience, it
changes your perception of thedifficulty of a route.
(10:59):
Yeah absolutely Cool and I andjust for the record, I think the
side profile thing that you'vegot for portages is genius.
I can't believe that that neveroccurred before.
Like it's just, it's that.
So you look at it, you goperfect, I can do that and I
know where I'm going to run intotrouble, whatever.
(11:19):
That's excellent.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Yeah, I mean that was I really enjoy, I guess,
designing new features becausesomething like that.
Like you're saying, right, likeI didn't go and find it on some
other map and say, hey, that'sa great idea, I should do that
here, right, you know you got tofigure out, okay, what's.
What's the sort of questionsomebody is asking, right, so
(11:42):
people obviously ask you know,hey, is this a flat portage, is
this a steep portage?
That sort of thing.
And at least my perspectivegoing into it was that you know,
a long portage, sure it's long,but you can always take breaks,
right, but a steep portage, itcan be short and it can be the
sort of thing that's burned intoyour mind because you know
(12:05):
you're trying to walk up thisthing, the front of your canoe
is like banging into the trailin front of you.
There's no spot to take a breakbecause you're, you know you're
going up the incline.
And so the question then comesdown to like, okay, so this is,
you know you want to show thisto people, but how do you do it?
Right, how do you make sure?
Cause they're little, littleportage graphs right on the map
(12:26):
there, I don't know, like in noteven an inch right, maybe a
centimeter and a half by acentimeter.
So how do you make something sosmall but still make sure that
people can read that maybe inbad lighting conditions,
whatever and understand you knowwhat they're going to be up
against?
So there's all sorts of littledesign stuff in there to sort of
(12:47):
make that happen.
But yeah, I certainly enjoythat challenge.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Well, and is there an indication of the like?
As you said?
Like there's the steepness, butthere's also the quality of
what you're walking on.
Is it?
Is it a rock garden that you'rewalking through?
Is it a?
Is it just a flat like groundsomebody has walked through many
times?
Like, is there a way toindicate that?
Speaker 3 (13:09):
Oh, that's a great question.
No, that's something that's Idon't do right now and I've been
like thinking about and thequestion that I have to figure
out is how do you, how do you, Iguess, categorize that?
But it is very valid, right?
So this has come up once ortwice.
Where a Gawkin, for exampleright, that's where I'm most
familiar, but sort of theNortheast side of the park along
(13:31):
the Padua river, there are anumber of portages where you're
walking over this like shalystuff, like small rocks, and
every time you take a stepyou're on sort of the side of a
hill at times.
So every time you take a step,you know the gravelly stuff
underneath your feet, you knowmoves and you hear it rolling
(13:52):
downhill and whatever, andcertainly that is a lot more
challenging than just a dirtpath.
So, yeah, I mean, I thinkthat's something I definitely
want to add and it's simply amatter of figuring out, like,
what are the categories or howdo you present that in a
digestible way?
But it's a very valid point.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Yeah, I just that made me just think about yeah
that made me just think aboutcamper Christina.
Sucky muck is a phrase that sheuses, right, and I've been
places that she's been, but I'vedone them in a dry season.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
No, sucky muck very how do you put, yeah, how do you
put that on a map to go?
Speaker 2 (14:37):
this is.
It's really challenging ifyou're there in may because it's
it's wet as all get out.
You know you're up to the topof your boots.
You're probably going to getyour boots sucked right off of
your feet, um, but in july, notso much yeah, no, I mean, that's
where sometimes I'll add notesfor that sort of stuff.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
But that certainly is the challenge, right?
Yeah, and especially, um, youknow, to your point, I'd love to
do it in a more holistic way,right?
Speaker 2 (15:03):
um, so, yeah, it's very much on my mind yeah, must,
must, must suck to wake up attwo o'clock in the morning
dreaming about maps or goingright.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Oh, how can I add that?
How can I make this look likethat?
Speaker 3 (15:18):
You know I find that a lot of fun, sort of working on
the same project for a longtime, like now it's been.
I started this thing like 19years ago.
I was like late high school,early university.
But the reason I find it a lotof fun is because, almost to
(15:42):
your point, it's always neat tobe figuring out how can I do
better at this, what are againbetter ways I can convey this
information.
Sometimes it can be, you know,figuring out how do you
categorize things like we'retalking about.
Sometimes it can be, you know,just figuring out, like what
should the icon look like?
Because ideally you knowthere's the map legend
explaining everything, butideally you want things to be as
explanatory as possible.
Snapshot.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
Exactly, exactly, exactly.
So how do you sort of again, Ihave ideas of what I'm trying to
communicate in my head.
I try to, you know, put theminto these symbols and colors
and icons and, you know,transmit that to the person on
the other end.
And so, you know, sometimesthat works really well.
Sometimes there can beconfusion and that's where,
again, you're always trying toto think about how can I improve
(16:26):
.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
Then, you know, well, yeah, and so, speaking of that,
like all the things that are onyour maps, there's I mean,
there's the topography, as timsaid, of the, of the portages,
there's points of interest, asyou said.
So there's a waterfall here andyou might want to alter your
route so that you can take inthe beauty of that waterfall.
But, yeah, just tell us aboutsome of the icons that are on
(16:48):
your maps.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
So, as you're saying, there's quite a variety of
stuff.
It's all the sort of bonus bitsalong the way.
You certainly have a fun tripif you didn't see this stuff.
But, um, again, to me it's likeyou know you're talking soaking
in the beauty of a waterfall,right, it really these points of
(17:10):
interest can add this extradimension to the trip, right,
sometimes that's where thespecial memories come from.
So, uh, yeah, I've got quite avariety.
I think there's like 20, 20 oddsort of types of points of
interest.
So, um, there's things in a sortof historic category, historic
category, uh, like old, oldranger cabins, uh, fire towers,
(17:33):
other sort of buildings andartifacts, a lot of logging
stuff from, you know, 120, 150years ago, that sort of era.
Um, you know painting spots,right, so you know, especially
in Killarney and and that sortof area, uh, but even in
Ogonquin and some other spotsyou've got, you know, the group
of seven did a lot of paintingand so there's a bunch of sort
(17:53):
of iconic paintings where youcan go to that spot, which is
kind of cool.
You know big cliffs and rockoutcrops, lookout points, I mean
that's where, again, especiallywith Killarney, right, it's got
these big mountains, the littlecloche mountains, and so you
(18:15):
get some amazing viewpoints.
What else have I got soold-growth forests, forest fire
sites Again, I was talking aboutFrench River.
There was a huge fire back in2018.
And, of course, in a sense,it's quite destructive, but fire
happens in nature, and so nowyou go back to the same areas
and you get to see that regrowthhappening, know, springing back
(18:38):
, and that transition from theburn forest to eventually what
will be, you know, big treesagain, many, many years from now
yeah, well, just to interjectuh oh yeah, our eldest and I um
did the french well, I don'tknow, maybe three years ago,
something like that, and weactually saw the end of the burn
(18:59):
.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
We're looking across at rocks and and blackened trees
, like it was.
It was wild to look at that andthen go green.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
Yeah, yeah, no, exactly right, and uh, you know,
to me, all these, these pointsof interest, they again, they
add that extra dimension to thetrip.
They help you, I think, in asense, understand the world
differently, right?
So, whether historic sites, youunderstand the people that have
come before you, or you knowearth science, life science,
(19:33):
again, to see the fire, likethat, it's something that I
think you can think about in avery academic sense like, oh,
it's a big.
I think you can think about ina very academic sense like, oh,
it's a big fire and thingshappen and there's, you know,
transitions that happen in termsof growth, whatever.
But it's another thing to standthere and be like, wow, that's
crazy, yeah, yeah absolutely itwas.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
It was pretty mind-blowing to just to just go
that that was the.
That's where it stopped burning.
It couldn't make the jump rightlike holy mackerel.
That's crazy.
Very yeah, exactly.
So sorry, sorry, continue on.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
No, no, no, I mean, you're sort of making the point
for me, but uh, again, I guess II'd even touched on that there
that there's some earth sciencestuff, life life science stuff,
um, a sort of random fun one is.
Uh, there's some spots whereyou can like grab an ice cream
bar mid-trip, which is just likea neat, weird thing.
(20:28):
You know, tim didn't know aboutthose spots, yeah, you know it's
like in algonquin there's, forexample, there's not a ton of
spots, but uh, when I was youngit was always me and my dad, my
brother, were on trips and we doa lot of like 20, 23 day that
sort of thing trips and the waywe would do it is we would start
sort of down near highway 60 inAlgonquin and we do big loops
(20:51):
right in 20, whatever days, butvery roughly about halfway along
We'd stop at Brent, which issort of an old railway town in
the sort of top, middle of apark, and again, nowadays it's
more of a cottage community butthere is a little store there
and so it was a huge highlightof the trip.
(21:12):
When you go in you grab an icecream or a pop or bag of chips
or whatever, right After youknow 10 plus days.
So you know it's just littlememories, like I was saying
right, little tidbits along theway and then I've got swimming
spots and spring water andspring water again, you know I'm
(21:33):
sort of evoking memories as I'mtalking, right, but I remember
sort of plenty of times whereit's like August and it's like
30 something degrees out and youyou take your Nalgene and you
fill it with spring water andthat thing like frosts up.
You know there's nothing better, right, and we're almost on
(21:53):
this list.
But there's, especially inKillarney there's some super
clear lakes, of course,waterfalls fishing, so in a
sense, you know there'ssomething for everyone, right?
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Absolutely Well, as you said, like it just adds that
extra layer.
I would come back from a tripand then, if I saw the map after
that, I was like I could haveseen that waterfall.
I paddled right by there.
I didn't even know it was there, I'd be, so I'd feel so cheated
.
So I so appreciate that I won'tfeel cheated now.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
Oh, it's funny because I've done the same thing
, right, because, again, I'dmentioned on these new maps the
Chlorine and French River.
It was a bunch of additionalpoints of interest.
There's both more types, butthere's more quantity too, right
?
And so I've gone through thatexact same thing.
It's like you've been to aplace and then, after you read
(22:48):
online or look at some old mapor whatever, you're like, oh,
turns out, right around thecorner was a waterfall, historic
ruins, whatever, right.
But in a sense then you have anexcuse to go back, right, as if
you needed one.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Yeah, Tim doesn't need any more excuses.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Well, but I now have an excuse to buy more maps.
Thanks, Jeff.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
But you know it's also it's kind of fun because
you know I'm in the same boat asyou, right, like you know, you
might look at the map and say,oh, there's this new thing.
Well, in some fashion, I I findsome new thing, right, not
looking at my own map, but youknow, again it could just be
somebody talking about it onlineor emailing it in or whatever,
and so it is kind of neat.
You're going back to this placeyou've been before and you look
(23:29):
around this other corner andlike ta-da, you know there's a,
there's an interesting point.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Do Do you get you said email it in?
Do people reach out and say,hey, I found this cool thing and
I thought I'd let you know, orI had this thought about
something that I didn't see onyour map or something that I
liked.
Like, how does feedback workfor you?
Do you get a decent amount ofit and is it engaging?
(23:58):
Is it good stuff?
Speaker 3 (23:59):
Yeah, oh, excellent question.
Yeah, no, I mean it isextremely useful, right, I
certainly do get a good amount,and more is always better.
So you know, person watchingthis.
Feel free to email me, jeff, atmassbyjeffcom.
But yeah, I mean in terms ofpoints of interest and other
(24:21):
things too.
The way I always pitch it in asense is I've spent 700 and
something days paddling, and soa lot of people will ask me
about Algonquin how much ofAlgonquin have I done?
And I've done maybe 70%.
And again, that pretty muchextends to the other parks too,
like Wharf Highlands and MassSaga and French River and
(24:43):
Chlorny.
It's similar Less days in thoseplaces, but similar sort of you
know amount of exploring.
But even then, you know, there'splaces that I haven't been in
10 years, and so having peoplewrite it and say, hey, this
changed is extremely useful.
Actually, one, for example, onthe new colony map is there's a
(25:03):
lake there, pike Lake, whichessentially it was like a big
pond, and there's a sort of longstretch of narrow lake coming
off of it.
Well, that's how it used to beit was, I think, 2023, there was
like a massive beaver damholding up the lake.
That blew, and, and so now theeastern two-thirds of the lake,
the sort of narrow bit, is now acreek that's a few inches deep.
(25:26):
So I've been to Pike Lake, I'vebeen back since then, and
that's a pretty big thing.
So it went from being a nice,easy, pedalable lake to a mud
puddle, certainly on that side.
So that sort of info is great.
And even, you know, again, likewe were talking about earlier,
to sort of make the connection,uh, you know the portages and uh
(25:50):
, uh, you're talking about uh,sort of trail condition, right,
well, that's an example ofsomething that, uh, I honestly
hadn't thought of someone elsebrought up.
I use the pedophile example.
That was their example and uh,it's like, well, that's a good
point, right, um, and they caneven just be things where the
(26:11):
stuff that is super clear to me.
I mean, that's the thing.
I make the map, so I know whatI'm saying, right.
And then you know, people willwrite in and say I don't get it
and that's that's great whenpeople say that, because, even
if they're not explicitly sayingthat's confusing, that's great
when people say that, because,even if they're not explicitly
saying that's confusing, that'swhat they're saying right.
Again, like I talked about theidea, I'm trying to put my ideas
and the symbols and colors andwhatever put on the map and
(26:33):
they're trying to decode it.
Well, if they don't get it,that's a sign.
So, yeah, I mean, there'snothing that could be more
useful than people writing in,and the map certainly would not
be what it is without that cool.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
I, I will.
I will add to it in a in apositive sense.
The one of the one of thethings I like most about your
maps is is that snapshot, likeyou can look at it and and
through osmosis, like justtaking a ton of information,
right out of the gate right, um,which makes so.
(27:06):
So our eldest is my, my uhpaddling partner for the most
part, and if I spend a lot oftime looking at a map when we're
in the canoe, he gets unhappybecause he's the only one that's
paddling.
I'm looking at a map so if Ican go click, okay, got it,
we're.
We're up and around the bendhere for this.
There's where the portage is,whatever, because it's all laid
(27:27):
out for me.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
He likes it better when we're traveling with your
maps, just saying no, I mean andI think that's very practical,
because that situation I've beenon the other side of that when
I was the one paddling and dad'sgetting the map You're like I
want to go, but you know, youknow, I just imagine.
You know it's pouring rain out,you know it's windy.
(27:53):
You're like bouncing up anddown the boat, you're like I
want to get to the campsite andso again like to your point.
The worst thing is you'retrying to like look at this and
decode, like where are we?
What's going on?
So it, you know, it's so key tolook at the map, figure it.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
We want to figure out and go, you know yeah, agreed,
agreed, and and my, mykryptonite is scale I simply, I,
my brain just won't.
I'm looking at a map and I gowell, it's got to be right there
.
It's not, it's 20 miles in thatdirection, or whatever, or this
(28:28):
bay.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
This bay looks like it's that size, but it's
actually it's not.
This is not the right bay.
This is the next bay over thatwe want, so yeah I'm looking
forward to seeing seeing larger.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
If you're, if you know, if you 50 percent, yeah,
that's.
That's going to make my lifeway better, which will make the
big kids life way better as wellyeah, no, I mean, I love the
zoom right and uh, you know it'salways.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
Honestly, it's just about uh, I wish I could go even
more, but it's something likecalarney and I I don't want to
have more than one mat forcalarney.
Uh, french river, certainly Idon't want to have more than the
two I already have, but that'swhere the little tricks like the
double sliding, whatever reallyhelped that.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
Yeah, I like that idea.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
And did you choose these particular locations?
Because they're your favorites,because they're the most
popular, they're the most indemand.
How did you choose which onesto map?
Speaker 3 (29:21):
That's a really good question.
It's a mix of both and it'sfunny because, like the irony in
a sense is, I love going placespeople don't want to go, but of
course those don't make forpopular maps.
But it works out because youknow, if you take a place like
Algonquin or honestly evenKillarney, there's going to be
(29:42):
places that are busier andthere's going to be places that
are less busy.
Certainly, I think there's moreless busy places in Ogonkwa
just because it's a bigger place.
So if you want to put the timeand effort to sort of get to the
middle or other little corners,you can certainly get away from
people.
But it applies to Killarney too.
And again to connect back towhat we were talking about
(30:05):
earlier, you know about rootdifficulties and stuff.
There's always going to be someof those, you know, sketchy,
bushwhacky things or just harderroots.
So, to answer your question,there certainly is an element of
places I want to go, places Iwant to check out, but it
certainly is there.
You know I I'm picking placesthat, uh, I know.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
ultimately, I can tell them that yeah, well, yeah,
business plan has to play intoit.
Uh, I'm very glad you've donethe ones that you have done
because they're they'redefinitely my favorite parks,
like I love clarity, algonquin.
We do kawartha islandsliterally every fall.
Uh, we've done the massasauganow, so that was a another good
(30:49):
one.
We've done the french.
I see, I see tomogami in myfuture.
I've.
Actually, when I discoveredthat you had a digital one, I
started looking at routes yeah,yeah it was totally accidental.
I didn't mean to go looking.
I saw it and then, two hourslater, it's like I already have
a whole bunch of trips plannedthis year but there's next year,
(31:09):
so never too early startplanning.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
It's not exactly, and that's where you know one of
the fun things.
Oh sorry no, no, no, no, goahead I'd say one of the fun
things about, uh, doing each ofthe maps is it certainly there's
a lot of similarity, right,like you know, you're paddling,
you're camping at campsites,there's portages, but there
certainly are little differencestoo, and so it's really
(31:35):
interesting going to a new placeand sort of trying to
understand it.
In a sense it's littleintricacies and whatever, and so
, like talking about tobogganing, I remember there's sort of new
things that I've neverexperienced, nothing huge in a
sense, but little things.
Like it's among me, some of theportages are cut more narrower.
(31:57):
That can be more challengingwhen you're carrying the canoe.
There's certainly spots you'rewalking and suddenly the canoe
is stuck.
And then you know, from amapping point of view, one of
the little interestingchallenges was the tomogony.
It's sort of this network ofsmall little parks and crown
land right and conservationreserves and that sort of thing.
So there's maybe I'm justguessing off the top of my head
(32:17):
you know, let's say there's 12little parks and different parks
have different rules.
You know some of them you haveto have like a permit for
camping.
Uh, some of them you don't,some of them you might bump into
motorboats, some of them youmight not, and so, you know, for
something like algonquin, uh, Ididn't quite have to worry
about that because there's onebig park and the rules are the
(32:38):
same, and you know, easy peasy.
But for tomogami, I essentiallyhad to come up with a way of how
do I communicate thisinformation.
You know the person using themap needs this and so, uh, it's
interesting, you know, from ayou know challenge of how do you
present this perspective.
But I also find that, um, thenyou, you end up learning.
(32:59):
When you learn these things,you take that information and
you bring it back to the othermaps and then it improves them
too.
Right, because in a sense it'sa sort of thing that you, you
could get away with doing a jobon, because it didn't matter
quite as much.
But certainly when you do abetter job of communicating
these things well, it's easierto read, easier to understand
(33:22):
and, uh, you know, a lot oftimes again, it's just something
I didn't think about.
For algonquin, um, you know,sort of the different rules and
parks, because there arecertainly other little parks
around the periphery ofalgonquin.
I show, um, but it's just again, it's easy to sort of hand wave
that away when it's not thefocus of the map and, uh uh,
something like tomogami hasforced me to uh uh uh, do a
(33:45):
better job.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
So yeah, yeah, Good point it's.
It's funny you mentioned the.
You know you, you run into twomotorboats and stuff.
It took me, it took me agesFeel.
It feels like it took me yearsand years to figure out that
pretty much every access pointyou're going to run into
motorboats If you have to do aportage in or two portages in
before you go.
Okay, now I'm away from thoseguys, like I didn't.
(34:07):
I didn't realize that literallyall the parks have cottages and
stuff around the periphery ofthe park itself.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
I have no idea yeah, yeah, and even on crown land too
you face this sort of stuff andit's it's uh.
It took me even longer tounderstand because at least in a
park it's kind of spelled outmotorboats here, no, motorboats
here, uh, with crown land it'slike well, they're allowed
(34:37):
everywhere.
But you realize over time it'skind of it's something you're
kind of getting at, which isthey physically can't get
everywhere.
So, for example, maybe there'sa lake and then there's a river.
If you have a waterfall inbetween, they're not going
upstream Right yeah, so yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Yeah, interesting.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Yeah.
How to escape motorboats yes.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
There's a book, there's Kevin's next book.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
There you go, it just writes itself.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
Being the wonderful storyteller that you are, you
regaled us with a 31-day trip.
You were young, you were likeend of high school sort of deal.
It was awesome.
Tell us another trip justbecause we like stories.
That's a thing for us.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
Oh, I guess I'll tell you about last spring's trip.
Okay, cool, yeah, so it was meand two other guys and again,
you know I was talking aboutthose root difficulty colors
before right, the yellow, orangeand red, and then kind of the
pencil stuff.
So we were off in the pencilland of you know extreme
(35:52):
adventure and so, uh, what we'vedone last spring, this is
algonquin, the very bottom partof the park, okay, and so if you
look at a map, my map, um,you'll see that there's these
long, uh, two kilometer ish,portages, little pond, uh long,
uh long, two kilometer portage,little pond, and they're all.
All the portages are in redCause.
It kind of, you know, prettyrough, uh, but it's, it's just
one way trip.
And uh, I was looking at themap, right Obviously, and uh,
(36:20):
one of the features I added tothe Ivankan map is the creeks on
the map.
The width of the creek on themap correlates the width of the
creek in real life.
So if it's bigger in real life,bigger on the map, right, and
so that got sort of the wheelsturning and so we came up with
this idea of doing a loop.
(36:41):
So we'd start by going throughthat long series of stuff in the
park.
But rather than going back up,the same thing we would, what do
we do?
So we got to this lake calledScorch Lake, camped there, and
from there there was a road,sort of a minor road that you go
(37:03):
two kilometers.
You meet up with this moremajor road, walk another two
kilometers, you get to this lakecalled Lost Water Lake and from
there again, this is where I'dseen this wide creek.
That was sort of theinspiration.
So we put in at Lost Water Lake, paddle, paddle, paddle for a
(37:24):
few kilometers.
And I mean, the one thing isyou know the width, you never
know the depth, right?
So you're always doing thisfingers crossed thing.
But we were super lucky.
The first again like four-ishkilometers or whatever was wide
and deep.
It was exactly what you'rehoping for.
So that was very, very cool.
(37:46):
As you're paddling along,you're wondering when's the last
time someone was here, right,that's a good thing.
And we got to a spot where Iknew there was going to be some
rapids.
There's another road nearby, soit was okay, we'll connect up
to this road, which we did, andour plan from there.
(38:07):
This is where things didn'tquite go as planned, right, the
adventure struck.
So at this point we were goingto this new road that we'd hit.
It kind of paralleled the creekfor the next, let's say, two
kilometers, and we'd seen onsort of satellite imagery that
(38:29):
it looked very bushy in there,right Like alder and that sort
of thing where you know you'refighting through the bushes.
So we're like, okay, what we'regoing to do is we're going to
walk two kilometers along thisroad.
That should get us around theworst of it, We'll put in, we'll
paddle from there and so we getready to portage road that
should get us around, the worstof it, we'll put in, we'll
puddle from there and so, um, weget ready to portage, we eat
some snacks or whatever, andlike 50 meters later the bridge
(38:51):
is out and this is spring, soyou know you got water just
pouring down, pouring down.
So challenge number one was wehad to sort of push back around
and find a spot where you cross.
Did that?
Then you walk the twokilometers and you're just
walking at the road, so it's nottoo bad.
Push right down to the creekand of course we did not miss
(39:13):
all the alder.
Two kilometers of alder aheadof us, turns out.
So we skipped two.
We had two more.
So we're paddling and pushingthrough us I mentioned it was me
and two other guys.
So me and one other guy were ina tandem canoe.
The other guy was in a solo andhe had like a double-bladed
paddle so he couldn't even liftthe paddle.
(39:34):
Every time he tried to lift ithe would get caught up and he's
saying what are we doing here,right?
So eventually we said, screwthis, it was bushwhacked for
another kilometer or so and gotaround it.
And that was that.
The funny thing was that whenwe that spot where I mentioned
the bridge was out, if we'd justgone the other way on the road,
(39:55):
about two kilometers, we wouldhave been to the exact same spot
where we'd, you know,bushwhacked and fought through
and everything, and so it wasjust kind of funny.
But hey, we made it, we'realive, that's good.
And uh, we made a loop wherethere was no loop.
So you know, I I would totallydo that again, just going the
other way the mertree loop.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
Yeah, exactly, exactly so you know fun yeah,
well, sure, type Type two fun.
It's funny when people get into.
Every time I hear bushwhackalder comes up as well.
It's always you know.
It's like, oh, and you know,scratch that crap out of me.
(40:42):
And oh, man, it took me days toget through there.
Oh, part of kevin callan'spresentation uh, I can't
remember which one, maybe maybethe toronto outdoor adventure
show.
He was talking about a tripthat he and andy did way, way,
way north and it took themsomething like some ridiculous,
(41:04):
like six days to go fourkilometers, which is yeah,
that's insane.
Man like and and alder was aword he kept kept using, so yeah
, that's where it's always funny.
Speaker 3 (41:16):
You'll see the odd person on facebook or whatever
saying hey, can I like skip thattwo kilometer portage and take
the creek?
I guess they're imagining, youknow they don't like portaging,
so let's just not do that.
And yeah, the portage existsfor a reason it is so much
easier it is so much easier yeah, why?
Speaker 2 (41:35):
why would somebody unload everything you know and
love it for two kilometers ifthey didn't have to.
Speaker 3 (41:41):
So just saying yeah, I mean, that's a random tangent,
but um, I remember the firsttime I was doing crown land, you
know uh, canoeing stuff it waslike where's the portage going
to be?
That's exactly what you'resaying.
People hate portages, so it isliterally the last place it
could possibly be yep um chrisprose.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
Uh said if you, if you don't know where the portage
is, look around, look for thelowest point.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
That's probably where the portage is gonna be yeah,
exactly, and I've done that morethan once and, you know, ended
up within you know, 100 meters,or whatever, of wherever it is.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
That's there's a good one and that's the thing.
Speaker 3 (42:21):
The one thing that unites paddlers, or one of the
things that unites paddlers, isour collective hate of portages
yeah, hate.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
Hate's not too strong a word there um otherwise we'd
be backpackers.
So yeah, I'd be a hiker, but II hate hiking.
So I don't hate hiking, I justrather I'd rather be exactly who
carries the stuff, not meexactly, exactly sure sorry, I
will edit around all this stuff,don't worry about it no problem
(42:52):
, yeah so, yeah.
Speaker 3 (42:55):
so certainly, in the past I haven't really done a lot
of updates to digital versions.
There's certainly something Iwant to do more going forward,
uh, but right now my workflowisn't really set up for it,
right.
Right, it really is designedfor you build up this big map
over many months, and then itactually takes like a couple
(43:15):
days to get digital sort ofstuff set up, and so that's why
it's like, oh, it would be greatto make this one little fix or
change or whatever.
But then there's always otherprojects, and so it's like, yeah
, I'll get to that at some point, and it doesn't happen.
So many hours in the dayprojects, and so it's like, yeah
, I'll get to that at some pointand it doesn't happen, uh, but
going forward exactly, no,exactly right, because you know
people say, well, what about newmaps?
(43:36):
And you're like, yeah, I shoulddo that.
Like you gotta do updates toother maps and there's always
new stuff to be done, right, um,but, uh, you know, this is this
is something I really want tobe able to do more, and so one
of my next next projects, sortof after the homochomy, is I
want to work on changing, then,how I build the maps to make a
(43:57):
lot easier, to make morefrequent updates, at least to
the digital version.
So, um, yeah, it's kind ofexciting to be able to do that,
but that's, that's in the cardsso with the printed maps, people
get a digital copy of the mapas well, right?
yeah, exactly, multiple versionsof that, digital as well, right
yeah, no, exactly right,because so I figure, once
(44:19):
somebody buys the map, right,really, it's all the time and
effort whatever that I've putinto it.
That's what you're paying for.
And then I want you to be ableto use it in as many ways as
possible.
I've included as many formatsas I can possibly think of.
Right now there's five.
There is a JPEG which is sortof for computer.
You can blow it up.
You can even print blowups.
(44:40):
It's super high quality, forthat exact reason, so you can do
a blowup of your trip.
There's an Avenza Maps versionfor iPhone and Android.
That's fun and it has a GPSsort of capabilities.
So you know you're the blue dotin the map and, uh, that can be
handy again for the age old,like, is this the bay or is that
bay, right?
Um, there's a Garmin GPSversion.
(45:03):
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Uh, there's the Garmin GPSversion same sort of deal.
Um, there's the garmin gpsversion same sort of deal.
Um, there's a google earthversion and that's super cool
because it's you get this like3d view on the world.
Um, so again, especially forthe, the bushwhacky explory
stuff, I've I've used thatbefore sort of plot out where
(45:24):
we're gonna go, because, again,you're talking about hills and
and valleys, and you know, uh, Iguess we're talking about that
in the context of existingportages, but even bushraking,
it's some of the same logic,right?
So, yeah, using the 3D GoogleEarth is super handy for that.
And finally, there's a moretechnical file called GeoTIFF,
(45:46):
but essentially that allowssomebody who has some very
specific need.
You can take this GeoTIFF andyou can load it into essentially
any mapping program.
So, even if it's something thatI haven't thought of or doesn't
even exist yet, that file, ifyou're technically minded, you
can use for anything.
Speaker 2 (46:05):
Cool.
Where can people get all thesemaps from?
Speaker 3 (46:08):
Oh yes, great question.
Where can people get all thesemaps from?
Oh yes, great question.
So the easiest way probably isto go to my website, which is
mapsbyjeffcom.
Oh, I got mapsbyjeff, so stabthe com.
But they're also available atmost outdoor stores and
outfitters, right?
So in Killarney you got, likeKillarney Outfitters and the
(46:32):
Wichitaodge, you know, probablyprobably an outdoor store near
you.
Speaker 1 (46:34):
Very cool.
That's it for us for today.
Thank you so much to JeffMcMurtry from Maps by Jeff for
joining us today and for joiningus the second time.
So please do listen to hisfirst episode and then you can
listen to the second episode, orlisten to him the other way
around.
You can do whatever order youwant.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
And go out and buy his new maps and then new maps
again in July.
You can spend money all year.
Speaker 1 (46:56):
Get the maps.
Tim will attest that you canspend money all year.
Speaker 3 (47:03):
Indeed.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
And please do listen to us again sometime soon.
You can reach out to us anytimeyou want to.
We're at hi atsupergoodcampaigncom.
That's hi at supergoodcamp, andplease do listen to us again
sometime soon.
You can reach out to us anytimeyou want to.
We're at hi atsupergoodcampingcom.
That's hi atsupergoodcampingcom, and we're
on all the social media.
Please do check us out thereand we'll talk to you again soon
.
Bye, bye, bye.
Hello and good day.
Hey, welcome to the Super GoodCamping Podcast.
My name is Pamela.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
I'm Tim.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
And we are from supergoodcampingcom.
We're here because we are on amission to inspire other people
to get outside and enjoy campingadventures such as we have as a
family.
Today's guest is a gentleman wehad the pleasure to chat with
just over a year ago.
Feel free to go back and listento that episode.
He loves to camp, particularlyvia canoe, and he is excellent
(00:27):
at his chosen profession.
Please welcome our Vigor deDeity in the Ontario backcountry
community, jeff McMurtry.
Of Maps by Jeff Yay welcome.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Good morning.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Good morning.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Thanks for stopping by, man.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Yeah, I love it.
What a beautiful Sunday morning.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
So the first thing I would like to do is correct an
oops that we made last time, atleast I'm pretty sure wrecked
and oops that we made last time,at least I'm pretty sure I.
We talked about maps and, andin particular you had spanky new
algonquin, the, the purple ones, but I don't think we listed
all the parks that you havemapped.
Do me a favor, tell us, tell uswhat you've mapped out before
(00:58):
yeah, yeah, I mean.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
So, as you're saying, it's been a long time, lots of
maps, uh.
So, as you said, there's abronco to start.
And then I've got Killarney.
That was, I think, the secondplace I ever did.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
I've got French River , kortha Highlands, massasauga
and from a long time ago,tamagami, right.
Okay, so there's my secondquestion.
That's sort of what tweaked inmy brain, because I didn't
realize you had a Tamagami map.
It's digital.
(01:29):
Why is it only digital?
Out of curiosity, oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
No good question.
So when I first had released itthere were waterproof printed
copies too, but unfortunatelythat was kind of around the time
I had some business partnerproblems, had to leave Jeff's
Maps that's where I had createdthem at that time.
After that, I still owned, Icame to understand I still owned
the copyright to the map, but Ididn't have any more waterproof
(01:54):
ones around.
Some actually exciting news isthat this summer there should be
some new waterproof ones.
I'm doing some updates andcorrections and that sort of
thing.
Again, I don't have a firmtimeline.
That's kind of what I'mactually about to start working
on, but July-ish.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
Looking forward to it .
That's excellent.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
As you were listing the different ones.
I know him and his eyes likecheck, check, check oh need that
one Check.
Check.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Yeah, very true, because him in it's how he's
like check, check, check.
Oh, need that one.
Yeah, very true, because I do,I have, I have everything except
the tomogami one and I was Iwas looking at it going 2014.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
I wonder if he's gonna update that yeah, no, I
mean, it's been something I wantto do for a long time and you
know there's just always so manyprojects.
So for all those years it wasthe Algonquin one, and then you
know I've been working onupdating, like the Killarney and
stuff, to add some of thosefeatures I'd added a year ago,
and so you know that's where theTomogami map was sort of on the
(02:58):
list for after.
So here we are, you know.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Sweet, sweet.
So we've got the tomogamy mapto look forward to what?
And if you're tweaking otherones, what?
Give us all the news?
What's what's happening?
What's happening with yourstuff, man?
Speaker 3 (03:16):
yeah, no, hey, um, so uh, I've got uh coming out very
soon a new calorni map as wellas west River.
So I've had both those for anumber of years.
But I've added the features Iadded to Algonquin First, to
these guys.
So I've got things like for theportages there's a little side
view showing where the hills are.
I've got more points ofinterest.
(03:38):
I've zoomed them in about 50%.
So I've done that withAlgonquin first, where
essentially, rather than havingthe map on a single side and a
bunch of text on the back, nowI've got a map on both sides.
So I've done that for theKillarney and French River too.
And really especially, I guesswith that extra zoom it's both
allowed me to sort of spacethings out a bit, so stuff isn't
(04:00):
quite as crammed in, but alsoit's, let me add, a lot more
detail, a lot more informationthat otherwise there wasn't
space for.
So that's pretty exciting.
And then on top of the Killarneyand the West French River I've
also now got an East FrenchRiver map, so essentially the
West French River.
(04:20):
One had gone from Killarney inparticular there's Point Grandin
, kind of on Georgian Bay, sothey'd gone from there to
roughly Highway 69, just alittle bit past that, and so
then the East French Riverclicks into that.
It goes from essentiallyHighway 69 all the way up to
Lake Nipissing, and so then itcovers the whole French River.
(04:41):
And actually, if you do end upgetting all three maps, you get
like digitally you get a singlefile covering Killarney and then
the whole French River.
And actually, if you do end upgetting all three maps, you get
like digitally you get a singlefile covering Killarney and then
the whole French River.
So you're going all the wayfrom Lake Huron across the whole
Northern Georgian Bay and thenup to Lake Nipissing.
So yeah, that's the currentvery exciting thing.
I had just finished that aswe're recording.
(05:02):
It's at the printer right nowand I think when this is
released it'll be pretty darnclose.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Sweet, sweet.
I have to make a point ofgiving a shout out to, or give a
shout to, alex and Jess.
They've got sorry Tents andTimber.
Yeah, we've been talking aboutdoing a trip together and one of
the things they're trying tocombine it into cause they've
got a.
They've got a block of timethat they can.
(05:30):
They can get out and paddle.
They were talking about doingthe French river from Nipissing
and I pulled out my French rivermap and went oh, it doesn't go
all the way Now.
Now, now they can spend moneyand they can plan it better.
That's awesome.
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
So one question I had was when you're mapping, is it
every single inch of the areathat you're mapping, or are
there parts where you're likethis is really too rough, it
doesn't really have anywhere forpeople to go, or it's a
protected area, or it's asensitive area we don't really
want people to be traversingaround in there, is it?
Do you kind of pick and choosehow much detail you go into in
(06:13):
certain areas or you just thisis the whole thing oh, that's a
really good question.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Um, you know, I am certainly receptive to concerns
about particular spots or issues, but, uh, speaking again, other
than, I guess, very, very, veryparticular situations, it would
really just be, you know, addall the info this right yeah, um
(06:38):
, yeah yeah, yeah, just so.
You want people to know,everywhere where they're going
out, the options of places to goyeah, I mean, that's where I
guess kind of an add on to thatis one of the things I've
learned over time is.
Well, in a sense it's obvious,right, but different people have
different things.
They want to experiencedifferent sort of levels of pain
(06:59):
they're willing to go throughto get there, through to get
there.
And you know the maps I make,they're certainly very paddling,
specific, right, so they're notfor, you know, snowmobiling or
ATVing or that sort of thing,but within the paddling realm I
certainly do try to covereverything from maybe what a
first timer might want to do allthe way up to somebody who's
(07:21):
into bushwhacking and exploringoff trail.
And so that certainly is achallenge in terms of presenting
the information to make surethat, again, like you know, the
new person or the person who'slooking for a nice relaxing trip
isn't finding themselvesbushwhacking through the middle
of nowhere and so on.
(07:42):
Some of the previous maps, theUnlostify ones, I'd first added
these color-coded rootdifficulties, right, so there
was yellow, orange and red andwhite as well for sort of
first-timer stuff, but the ideabeing that it was typical,
challenging, very difficult, andone of the things I found at
(08:04):
one point is that some peopleyou know, had a different
understanding of what does verydifficult mean.
Right, because when I had donethat, when I added that, first I
thought, oh, this is great,right, because I can show stuff
that maybe some people don'twant to do Because, see, it says
right there very difficult inred, right.
But yeah, like I said, somepeople have a different
(08:25):
understanding of very difficultand I guess, in particular, I
really remember there was areview of the Kortha Highlands
map, an old version, on the MECwebsite, and this person I feel
so bad for them, right, but thisperson was very upset because
they had done one of these red,very difficult routes and I
(08:45):
guess, to put it mildly, it wasnot what they were hoping for,
because they had done one ofthese red, very difficult routes
and I guess, to put it mildly,it was not what they were hoping
for, right, and it was funny,right, because I'm like, oh,
I've had friends who've donethis, in particular, brad
Jennings explored that country.
He had done that, had a lot offun, and then a couple other
people have done it, but again,it's a mindset thing, right, and
(09:07):
so what I'd done, I guess, tosort of address that is,
starting with the Algonquin maps.
I decided well, again, I stillwant to show these routes
because I enjoy them, some otherpeople enjoy them, but again,
you want to make sure that theright people are doing them.
So rather than putting them asred, I decided to show them as
like penciled in and there's bigwarnings on them saying you
(09:33):
know, this is really tough andyou probably shouldn't do this
Right.
And so if somebody wants to doit, great, they can.
But you know they've beenwarned and I guess the key of
the pencil sort of style look isit doesn't look like the other
roots.
So there still are the yellow,orange and red.
But essentially, if you'redoing one of those normal routes
, there's degrees of pain,degrees of difficulty, but
there's still a trail right andyou don't have to know anything
(09:54):
about.
You know bushwhacking orwhitewater or whatever right, if
you put one foot in front ofthe other, you will get there.
So I thought that was kind ofan interesting sort of problem.
And certainly since I'd donethat with Yogantham once first.
Now on these new ones, I'vecertainly not heard of anybody
accidentally doing one of them.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Yeah, that's good and you're absolutely right,
different people, differentperspectives, but also, as like
I remember, I remember, you know, go go back a bunch of years,
um, that, uh, what, what?
You know, if I, if I did one ofyour yellow routes, you know,
it might, might have been alittle bit of a challenge at the
(10:37):
time.
Now it's like I don't even, Idon't even think about it, other
than looking at that.
That's a four kilometer portage, maybe not, not not
particularly the interestputting that kind of miles on,
but as far as difficulty goes,it's like, yeah, I can do that
in my sleep.
So there's always that, there'sthat as you gain experience, it
changes your perception of thedifficulty of a route.
(10:59):
Yeah absolutely Cool and I andjust for the record, I think the
side profile thing that you'vegot for portages is genius.
I can't believe that that neveroccurred before.
Like it's just, it's that.
So you look at it, you goperfect, I can do that and I
know where I'm going to run intotrouble, whatever.
(11:19):
That's excellent.
Speaker 3 (11:21):
Yeah, I mean that was I really enjoy, I guess,
designing new features becausesomething like that.
Like you're saying, right, likeI didn't go and find it on some
other map and say, hey, that'sa great idea, I should do that
here, right, you know you got tofigure out, okay, what's.
What's the sort of questionsomebody is asking, right, so
(11:42):
people obviously ask you know,hey, is this a flat portage, is
this a steep portage?
That sort of thing.
And at least my perspectivegoing into it was that you know,
a long portage, sure it's long,but you can always take breaks,
right, but a steep portage, itcan be short and it can be the
sort of thing that's burned intoyour mind because you know
(12:05):
you're trying to walk up thisthing, the front of your canoe
is like banging into the trailin front of you.
There's no spot to take a breakbecause you're, you know you're
going up the incline.
And so the question then comesdown to like, okay, so this is,
you know you want to show thisto people, but how do you do it?
Right, how do you make sure?
Cause they're little, littleportage graphs right on the map
(12:26):
there, I don't know, like in noteven an inch right, maybe a
centimeter and a half by acentimeter.
So how do you make something sosmall but still make sure that
people can read that maybe inbad lighting conditions,
whatever and understand you knowwhat they're going to be up
against?
So there's all sorts of littledesign stuff in there to sort of
(12:47):
make that happen.
But yeah, I certainly enjoythat challenge.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Well, and is there an indication of the like?
As you said?
Like there's the steepness, butthere's also the quality of
what you're walking on.
Is it?
Is it a rock garden that you'rewalking through?
Is it a?
Is it just a flat like groundsomebody has walked through many
times?
Like, is there a way toindicate that?
Speaker 3 (13:09):
Oh, that's a great question.
No, that's something that's Idon't do right now and I've been
like thinking about and thequestion that I have to figure
out is how do you, how do you, Iguess, categorize that?
But it is very valid, right?
So this has come up once ortwice.
Where a Gawkin, for exampleright, that's where I'm most
familiar, but sort of theNortheast side of the park along
(13:31):
the Padua river, there are anumber of portages where you're
walking over this like shalystuff, like small rocks, and
every time you take a stepyou're on sort of the side of a
hill at times.
So every time you take a step,you know the gravelly stuff
underneath your feet, you knowmoves and you hear it rolling
(13:52):
downhill and whatever, andcertainly that is a lot more
challenging than just a dirtpath.
So, yeah, I mean, I thinkthat's something I definitely
want to add and it's simply amatter of figuring out, like,
what are the categories or howdo you present that in a
digestible way?
But it's a very valid point.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Yeah, I just that made me just think about yeah
that made me just think aboutcamper Christina.
Sucky muck is a phrase that sheuses, right, and I've been
places that she's been, but I'vedone them in a dry season.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
No, sucky muck very how do you put, yeah, how do you
put that on a map to go?
Speaker 2 (14:37):
this is.
It's really challenging ifyou're there in may because it's
it's wet as all get out.
You know you're up to the topof your boots.
You're probably going to getyour boots sucked right off of
your feet, um, but in july, notso much yeah, no, I mean, that's
where sometimes I'll add notesfor that sort of stuff.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
But that certainly is the challenge, right?
Yeah, and especially, um, youknow, to your point, I'd love to
do it in a more holistic way,right?
Speaker 2 (15:03):
um, so, yeah, it's very much on my mind yeah, must,
must, must suck to wake up attwo o'clock in the morning
dreaming about maps or goingright.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Oh, how can I add that?
How can I make this look likethat?
Speaker 3 (15:18):
You know I find that a lot of fun, sort of working on
the same project for a longtime, like now it's been.
I started this thing like 19years ago.
I was like late high school,early university.
But the reason I find it a lotof fun is because, almost to
(15:42):
your point, it's always neat tobe figuring out how can I do
better at this, what are againbetter ways I can convey this
information.
Sometimes it can be, you know,figuring out how do you
categorize things like we'retalking about.
Sometimes it can be, you know,just figuring out, like what
should the icon look like?
Because ideally you knowthere's the map legend
explaining everything, butideally you want things to be as
explanatory as possible.
Snapshot.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
Exactly, exactly, exactly.
So how do you sort of again, Ihave ideas of what I'm trying to
communicate in my head.
I try to, you know, put theminto these symbols and colors
and icons and, you know,transmit that to the person on
the other end.
And so, you know, sometimesthat works really well.
Sometimes there can beconfusion and that's where,
again, you're always trying toto think about how can I improve
(16:26):
.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
Then, you know, well, yeah, and so, speaking of that,
like all the things that are onyour maps, there's I mean,
there's the topography, as timsaid, of the, of the portages,
there's points of interest, asyou said.
So there's a waterfall here andyou might want to alter your
route so that you can take inthe beauty of that waterfall.
But, yeah, just tell us aboutsome of the icons that are on
(16:48):
your maps.
Speaker 3 (16:50):
So, as you're saying, there's quite a variety of
stuff.
It's all the sort of bonus bitsalong the way.
You certainly have a fun tripif you didn't see this stuff.
But, um, again, to me it's likeyou know you're talking soaking
in the beauty of a waterfall,right, it really these points of
(17:10):
interest can add this extradimension to the trip, right,
sometimes that's where thespecial memories come from.
So, uh, yeah, I've got quite avariety.
I think there's like 20, 20 oddsort of types of points of
interest.
So, um, there's things in a sortof historic category, historic
category, uh, like old, oldranger cabins, uh, fire towers,
(17:33):
other sort of buildings andartifacts, a lot of logging
stuff from, you know, 120, 150years ago, that sort of era.
Um, you know painting spots,right, so you know, especially
in Killarney and and that sortof area, uh, but even in
Ogonquin and some other spotsyou've got, you know, the group
of seven did a lot of paintingand so there's a bunch of sort
(17:53):
of iconic paintings where youcan go to that spot, which is
kind of cool.
You know big cliffs and rockoutcrops, lookout points, I mean
that's where, again, especiallywith Killarney, right, it's got
these big mountains, the littlecloche mountains, and so you
(18:15):
get some amazing viewpoints.
What else have I got soold-growth forests, forest fire
sites Again, I was talking aboutFrench River.
There was a huge fire back in2018.
And, of course, in a sense,it's quite destructive, but fire
happens in nature, and so nowyou go back to the same areas
and you get to see that regrowthhappening, know, springing back
(18:38):
, and that transition from theburn forest to eventually what
will be, you know, big treesagain, many, many years from now
yeah, well, just to interjectuh oh yeah, our eldest and I um
did the french well, I don'tknow, maybe three years ago,
something like that, and weactually saw the end of the burn
(18:59):
.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
We're looking across at rocks and and blackened trees
, like it was.
It was wild to look at that andthen go green.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
Yeah, yeah, no, exactly right, and uh, you know,
to me, all these, these pointsof interest, they again, they
add that extra dimension to thetrip.
They help you, I think, in asense, understand the world
differently, right?
So, whether historic sites, youunderstand the people that have
come before you, or you knowearth science, life science,
(19:33):
again, to see the fire, likethat, it's something that I
think you can think about in avery academic sense like, oh,
it's a big.
I think you can think about ina very academic sense like, oh,
it's a big fire and thingshappen and there's, you know,
transitions that happen in termsof growth, whatever.
But it's another thing to standthere and be like, wow, that's
crazy, yeah, yeah absolutely itwas.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
It was pretty mind-blowing to just to just go
that that was the.
That's where it stopped burning.
It couldn't make the jump rightlike holy mackerel.
That's crazy.
Very yeah, exactly.
So sorry, sorry, continue on.
Speaker 3 (20:05):
No, no, no, I mean, you're sort of making the point
for me, but uh, again, I guess II'd even touched on that there
that there's some earth sciencestuff, life life science stuff,
um, a sort of random fun one is.
Uh, there's some spots whereyou can like grab an ice cream
bar mid-trip, which is just likea neat, weird thing.
(20:28):
You know, tim didn't know aboutthose spots, yeah, you know it's
like in algonquin there's, forexample, there's not a ton of
spots, but uh, when I was youngit was always me and my dad, my
brother, were on trips and we doa lot of like 20, 23 day that
sort of thing trips and the waywe would do it is we would start
sort of down near highway 60 inAlgonquin and we do big loops
(20:51):
right in 20, whatever days, butvery roughly about halfway along
We'd stop at Brent, which issort of an old railway town in
the sort of top, middle of apark, and again, nowadays it's
more of a cottage community butthere is a little store there
and so it was a huge highlightof the trip.
(21:12):
When you go in you grab an icecream or a pop or bag of chips
or whatever, right After youknow 10 plus days.
So you know it's just littlememories, like I was saying
right, little tidbits along theway and then I've got swimming
spots and spring water andspring water again, you know I'm
(21:33):
sort of evoking memories as I'mtalking, right, but I remember
sort of plenty of times whereit's like August and it's like
30 something degrees out and youyou take your Nalgene and you
fill it with spring water andthat thing like frosts up.
You know there's nothing better, right, and we're almost on
(21:53):
this list.
But there's, especially inKillarney there's some super
clear lakes, of course,waterfalls fishing, so in a
sense, you know there'ssomething for everyone, right?
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Absolutely Well, as you said, like it just adds that
extra layer.
I would come back from a tripand then, if I saw the map after
that, I was like I could haveseen that waterfall.
I paddled right by there.
I didn't even know it was there, I'd be, so I'd feel so cheated
.
So I so appreciate that I won'tfeel cheated now.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
Oh, it's funny because I've done the same thing
, right, because, again, I'dmentioned on these new maps the
Chlorine and French River.
It was a bunch of additionalpoints of interest.
There's both more types, butthere's more quantity too, right
?
And so I've gone through thatexact same thing.
It's like you've been to aplace and then, after you read
(22:48):
online or look at some old mapor whatever, you're like, oh,
turns out, right around thecorner was a waterfall, historic
ruins, whatever, right.
But in a sense then you have anexcuse to go back, right, as if
you needed one.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
Yeah, Tim doesn't need any more excuses.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
Well, but I now have an excuse to buy more maps.
Thanks, Jeff.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
But you know it's also it's kind of fun because
you know I'm in the same boat asyou, right, like you know, you
might look at the map and say,oh, there's this new thing.
Well, in some fashion, I I findsome new thing, right, not
looking at my own map, but youknow, again it could just be
somebody talking about it onlineor emailing it in or whatever,
and so it is kind of neat.
You're going back to this placeyou've been before and you look
(23:29):
around this other corner andlike ta-da, you know there's a,
there's an interesting point.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Do Do you get you said email it in?
Do people reach out and say,hey, I found this cool thing and
I thought I'd let you know, orI had this thought about
something that I didn't see onyour map or something that I
liked.
Like, how does feedback workfor you?
Do you get a decent amount ofit and is it engaging?
(23:58):
Is it good stuff?
Speaker 3 (23:59):
Yeah, oh, excellent question.
Yeah, no, I mean it isextremely useful, right, I
certainly do get a good amount,and more is always better.
So you know, person watchingthis.
Feel free to email me, jeff, atmassbyjeffcom.
But yeah, I mean in terms ofpoints of interest and other
(24:21):
things too.
The way I always pitch it in asense is I've spent 700 and
something days paddling, and soa lot of people will ask me
about Algonquin how much ofAlgonquin have I done?
And I've done maybe 70%.
And again, that pretty muchextends to the other parks too,
like Wharf Highlands and MassSaga and French River and
(24:43):
Chlorny.
It's similar Less days in thoseplaces, but similar sort of you
know amount of exploring.
But even then, you know, there'splaces that I haven't been in
10 years, and so having peoplewrite it and say, hey, this
changed is extremely useful.
Actually, one, for example, onthe new colony map is there's a
(25:03):
lake there, pike Lake, whichessentially it was like a big
pond, and there's a sort of longstretch of narrow lake coming
off of it.
Well, that's how it used to beit was, I think, 2023, there was
like a massive beaver damholding up the lake.
That blew, and, and so now theeastern two-thirds of the lake,
the sort of narrow bit, is now acreek that's a few inches deep.
(25:26):
So I've been to Pike Lake, I'vebeen back since then, and
that's a pretty big thing.
So it went from being a nice,easy, pedalable lake to a mud
puddle, certainly on that side.
So that sort of info is great.
And even, you know, again, likewe were talking about earlier,
to sort of make the connection,uh, you know the portages and uh
(25:50):
, uh, you're talking about uh,sort of trail condition, right,
well, that's an example ofsomething that, uh, I honestly
hadn't thought of someone elsebrought up.
I use the pedophile example.
That was their example and uh,it's like, well, that's a good
point, right, um, and they caneven just be things where the
(26:11):
stuff that is super clear to me.
I mean, that's the thing.
I make the map, so I know whatI'm saying, right.
And then you know, people willwrite in and say I don't get it
and that's that's great whenpeople say that, because, even
if they're not explicitly sayingthat's confusing, that's great
when people say that, because,even if they're not explicitly
saying that's confusing, that'swhat they're saying right.
Again, like I talked about theidea, I'm trying to put my ideas
and the symbols and colors andwhatever put on the map and
(26:33):
they're trying to decode it.
Well, if they don't get it,that's a sign.
So, yeah, I mean, there'snothing that could be more
useful than people writing in,and the map certainly would not
be what it is without that cool.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
I, I will.
I will add to it in a in apositive sense.
The one of the one of thethings I like most about your
maps is is that snapshot, likeyou can look at it and and
through osmosis, like justtaking a ton of information,
right out of the gate right, um,which makes so.
(27:06):
So our eldest is my, my uhpaddling partner for the most
part, and if I spend a lot oftime looking at a map when we're
in the canoe, he gets unhappybecause he's the only one that's
paddling.
I'm looking at a map so if Ican go click, okay, got it,
we're.
We're up and around the bendhere for this.
There's where the portage is,whatever, because it's all laid
(27:27):
out for me.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
He likes it better when we're traveling with your
maps, just saying no, I mean andI think that's very practical,
because that situation I've beenon the other side of that when
I was the one paddling and dad'sgetting the map You're like I
want to go, but you know, youknow, I just imagine.
You know it's pouring rain out,you know it's windy.
(27:53):
You're like bouncing up anddown the boat, you're like I
want to get to the campsite andso again like to your point.
The worst thing is you'retrying to like look at this and
decode, like where are we?
What's going on?
So it, you know, it's so key tolook at the map, figure it.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
We want to figure out and go, you know yeah, agreed,
agreed, and and my, mykryptonite is scale I simply, I,
my brain just won't.
I'm looking at a map and I gowell, it's got to be right there
.
It's not, it's 20 miles in thatdirection, or whatever, or this
(28:28):
bay.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
This bay looks like it's that size, but it's
actually it's not.
This is not the right bay.
This is the next bay over thatwe want, so yeah I'm looking
forward to seeing seeing larger.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
If you're, if you know, if you 50 percent, yeah,
that's.
That's going to make my lifeway better, which will make the
big kids life way better as wellyeah, no, I mean, I love the
zoom right and uh, you know it'salways.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
Honestly, it's just about uh, I wish I could go even
more, but it's something likecalarney and I I don't want to
have more than one mat forcalarney.
Uh, french river, certainly Idon't want to have more than the
two I already have, but that'swhere the little tricks like the
double sliding, whatever reallyhelped that.
Speaker 2 (29:09):
Yeah, I like that idea.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
And did you choose these particular locations?
Because they're your favorites,because they're the most
popular, they're the most indemand.
How did you choose which onesto map?
Speaker 3 (29:21):
That's a really good question.
It's a mix of both and it'sfunny because, like the irony in
a sense is, I love going placespeople don't want to go, but of
course those don't make forpopular maps.
But it works out because youknow, if you take a place like
Algonquin or honestly evenKillarney, there's going to be
(29:42):
places that are busier andthere's going to be places that
are less busy.
Certainly, I think there's moreless busy places in Ogonkwa
just because it's a bigger place.
So if you want to put the timeand effort to sort of get to the
middle or other little corners,you can certainly get away from
people.
But it applies to Killarney too.
And again to connect back towhat we were talking about
(30:05):
earlier, you know about rootdifficulties and stuff.
There's always going to be someof those, you know, sketchy,
bushwhacky things or just harderroots.
So, to answer your question,there certainly is an element of
places I want to go, places Iwant to check out, but it
certainly is there.
You know I I'm picking placesthat, uh, I know.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
ultimately, I can tell them that yeah, well, yeah,
business plan has to play intoit.
Uh, I'm very glad you've donethe ones that you have done
because they're they'redefinitely my favorite parks,
like I love clarity, algonquin.
We do kawartha islandsliterally every fall.
Uh, we've done the massasauganow, so that was a another good
(30:49):
one.
We've done the french.
I see, I see tomogami in myfuture.
I've.
Actually, when I discoveredthat you had a digital one, I
started looking at routes yeah,yeah it was totally accidental.
I didn't mean to go looking.
I saw it and then, two hourslater, it's like I already have
a whole bunch of trips plannedthis year but there's next year,
(31:09):
so never too early startplanning.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
It's not exactly, and that's where you know one of
the fun things.
Oh sorry no, no, no, no, goahead I'd say one of the fun
things about, uh, doing each ofthe maps is it certainly there's
a lot of similarity, right,like you know, you're paddling,
you're camping at campsites,there's portages, but there
certainly are little differencestoo, and so it's really
(31:35):
interesting going to a new placeand sort of trying to
understand it.
In a sense it's littleintricacies and whatever, and so
, like talking about tobogganing, I remember there's sort of new
things that I've neverexperienced, nothing huge in a
sense, but little things.
Like it's among me, some of theportages are cut more narrower.
(31:57):
That can be more challengingwhen you're carrying the canoe.
There's certainly spots you'rewalking and suddenly the canoe
is stuck.
And then you know, from amapping point of view, one of
the little interestingchallenges was the tomogony.
It's sort of this network ofsmall little parks and crown
land right and conservationreserves and that sort of thing.
So there's maybe I'm justguessing off the top of my head
(32:17):
you know, let's say there's 12little parks and different parks
have different rules.
You know some of them you haveto have like a permit for
camping.
Uh, some of them you don't,some of them you might bump into
motorboats, some of them youmight not, and so, you know, for
something like algonquin, uh, Ididn't quite have to worry
about that because there's onebig park and the rules are the
(32:38):
same, and you know, easy peasy.
But for tomogami, I essentiallyhad to come up with a way of how
do I communicate thisinformation.
You know the person using themap needs this and so, uh, it's
interesting, you know, from ayou know challenge of how do you
present this perspective.
But I also find that, um, thenyou, you end up learning.
(32:59):
When you learn these things,you take that information and
you bring it back to the othermaps and then it improves them
too.
Right, because in a sense it'sa sort of thing that you, you
could get away with doing a jobon, because it didn't matter
quite as much.
But certainly when you do abetter job of communicating
these things well, it's easierto read, easier to understand
(33:22):
and, uh, you know, a lot oftimes again, it's just something
I didn't think about.
For algonquin, um, you know,sort of the different rules and
parks, because there arecertainly other little parks
around the periphery ofalgonquin.
I show, um, but it's just again, it's easy to sort of hand wave
that away when it's not thefocus of the map and, uh uh,
something like tomogami hasforced me to uh uh uh, do a
(33:45):
better job.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
So yeah, yeah, Good point it's.
It's funny you mentioned the.
You know you, you run into twomotorboats and stuff.
It took me, it took me agesFeel.
It feels like it took me yearsand years to figure out that
pretty much every access pointyou're going to run into
motorboats If you have to do aportage in or two portages in
before you go.
Okay, now I'm away from thoseguys, like I didn't.
(34:07):
I didn't realize that literallyall the parks have cottages and
stuff around the periphery ofthe park itself.
Speaker 3 (34:17):
I have no idea yeah, yeah, and even on crown land too
you face this sort of stuff andit's it's uh.
It took me even longer tounderstand because at least in a
park it's kind of spelled outmotorboats here, no, motorboats
here, uh, with crown land it'slike well, they're allowed
(34:37):
everywhere.
But you realize over time it'skind of it's something you're
kind of getting at, which isthey physically can't get
everywhere.
So, for example, maybe there'sa lake and then there's a river.
If you have a waterfall inbetween, they're not going
upstream Right yeah, so yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Yeah, interesting.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Yeah.
How to escape motorboats yes.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
There's a book, there's Kevin's next book.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
There you go, it just writes itself.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
Being the wonderful storyteller that you are, you
regaled us with a 31-day trip.
You were young, you were likeend of high school sort of deal.
It was awesome.
Tell us another trip justbecause we like stories.
That's a thing for us.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
Oh, I guess I'll tell you about last spring's trip.
Okay, cool, yeah, so it was meand two other guys and again,
you know I was talking aboutthose root difficulty colors
before right, the yellow, orangeand red, and then kind of the
pencil stuff.
So we were off in the pencilland of you know extreme
(35:52):
adventure and so, uh, what we'vedone last spring, this is
algonquin, the very bottom partof the park, okay, and so if you
look at a map, my map, um,you'll see that there's these
long, uh, two kilometer ish,portages, little pond, uh long,
uh long, two kilometer portage,little pond, and they're all.
All the portages are in redCause.
It kind of, you know, prettyrough, uh, but it's, it's just
one way trip.
And uh, I was looking at themap, right Obviously, and uh,
(36:20):
one of the features I added tothe Ivankan map is the creeks on
the map.
The width of the creek on themap correlates the width of the
creek in real life.
So if it's bigger in real life,bigger on the map, right, and
so that got sort of the wheelsturning and so we came up with
this idea of doing a loop.
(36:41):
So we'd start by going throughthat long series of stuff in the
park.
But rather than going back up,the same thing we would, what do
we do?
So we got to this lake calledScorch Lake, camped there, and
from there there was a road,sort of a minor road that you go
(37:03):
two kilometers.
You meet up with this moremajor road, walk another two
kilometers, you get to this lakecalled Lost Water Lake and from
there again, this is where I'dseen this wide creek.
That was sort of theinspiration.
So we put in at Lost Water Lake, paddle, paddle, paddle for a
(37:24):
few kilometers.
And I mean, the one thing isyou know the width, you never
know the depth, right?
So you're always doing thisfingers crossed thing.
But we were super lucky.
The first again like four-ishkilometers or whatever was wide
and deep.
It was exactly what you'rehoping for.
So that was very, very cool.
(37:46):
As you're paddling along,you're wondering when's the last
time someone was here, right,that's a good thing.
And we got to a spot where Iknew there was going to be some
rapids.
There's another road nearby, soit was okay, we'll connect up
to this road, which we did, andour plan from there.
(38:07):
This is where things didn'tquite go as planned, right, the
adventure struck.
So at this point we were goingto this new road that we'd hit.
It kind of paralleled the creekfor the next, let's say, two
kilometers, and we'd seen onsort of satellite imagery that
(38:29):
it looked very bushy in there,right Like alder and that sort
of thing where you know you'refighting through the bushes.
So we're like, okay, what we'regoing to do is we're going to
walk two kilometers along thisroad.
That should get us around theworst of it, We'll put in, we'll
paddle from there and so we getready to portage road that
should get us around, the worstof it, we'll put in, we'll
puddle from there and so, um, weget ready to portage, we eat
some snacks or whatever, andlike 50 meters later the bridge
(38:51):
is out and this is spring, soyou know you got water just
pouring down, pouring down.
So challenge number one was wehad to sort of push back around
and find a spot where you cross.
Did that?
Then you walk the twokilometers and you're just
walking at the road, so it's nottoo bad.
Push right down to the creekand of course we did not miss
(39:13):
all the alder.
Two kilometers of alder aheadof us, turns out.
So we skipped two.
We had two more.
So we're paddling and pushingthrough us I mentioned it was me
and two other guys.
So me and one other guy were ina tandem canoe.
The other guy was in a solo andhe had like a double-bladed
paddle so he couldn't even liftthe paddle.
(39:34):
Every time he tried to lift ithe would get caught up and he's
saying what are we doing here,right?
So eventually we said, screwthis, it was bushwhacked for
another kilometer or so and gotaround it.
And that was that.
The funny thing was that whenwe that spot where I mentioned
the bridge was out, if we'd justgone the other way on the road,
(39:55):
about two kilometers, we wouldhave been to the exact same spot
where we'd, you know,bushwhacked and fought through
and everything, and so it wasjust kind of funny.
But hey, we made it, we'realive, that's good.
And uh, we made a loop wherethere was no loop.
So you know, I I would totallydo that again, just going the
other way the mertree loop.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
Yeah, exactly, exactly so you know fun yeah,
well, sure, type Type two fun.
It's funny when people get into.
Every time I hear bushwhackalder comes up as well.
It's always you know.
It's like, oh, and you know,scratch that crap out of me.
(40:42):
And oh, man, it took me days toget through there.
Oh, part of kevin callan'spresentation uh, I can't
remember which one, maybe maybethe toronto outdoor adventure
show.
He was talking about a tripthat he and andy did way, way,
way north and it took themsomething like some ridiculous,
(41:04):
like six days to go fourkilometers, which is yeah,
that's insane.
Man like and and alder was aword he kept kept using, so yeah
, that's where it's always funny.
Speaker 3 (41:16):
You'll see the odd person on facebook or whatever
saying hey, can I like skip thattwo kilometer portage and take
the creek?
I guess they're imagining, youknow they don't like portaging,
so let's just not do that.
And yeah, the portage existsfor a reason it is so much
easier it is so much easier yeah, why?
Speaker 2 (41:35):
why would somebody unload everything you know and
love it for two kilometers ifthey didn't have to.
Speaker 3 (41:41):
So just saying yeah, I mean, that's a random tangent,
but um, I remember the firsttime I was doing crown land, you
know uh, canoeing stuff it waslike where's the portage going
to be?
That's exactly what you'resaying.
People hate portages, so it isliterally the last place it
could possibly be yep um chrisprose.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
Uh said if you, if you don't know where the portage
is, look around, look for thelowest point.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
That's probably where the portage is gonna be yeah,
exactly, and I've done that morethan once and, you know, ended
up within you know, 100 meters,or whatever, of wherever it is.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
That's there's a good one and that's the thing.
Speaker 3 (42:21):
The one thing that unites paddlers, or one of the
things that unites paddlers, isour collective hate of portages
yeah, hate.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
Hate's not too strong a word there um otherwise we'd
be backpackers.
So yeah, I'd be a hiker, but II hate hiking.
So I don't hate hiking, I justrather I'd rather be exactly who
carries the stuff, not meexactly, exactly sure sorry, I
will edit around all this stuff,don't worry about it no problem
(42:52):
, yeah so, yeah.
Speaker 3 (42:55):
so certainly, in the past I haven't really done a lot
of updates to digital versions.
There's certainly something Iwant to do more going forward,
uh, but right now my workflowisn't really set up for it,
right.
Right, it really is designedfor you build up this big map
over many months, and then itactually takes like a couple
(43:15):
days to get digital sort ofstuff set up, and so that's why
it's like, oh, it would be greatto make this one little fix or
change or whatever.
But then there's always otherprojects, and so it's like, yeah
, I'll get to that at some point, and it doesn't happen.
So many hours in the dayprojects, and so it's like, yeah
, I'll get to that at some pointand it doesn't happen, uh, but
going forward exactly, no,exactly right, because you know
people say, well, what about newmaps?
(43:36):
And you're like, yeah, I shoulddo that.
Like you gotta do updates toother maps and there's always
new stuff to be done, right, um,but, uh, you know, this is this
is something I really want tobe able to do more, and so one
of my next next projects, sortof after the homochomy, is I
want to work on changing, then,how I build the maps to make a
(43:57):
lot easier, to make morefrequent updates, at least to
the digital version.
So, um, yeah, it's kind ofexciting to be able to do that,
but that's, that's in the cardsso with the printed maps, people
get a digital copy of the mapas well, right?
yeah, exactly, multiple versionsof that, digital as well, right
yeah, no, exactly right,because so I figure, once
(44:19):
somebody buys the map, right,really, it's all the time and
effort whatever that I've putinto it.
That's what you're paying for.
And then I want you to be ableto use it in as many ways as
possible.
I've included as many formatsas I can possibly think of.
Right now there's five.
There is a JPEG which is sortof for computer.
You can blow it up.
You can even print blowups.
(44:40):
It's super high quality, forthat exact reason, so you can do
a blowup of your trip.
There's an Avenza Maps versionfor iPhone and Android.
That's fun and it has a GPSsort of capabilities.
So you know you're the blue dotin the map and, uh, that can be
handy again for the age old,like, is this the bay or is that
bay, right?
Um, there's a Garmin GPSversion.
(45:03):
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Uh, there's the Garmin GPSversion same sort of deal.
Um, there's the garmin gpsversion same sort of deal.
Um, there's a google earthversion and that's super cool
because it's you get this like3d view on the world.
Um, so again, especially forthe, the bushwhacky explory
stuff, I've I've used thatbefore sort of plot out where
(45:24):
we're gonna go, because, again,you're talking about hills and
and valleys, and you know, uh, Iguess we're talking about that
in the context of existingportages, but even bushraking,
it's some of the same logic,right?
So, yeah, using the 3D GoogleEarth is super handy for that.
And finally, there's a moretechnical file called GeoTIFF,
(45:46):
but essentially that allowssomebody who has some very
specific need.
You can take this GeoTIFF andyou can load it into essentially
any mapping program.
So, even if it's something thatI haven't thought of or doesn't
even exist yet, that file, ifyou're technically minded, you
can use for anything.
Speaker 2 (46:05):
Cool.
Where can people get all thesemaps from?
Speaker 3 (46:08):
Oh yes, great question.
Where can people get all thesemaps from?
Oh yes, great question.
So the easiest way probably isto go to my website, which is
mapsbyjeffcom.
Oh, I got mapsbyjeff, so stabthe com.
But they're also available atmost outdoor stores and
outfitters, right?
So in Killarney you got, likeKillarney Outfitters and the
(46:32):
Wichitaodge, you know, probablyprobably an outdoor store near
you.
Speaker 1 (46:34):
Very cool.
That's it for us for today.
Thank you so much to JeffMcMurtry from Maps by Jeff for
joining us today and for joiningus the second time.
So please do listen to hisfirst episode and then you can
listen to the second episode, orlisten to him the other way
around.
You can do whatever order youwant.
Speaker 2 (46:51):
And go out and buy his new maps and then new maps
again in July.
You can spend money all year.
Speaker 1 (46:56):
Get the maps.
Tim will attest that you canspend money all year.
Speaker 3 (47:03):
Indeed.
Speaker 1 (47:06):
And please do listen to us again sometime soon.
You can reach out to us anytimeyou want to.
We're at hi atsupergoodcampaigncom.
That's hi at supergoodcamp, andplease do listen to us again
sometime soon.
You can reach out to us anytimeyou want to.
We're at hi atsupergoodcampingcom.
That's hi atsupergoodcampingcom, and we're
on all the social media.
Please do check us out thereand we'll talk to you again soon
.
Bye, bye, bye.
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