Pearson Airport to Algonquin Park

How do I get from Pearson Airport to Algonquin Park?

The alternatives are the Ontario Northland bus from Toronto to Huntsville and a taxi or an outfitter's shuttle from there — five hours from Pearson with the changes — and the park's own shuttle services from Huntsville in summer. The chauffeur is the version that runs from the arrivals curb to the lodge's door or the put-in in one movement at a fixed fare, with the canoe, the packs and the paddles in the Sprinter; the Muskoka page covers the road as far as Huntsville and the long-distance page explains how a three-hour fare is set.

The Highway 60 corridor: the gates, the lodges and the outfitters

Highway 60 runs fifty-six kilometres through the park's southern edge between the West Gate at Oxtongue Lake and the East Gate near Whitney, and everything a visitor without a canoe trip needs is along it: the Visitor Centre at kilometre 43 with its exhibits and its lookout over the bog, the Logging Museum, the Art Centre, the campgrounds at Canisbay, Mew Lake, Pog Lake and the Lake of Two Rivers, the day-use beaches, the trailheads for the Lookout, the Track and Tower, the Spruce Bog and the Centennial Ridges trails, and the three lodges. The chauffeur knows the kilometre markers, which is how the corridor is addressed; a visitor booking a trailhead rather than a lodge gives the kilometre, and the Ontario Parks permit — required for any stop in the park, bought at the gate or online — is the visitor's, not ours.

The lodges: Arowhon, Killarney and Bartlett

The park's three lodges are the reason a visitor without a tent comes: Arowhon Pines on Little Joe Lake, eight kilometres down a dirt road from the highway, with its hexagonal dining room and its canoes at the dock; Killarney Lodge on the Lake of Two Rivers, with its log cabins on the peninsula and a canoe with each; and Bartlett Lodge on Cache Lake, reached only by the lodge's boat from the landing at kilometre 23, which meets the chauffeur's car at the dock. All three run from May to October, include the meals, and fill months ahead for the fall colours; the chauffeur delivers to Arowhon's door down the dirt road, to Killarney's office, and to Bartlett's landing for the boat, and collects at the same points at the end. The Algonquin Eco-Lodge and the lodges outside the park at Oxtongue Lake and Dwight are the alternatives when the three are full.

The canoe trip: the drop, the put-in and the collection

The park's interior — the two thousand kilometres of canoe routes and the fifteen hundred lakes — is reached by canoe from the access points, and the chauffeur's role in a canoe trip is the logistics: the drop at the outfitter at the West Gate or at Canoe Lake, where the canoe, the packs and the permits are collected; the drive to the access point if it is not the outfitter's own — Rock Lake, Rain Lake, the Opeongo dock — with the canoe on the Sprinter's roof rack or the outfitter's shuttle; and the collection five days later at the take-out, with the Sprinter sized for a party of four and their packs. A group flying into Pearson from Germany or Japan for a week in the interior — the booking this page sees most — is met at the group meeting point inside the terminal with the packs, driven three hours to the outfitter, and collected at the take-out on the day the trip ends, with a shower and a hotel in Huntsville before the flight.

The fall colours: the first two weeks of October

The maples along the Highway 60 corridor turn in the last week of September and the first two of October, and the park's fall-colour report — published daily by the Friends of Algonquin — sets the province's calendar: the Thanksgiving weekend is the peak and the busiest weekend of the year on the corridor, with the Lookout trail's parking full by nine and the lodges booked a year ahead. A visitor flying in for the colours books the Friday arrival to a lodge or to Huntsville, the Saturday on the corridor as a chauffeured day with the chauffeur holding at the trailheads, and the Sunday departure; the chauffeur's advice is a weekday, when the corridor is empty and the colours are the same.

Winter: the park under snow

Algonquin in winter is the Mew Lake campground's yurts, the cross-country ski trails at the Fen Lake and Leaf Lake trailheads, the snowshoe trails, the dog-sledding operators at the gates, and the wolves' howl on a January night — and the drive is the Highway 11 and Highway 60 in the snowbelt, where the squalls off Georgian Bay close the road a few times each winter. The chauffeur reads Ontario 511 before leaving, the vehicles run winter tyres, and a drive that cannot be made safely is rescheduled rather than attempted; the lodges are closed and Huntsville's hotels — the Deerhurst resort ten minutes from the highway, the Hidden Valley resort at the ski hill — are the winter base.

Huntsville, Dwight and the base outside the gate

Huntsville, thirty minutes west of the West Gate, is the park's town — the outfitters, the grocery stores for a trip's food, the hotels and the Deerhurst resort, the Muskoka Airport at Gravenhurst an hour south for a charter — and Dwight and Oxtongue Lake at the gate itself have the motels and the cottages that a family uses as a base for day trips into the corridor. A family that flies into Pearson for a week books the transfer to a Dwight cottage, a chauffeured day or two into the park, and the departure timed to the flight; the Trent University page covers the Peterborough road to the East Gate from the other side.

What the fare includes

The fare from Pearson to Algonquin Park is fixed by vehicle class for the lodge, the gate or the access point and includes the chauffeur, the vehicle, fuel, the 407 toll, taxes, curbside pickup at the pre-arranged area, a stop on the way and the included waiting with the flight tracked; meet and greet is the paid add-on; gratuity is never added; a cancellation before dispatch is free; the park permit and the lodges are the visitor's bookings, and the Sprinter's roof rack carries a canoe.

The park's own traffic: researchers, the Wildlife Research Station and the film crews

Algonquin's professional traffic is small and particular: the researchers at the Wildlife Research Station on Lake Sasajewun and the Harkness fisheries laboratory on Lake Opeongo, who arrive at Pearson from universities across the continent with equipment cases and a season's work; the Friends of Algonquin's visiting naturalists and the artists in residence at the Art Centre; and the film and photography crews for whom the corridor's moose, its loons and its fall colours are the shot. The corporate account serves the institutions that move them, and the Sprinter carries a crew's cases on one manifest; the Muskoka page covers the Huntsville hotels where a crew's week is based.

The moose, the wolves and the dawn drive

The corridor's wildlife keeps its own hours, and the visitor who wants the moose — at the roadside bogs along Highway 60 in May and June, when the salt from the winter's road draws them to the ditches at dawn — books the chauffeured dawn from a lodge or from Huntsville: the chauffeur at the door at five, the slow drive along the corridor with the windows down, and the breakfast at the Visitor Centre when it opens. The August wolf howls — the Friends of Algonquin's public howling nights, when hundreds of cars park along the highway in the dark to hear the pack answer the naturalists — are the other dawn-or-dusk booking, and the chauffeur knows the pull-offs.

Book Pearson to Algonquin Park