Kayaking and Camping at Baker Lake

This is a short video taken this past weekend of Bryan and I at Baker Lake. This was my first time attempting the kayaking and camping combo, so I was quite excited about the trip. I had never been to Baker Lake, so I took my time carefully selecting my camp gear on this particular trip, as there were quite a few unknowns to deal with. Bryan and I decided early on that though there were three managed (aka comfortable) camp sites on the West shore of Baker Lake, we would try to do the “Seattle” thing and camp in whatever primitive spot we could find while sploshing around on the water.

Gathering my gear, I quickly realized our kayaks could hold perhaps half the gear I would like to bring. Many modern campers swear by the trek lite method of camping, which utilizes the bare minimum to ensure a quick in-and-out approach. I, however, prescribe to the school of everything and the kitchen sink, which in this case would mean successfully sinking my kayak to the lake bottom the minute it touched water.

On the first night, my regrets materialized when I woke up every hour tossing and turning due to the hard sand that doubled as my bed. I shouldn’t complain however, as we snagged one of the best primitive spots on the lake, a protected sandy bed next to a creek. We even had fish biting all around our secluded point that morning, but couldn’t quite snag enough luck to have grilled trout for lunch.

We had to depart early the next day due to thunderstorms that started rolling in. It was unfortunate, as we had kayaked the entire lake that morning and our arms were sore, but rather than brace a miserable night with limited rain gear short of our tent and jackets, we packed up and took off.

All in all, Baker Lake is a great destination for a summer camping trip. It is crowded however, but there are multiple managed camp sites with quite a few spots at each site. The type of people we saw were primarily family campers and younger groups of teens on motorboats, but no unsavory elements as far as we could tell.

FYI, the video is a bit choppy, as it was taken with my new and experimental Oregon Scientific Action Cam. It’s an enclosed video camera that is waterproof and the size of a monocular that fits in your hand and can record up to an hour of video (with a 2GB memory card). I’m playing around with it for a bit, but it seems pretty useful so far.