Car camping at Reid Lake: A review

We have been wondering about the territorial park campgrounds in the NWT and with a forecasted nice weekend, we decided to check one out. When we were researching the park (and other parks in the NWT), we noticed a severe lack of information compared to parks in other provinces. We’ve decided that we would try and provide a bit of a review of parks we visit for anyone looking to explore the NWT parks system. So this post and some future posts might be a little different for our dedicated followers.

We reserved a spot at a popular park,

. It is located towards the end of the Ingraham Trail, about an hour outside of Yellowknife. We had some friends join us for this camping weekend. The weather turned out to be not so great, but we all still had a nice and relaxing weekend before packing up in the rain on Sunday morning…

The Ingraham Trail near Reid Lake is pretty quiet.

We paddled around Reid Lake a bit on Saturday afternoon, found some rapids, and did a little fishing (none of us are real fishers…). We geocached, walked around the campground, played cards, cooked (and ate too much) on the campfire. You know, the camping usuals.

...Vanessa for scale. Not a bad set of rapids though.

Overall, Reid Lake was an okay park. The campsites are not located on the lake though - a bit of a disappointment. There are a handful of sites that have beautiful views, however. The walk-in tent sites (with tent pad) are practically regular campsites, as your car is so close by. These are a good option to avoid the abundance of trailers, but are relatively open and exposed. This campground does not offer a lot of privacy. The washrooms/showers are modern and clean, but there is only one location in the park - the remainder are vault toilets. (Very dry) Firewood is available for $10/crate.

The ground is quite dry around here. There is a large fire burning about 50km from the park.

Corn soaking for the fire...and fire safety.

There is a small sandy (steep) beach for swimming, a volleyball court, and playground; and it is an excellent spot to launch a motored boat and enjoy the lake (for all the kayakers and canoers, the shallower, quieter west end of the lake allows for less boat traffic). We were disappointed with the lack of hiking trails in the park, as it really is a camping only park.

After we took down our camp, we headed further down the road to the end of the Ingraham Trail before heading home.