I’m so excited to write about this trip! I’ve been wanting to paddle the Bowron Lake Circuit for a while now, and Seth and I finally took a week off to do it in mid-May 2025. Bowron Lake is traditionally known as a 116km canoe circuit, but it can be done in a canoe or a kayak, so we were thrilled to undertake this adventure with our 16 foot sea touring kayaks.

The Bowron Lake Circuit is a renowned paddling route for it’s premier access to remote wilderness and wildlife. It’s an 8-10 hour drive from Vancouver, located ~700km north of Vancouver and 2 hours east of Quesnel. It’s a series of 12 lakes, which are connected by either rivers, or 11km of portaging trails. It’s a loop circuit, so you don’t have to undo any of the distance you paddle, and there are 54 campsites spread out around the circuit. It does require a permit, which indicates your starting date, and then you have up to 14 days to complete the circuit, staying at any of the first-come-first-serve campsites along the way. In order to maintain the remote wilderness setting, there is a limit on how many boats and people can start the circuit every day.

From what I understand, the circuit is very busy in the summer and the permits often sell out. It is less busy in the late Spring and early Fall, which is why we opted to paddle the circuit in mid-May, just 1 day after it opened for the season. It was a bit busier than we were expecting (several others started at the same time as us, around the May long weekend), but still relatively empty. We didn’t have any trouble getting campsites and had the campsite completely to ourselves more than once.

We had a long time to wait in anticipation of this trip because the permits for it released in October 2024. The circuit is located in Bowron Lake Provincial Park and is managed by BC Parks, but they don’t follow the same 4 month release timeline as other parks. A number of reservations released in October, which is when we booked ours, but it seems that it was only half of the reservations, with the rest releasing in March. In any case, we went early enough that the permits weren’t sold out on our starting date.

There’s a few benefits to going so early in the season. The biggest is that there aren’t a lot of crowds, but other perks were that there were limited bugs, no smoke, and no fire bans. So we enjoyed having a campfire every night and didn’t have to worry about getting eaten by mosquitoes. However, there are also several downsides to doing this circuit in May, the biggest of which is the weather. Bowron Lake is located quite a bit north of Vancouver, and it was a lot colder. The ice actually only melted off the lakes 2-3 weeks before we started the trip, and the weather was pretty variable. It rained most days that we were on the circuit and it dropped near zero degrees celsius most nights. Plus, it could get pretty windy some afternoons and even some mornings. We still had a great time and don’t regret going in May, but we missed out on some of the other attractions of the circuit, like swimming.

I plan to write a full guide to paddling the circuit, but I want to dedicate these initial posts to my trip reports and sharing about our personal experience on the circuit. At 116km, this was by far the longest paddling trip we’ve ever gone on. It was our first major lake trip (we usually do sea kayaking) and our first time portaging the boats. Bowron Lake is a good option for kayakers though because the portage trails are all accessible with a cart, so you don’t have to do an overhead carry with your boat, making it accessible to kayaks and canoes. You have 14 days to finish the circuit, but we opted to complete it in 7 days and 6 nights. This seemed to be the most popular duration, though we did meet one group doing it in 6 days and one group doing it in 8 days. I think I would prefer to go slower in the summer to enjoy swimming in the lakes, but 7 days was a good duration for May.

The trip started with a full day drive to Bowron Lake Provincial Park. We left Vancouver early in the morning, stopping in Cache Creek for lunch and Quesnel for supper. It’s still a good 2 hour drive from Quesnel on highway 26, so it was quite late when we finally arrived. We did play tourist on the way there though. There’s a historic gold rush town located just before the turn-off to the park, Barkerville, and we figured there was no better time to visit. Barkerville is now just a tourist attraction, but it’s definitely worth the stop. It has more than 125 heritage buildings dating back to the mid-1800’s gold rush era, including Barkerville’s Chinatown, as well as evidence of early indigenous settlement dating back more than 10,000 years!

Our experience was unique in that the attraction was open for the season, but because we arrived in the evening, it was technically closed for the day. They leave the gate open for people to browse, so we were able to walk the completely empty streets of Barkerville, which was honestly, a bit spooky! It’s definitely a can’t-miss experience if you happen to be in the area.

We did see another attraction along the highway to Bowron Lake – wildlife. Shortly after turning onto the highway we encountered about a dozen deer, which reminded us to slow down our speed. Once we got our of deer territory, we moved into bear territory, spotting 3 separate black bears along the way. We were getting a bit nervous about what we might encounter on the circuit, but we didn’t end up seeing any bears along our paddling route. Before arriving to Bowron, we spotted a fox along the road, which was probably the most exciting encounter!

There are a few options for where to stay before starting the circuit. There is a mandatory orientation at the park registration centre before starting the circuit, which is offered from 8am-noon, so you do need to arrive quite early. You could stay in Quesnel and drive in, or there is limited lodging in the small town of Wells on highway 26. We wanted to get an early start, so we stayed on the lake itself. The options I learned of were Becker’s Lodge, Bowron Lake Lodge and Campground, or the BC Parks Bowron Lake Campground.

My preference would have been to stay at the BC Parks site, which is the cheapest, but I couldn’t book a single night at the campground because it was over a long weekend and the system only allows you to book the entire weekend. We probably could have got in FCFS, but I opted to book 1 night at the Lodge Campground instead. It’s located right on the lake and is quite beautiful. The Lodge also rents canoes, but most people seemed to be renting and staying at Becker’s Lodge rather than Bowron Lodge. We own our kayaks, so we didn’t have to navigate rentals.

We were up early on Sunday morning to head over to the Registration Centre to complete our orientation. It was pretty straightforward and we got our permits to start the circuit. If you’re going in a canoe, you also have to get your gear weighed. To limit impacts to the portaging trail, you’re only allowed to portage with 60lbs of gear in your boat, everything else has to go in a backpack that you wear. It turns out they don’t weigh kayaks (I guess it’s harder to overload the kayak hatches than a canoe), but we followed the same rules as the canoes anyways. We didn’t want to be towing fully loaded kayaks (it’s hard on both us and the boats), so we also brought backpacks to carry gear while portaging. Logistically, this was more challenging as a kayaker, because we had to pack and unpack the backpacks at every portage and squish the empty backpack into the hatch, but we made it work.

We had 7 days to complete the 116km circuit, which works out to an average of 16.5km per day. In reality, we did a lot more than that and I ended up tracking 135km on my GPS (which would average to 19km a day). That said, I tried to pace our days to do shorter distances on days with portages, and longer distances on days with only paddling. The circuit is very front-end loaded when it comes to portaging, so I planned for a pretty slow first day, especially since we’d be portaging with all our food weight.

There’s 3 portages totaling ~6km in the first 15km of the circuit. The third portage ends at Isaac Lake, which is the biggest lake on the circuit. On the day we started, there were several other groups starting. There was a group of 5 male canoers, a group of 5 male kayakers, a group of 3 male canoes, and a solo male kayaker. You can probably notice a common denominator in all those groups: male. We got to know a lot of these guys over the course of the week, and they’re all nice people, but I was the only woman on the circuit the entire time, which was a little disappointing. Ladies – Bowron is really fun, add it to your bucket list!

My point is that all of these groups had the goal of making it to Isaac Lake on day 1. I considered if we would also head for Isaac Lake, but I didn’t really want to overdo it early in the trip, nor did I want to do 3 portages in one day. So we decided to make the end of the second lake our goal for day 1, which I think was a good decision.

The circuit immediately starts with the longest portage, a 2.5km trail to Kibbee Lake. We were the first people on it for the day and the trail was in relatively good shape. The challenge was that it’s mostly uphill and we were fully loaded. It is humbling to drag a 45lb kayak while wearing a full backpack and we were quickly out of breath and sweating. That said, I think we did a pretty good job at our first portage, taking about an hour to finish it. It was threatening rain all morning, but it stayed dry until we arrived at Kibbee Lake.

Kibbee Lake is only a 2.5km paddle before you’re back at the next portage. The launch point at Kibbee Lake is really nice and starts with a leisurely paddle through the lake’s inlet. It started raining pretty much exactly when we got to Kibbee Lake, but we preferred that timing. I don’t really mind paddling in the rain. With our neoprene skirts and rain jackets, we get less wet paddling than we would on land, so it wasn’t too big a deal. Since the forecast for the week was pretty cold, I purchased a pair of neoprene gloves before the trip and they were worth every penny throughout the week! They kept my hands nice and warm, even when wet.

It rained pretty much every day that we were on the circuit, but it was one of the least defining parts of the trip if I’m being honest. I thought it would be miserable to be out in the rain for a full week. But it was the kind of rain that moves around a lot. It would rain for 15 minutes and then move on. At no point on the trip did it rain so much that our waterproof layers wetted through, so it honestly didn’t bother me.

We had a nice paddle across Kibbee Lake, but too quickly we arrived at our second portage. This one was a little bit shorter, at 2km, but it felt so much worse. Looking at the map, the topography on the second portage is actually more gentle than the first portage, but I guess I was feeling tired, because it did not seem that way! It starts with a hill and I was pretty quickly cursing my kayak. I don’t really use those arm muscles very much, so my forearms were screaming from pulling the kayak and my hands were hurting from dragging it. But I think my biggest problem was that I was hungry. I complained for the entire first half of the portage, which was all uphill, before finally pulling over and claiming that I couldn’t go a step further without having lunch!

The rain stopped again when we started portaging, so I think it was a good call to stop and eat. We parked our kayaks on the side of the trail and opted to just eat our lunch in the woods. I felt much better afterwards and let the downhill half of the trail propel me to our next milestone, the start of Indianpoint Lake.

At this point, some of the bigger groups had caught up with us, but they all had the goal of getting to Isaac Lake. I had studied the campsite map before the trip and noted that some of the campsites have shared shelters. I’m not sure how popular these shelters are in the summer when it’s warm, but they ended up being pretty popular on our trip, given that it was cold and wet. Indianpoint Lake is 6.5km long, but campsite #8, which is located near the end of the lake, is noted as having a shelter. So I made campsite #8 my goal for the day.

First, we decided to try our luck at a woodlot. The circuit has a number of woodlots scattered throughout the park where you can stop and pick-up wood. I thought this was going to be national park style woodlots, but it’s really just specific areas of forest with lots of blowdown. The woodlots aren’t marked on any map because it seems that BC Parks regularly moves them around, so you can just see the signage from the water. There’s one located early on Indianpoint Lake, so we decided to check it out, but it ended up being our first and last woodlot. Since it was early in the season, it was really easy to forage deadwood around the existing campsites, so we didn’t bother with any of the other woodlots after that because it was a pain to lug the wood around in my kayak.

After checking out the woodlot, we had a very enjoyable paddle to the end of Indianpoint Lake. It rained again, on and off, but the lake was actually very calm. The wind usually comes up in the afternoon, so we were expecting it to be windy and were pleasantly surprised to arrive at 1pm and find completely flat water! The mountains around the lake were mostly clouded in, but it actually looked kind of mystical with the rain.

Everyone else opted to bypass Campsite #8 on their way to Isaac Lake, so we ended up being the only ones staying there! It was our good luck, because I totally loved this campsite! It only has two tent pads, but it has an old log cabin with a woodstove(!) and the most beautiful view of Indianpoint Lake. It was nice not to overdo it and we still tracked a total of 13.5km on my GPS. We got our tent set up and then hung out under the under-hang of the cabin, sparing me from having to set up the tarp. We had a few snacks and then around suppertime, Seth got a fire going in the woodstove and we spent a very enjoyable evening in the warm cabin. Someone has insulated the roof inside with reflective material, so it reflected the heat quite well. We felt so cozy in the warm cabin listening to the rain hitting the tin roof.

Later in the evening, Seth decided to take advantage of the warm cabin to do some cold therapy and ran down for a quick swim in the lake. Usually I’m down for swimming in any lake and my cold tolerance is quite high, but I didn’t swim very much on this trip. It was probably the main downside of going early in the season. I was chilled for a lot of the trip and rarely willing to subject myself to the cold water (though I did eventually relent twice later in the trip)! Eventually the rain cleared up and we got some really beautiful photos of the lake around golden hour. We didn’t catch too many sunsets on the circuit – partially because of the mixed weather – but also because it was light so late in the evenings that we usually went to bed before sunset! Paddling is all about the early rise, so it was a small sacrifice to make.

I’ll conclude this blog post here because it’s already quite long! I’m hoping to cover two days each on my future posts, so tune back in next week to hear about the gnarly weather conditions we battled while paddling almost 40km along Isaac Lake, the biggest lake on the circuit!