This meandering trail along Baker Lake is a great one for when the leaves start changing in the fall. We arrived at 8:30 am and there were 4-5 spots left in the main lot by the trailhead.
Our plan was to camp at Maple Grove. We arrived at 10:30-ish and only one other site was occupied. We had brought a bear can but the campground also has metal food storage cabinets.
We had about three hours of quiet and solitude before the campground was suddenly descended upon by a large scout group and then a deluge of other groups, many with more than one tent.
There are SIX established sites at this campground, each one having one spot for one two- or three- person tent. Once the scout group arrived they were pitching tents wherever they found a flat spot, which gave the other groups arriving the sense that they could just pitch theirs anywhere, including within our own established site.
Most if not all of the sites have picnic tables which is nice. We had already had our tent up for hours and were hanging at our picnic table when a family of three arrived and tried to set up right next to us and were upset when we declined their request to share our picnic table.
Call us curmudgeons if you want, but we did not hike out to share our space that closely with complete strangers and unnecessary noise.
We packed up and left as the sun was setting because the noise and cramped feeling was too much. Good luck to the other groups we still saw coming in trying to find a camp spot!
This is why permits and quotas are a good thing even if they are sometimes hard to obtain. We will consider this a requirement for trips in the future and will avoid choosing such a popular area.
I’d encourage anyone who wants to camp out there to consider that there are only six sites and if the camp is full when you arrive, etiquette would suggest that you keep going along Baker Lake to find a spot that’s not right next to other people, or go back to Anderson Point to find an established spot. Bummed that this is the way our trip turned out.
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