Six Mile Lake Provincial Park is a beautiful little campground in the heart of Muskoka. Here's what we thought, and what you need to know!
It’s known as a charming family park - relatively small, but with a lot to offer. It has all kinds of different vibes through the various camping areas, 3 beaches, playground areas, and gorgeous boating opportunities.
It also has some history in the fine arts - famous painters have used the area as their muses, and one of the trails is named after one of them.
This past fall, we has an opportunity to check out this popular park, tacked on the end of our big fall camping trip.
Over the Thanksgiving weekend, we took in the scenic landscape, enjoyed some of the picturesque hiking trails, and cooked a camping version of a Thanksgiving turkey dinner.
It was a nice, quiet, peaceful stop on what had ended up being a hectic trip. We were able to check out a couple of local attractions - Hardy Lake Provincial Park and Big Chute Marine Railway .. and we ended up with a surprise visitor to our site!
Anyway, lots to talk about, so let’s get right to it!
The Basics:
Campground Name: Six Mile Lake Provincial Park
Address: 2024 Joe King's Road, Port Severn, ON L0K 1S0
Website: https://www.ontarioparks.ca/park/sixmilelake
Price: Ontario Provincial Parks uses a pricing matrix across all their parks. See 2025 Camping Fees for more details.
Reservations: Ontario Parks Reservations
Park Classification: Recreational
Season: May 9, 2025 to October 14, 2025
Logistics
Some basic information to help you plan your stay at Six Mile Lake Provincial Park:
Registration and Check In
We booked our trip 5 months ahead of time, and had no problems. As always, the online booking process was quick and easy.
Also, there didn’t seem to be a ton of competition for spaces - probably because we stayed in mid October. Even though it was a holiday weekend, the campground was probably about ⅔ full during our stay - if that.
Registration happened via window service at the park office - there’s not much in the way of trailer parking at the front gate, heads up!
Anyway, the park was on a paperless permit system when we signed in... though there was a paper permit on the post at our site, dated the day before we arrived.
Weird time to make such a switch over, unless it was something like running out of supplies at the end of the season?
So... we’re not sure if it’s generally paperless or not.
Maps and Signage
Some information on getting around the park:
Park Map
The park map is a super glossy, full colour 11 x 17" map, with the map itself taking up the entirety of one side of the page, and some basic information taking up the other side.
We didn’t notice any major discrepancies between the map and reality during our stay. There’s one parking lot in the day use area that doesn’t appear on the map, but that’s about it.
It’s a small park, so the map isn’t super complicated. It IS pretty busy in the day use area, but still clear to read.
Signage
There was a mix of sign styles in the park - some were the high contrast blue and white signs, while others were the lower contrast brown and yellow-orange ones.
Not super great in the fall, but it was still easy enough to get around.
One thing to note was that there were a few clear signs pointing out which roads were dead ends, which is nice to see.
Waste and Water Services
The Poop Loop at Six Mile Lake PP is a bit of a weird layout.
It’s adjacent to the park office, and definitely easier to access on the way out of the campground. It’s a fairly small loop, so I’d expect some traffic backed up onto the main exit road, on busier summer weekends.
It’s one lane, but wide-ish. There isn’t technically a bypass lane, but if the vehicle using the dump station and the left fill platform were pulled all the way over, you could *probably* get a car through around it.
In terms of the platforms, it starts with a dump platform on the left.
Shortly after that point, there’s a fill platform on the right - it’s kind of a weird location.
You can’t have two RVs or trailers in there side by side, and the fill platform is not far enough beyond the dump platform for a separate vehicle to be in front of the dumping one, to use at the same time.
It seems kind of shoehorned in there, and not really planned well.
Beyond THAT, there’s a second fill platform on the left. Both fill hoses are threaded.
Finally, there are also drinking water taps located throughout the park.
Connectivity
We had decent cell phone coverage throughout the park, on our drive through and walks on the first day. At the campsite, we ran speed tests - the both upload and download speeds are pretty slow, but they were consistent.
After the first day, it was pretty abysmal at our campsite, but we still had some connectivity. We’re on Rogers Wireless.
Accessibility
There are 4 barrier-free campsites at Six Mile Lake Provincial Park - 2 non-electric ones in the Maple Campground, and 2 electric ones in the Birch Campground.
The Maple ones are right next to the comfort station, while the Birch ones are a bit further away from that comfort station. Both comfort stations were accessible, but none of the vault toilets we saw were - and none are designated as such on the map or website.
The beaches are not wheelchair accessible, the park store is.
None of the hiking trails at Six Mile Lake Provincial Park are wheelchair accessible, and none seem to be a wise idea to do in a walking boot or with a cane.
Pets
As with all provincial parks, dogs must be leashed at all times.
There’s a really nice pet beach in the day use area - I thought it was a regular beach when I was doing a walk through! They were grooming it at the time, it was in really great condition.
That dog beach is the only beach that dogs are permitted to use, though.
Also, randomly, there’s a poop bag dispenser on the side of the park office.
Parking
There seems to be a fair amount of parking in Six Mile Lake Provincial Park, especially considering how small the park is. The big thing you’ll want to keep in mind are the walk-in sites.
If you’re booking a walk in site, you’ll want to be mindful of where you’re supposed to park, and not block the roads while loading in and out.
If you’re not doing walk-in camping, be sure you’re not parking in one of the spots designated for those who are.
Miscellaneous
A few things to note:
1. Six Mile Lake Provincial Park is in an area with higher light pollution than most of the parks we’ve been to lately, but it’s not too bad.
There’s not really any great spot for watching the Northern Lights, unless they’re directly overhead. We’d hoped to go to the parking lot at the far end of the Living Edge Trail, but that whole section of campground was gated off during our stay.
2. The campground is QUITE close to the Hwy 400, so expect some degree of traffic noise. With our air conditioner running, we didn’t hear much of it at our site (Birch campground, which is one of the closest to the highway). When the air conditioner was NOT running, though, it was a significant amount of noise.
3. The park map mentions that the drinking water at the park has slightly elevated sodium levels, and advises those with sodium restricted diets to regulate their park water intake.
Two things were interesting about this: For one, there was no signage to indicate the same at the fill platforms.
Secondly, it was printed on a fancy, glossy handout, as saying “recently”. I doubt these were specially printed towards the end of the season, so I would assume this to be either a past (hence the lack of signage) or long-term issue.
So, if you ARE watching your sodium, you’ll probably want to check in with the park staff at the time of your stay.
Campground Amenities & Info
We visited during the off season - and specifically over a holiday - so many of the regular campground amenities were closed for the season.
Here’s some basic information, though:
Creature Comforts
There are two comfort stations at Six Mile Lake Provincial Park, spaced such that they’re going to be in relatively close proximity to at least most of the campsites.
For some reason, one is referred to as a comfort station, and the other a “shower building”, though BOTH have flush toilets, laundry facilities, and showers.
One of the two is a short walking distance from the day use area - pretty much directly across the main road from the picnic shelter.
It’s $4/load for a wash, and $3/load for the dryer.
We put in 4 loonies for a load of wash... and the machine said that we still owed another 50 cents. OOOF. Like the stated price wasn’t high enough!
Bottom: Maple Campground Comfort Station
A fair number of them were closed during our stay.
Park Store
There’s a standalone camp store located near the front of the park, and it carries a fairly wide range of products.
Beyond the usual Ontario Parks souvenirs, ice, firewood, and snack items, they also had a decent range of camping and fishing supplies, and local products - like maple syrup items, and some skin/bath type stuff.
There was also a freezer full of ice cream treats, AND they offer a propane cylinder exchange service.
Located right off Hwy 400 in the heart of Muskoka, the park isn’t TOO far from other stores. There’s a Tim Hortons about 10 minutes away, and all kinds of small stores, restaurants, etc within a 30 minute radius.
Visitor Centre
There is no Visitor Center at Six Mile Lake Provincial Park.
Day Use Area
For such a small park, the Six Mile Lake Provincial Park Day-Use area is pretty extensive.
There’s a centrally located picnic shelter - with hydro - with other picnic areas sprawling around the general vicinity of the main beach and the dog beach.
The playground, boat launch and docks are right there, as are the rental equipment racks. There are toilets, showers, and water taps nearby as well, with a beach volleyball court located next to the comfort station.
Rentals
Per the park’s website, they offer canoes, kayaks, and stand up paddleboards for rent.
We saw these - along with some rental paddle boats - down in the day use area.
While it seemed that they had shut down rentals for the season, they had the pricing listed in the day use area, which was nice to see.
In addition to the rentals, the park has a Personal Floatation Devices (PFDs) loan program - so you can borrow life jackets from them.
Usually this just requires a refundable deposit, though they don’t have any information about it on the site or posted in the area - so far as I saw.
EV Charging Station
Six Mile Lake has a class 2 charging station, which is located next to the comfort station in the Maple Campground.
It’s a single post charging station, set up to be able to charge 2 vehicles at once.
Campsite Details
Six Mile Lake Provincial Park has a varied mix of campgrounds - both for car camping, and walk-in sites. There seems to be a bit of everything, to suit most styles of camping equipment.
Car Camping
There are a mix of electrical sites and non-electrical campsites, each with a picnic table and fire pit.
Most of the Maple Campground was gated off at the time of our stay, but we drove through the rest of the campgrounds to get a good feel for the rest of the park.
Closest to the park office is the Pine Campground. Most of this section - especially the center area - feels like a bit like a trailer park - large sites, wide open, very little tree cover, no privacy, etc.
There are a few more secluded sites closer to the main road, though.
Birch and Pine campgrounds seem to be the best options for larger trailers and RVs.
What we could see of Maple Campground was foresty, with nicer, larger sites that had better privacy between them. Some have cool rock formations in or behind the sites. Like Poplar, the area is really hilly and the ground uneven in the sites.
Poplar, Oak, and Maple are all non-electrical, btw.
Our site was next to the vault toilet in that section, with our own private path up to it./div>
Backcountry Camping
The remaining campgrounds - Lakeview and Cedar - are essentially backcountry sites. You park somewhere - not too far from the site - and walk in.
The access points to the walk in sites are really cute - like rustic hiking trails. Several of these sites are waterfront, or otherwise have a good view of the lake.
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Entertainment and Activity
Here’s some information on the activities available at Six Mile Lake Provincial Park:
Hiking
Six Mile Lake has an interconnected set of 3 beautiful hiking trails.
The listed distance for each trail needs to be taken with a grain of salt, due to the layout of the trails. Basically, there’s one long, linear trail (Living Edge Trail), and the other two trails are linear half-loops off of that trail.
So, the distances are for each portion of the trail, not including the walk to get there.
As an example, the David Milne Trail is listed as being 600 metres (on the map) or 0.5 km (on the site), but you’ll need to add about 1 km to that, to get there and back from the nearest trail access point.
Here’s some more specific information about each trail segment, in the order we did them:
The David Milne Trail - 0.6 km, Moderate
This short trail - named after one of Canada’s foremost artists - involves some fairly rugged terrain.
Early on, this trail completely flooded out. It looked like it had been that way for a while, and there was a bypass - not as well-worn trail section - off to the right.
Overall, though, the views were really nice. We could have done without the highway 400 traffic noise, but the fall colours were gorgeous.
Anyway - especially in that area - there were some steep inlines, slippery spots, rocks to traverse - including some pretty steep rock faces. Be careful if your boots are still wet from the marshy areas, these rocks get slippery!
The Marsh Trail - 1km, Moderate
We got onto the Marsh Trail towards the end of the David Milne trail.
It started fairly dry, and then dipped down to go around the marsh where it got pretty wet. There was a flooded out area, but with a decent work around, so we didn’t have much of a problem there.
There are some very steep rocks - and a lot of roots to climb over - before you climb up a really steep area of rocky outcrops of the Canadian Shield . At that point, the trail kind of levels out for a bit. You’re pretty far above the marsh there, so it's a lot more dry.
Up on this plateau, it’s easy to lose the trail - be sure to look for the faded paint marks on the ground to find your way.
There's a point on the Marsh Trail where the trail seems to end abruptly, roped off.
I was worried we'd have to turn back and do the whole trail, but it turned out to just be an access point for a private snowmobile trail.
From the parking lot to the first David Milne trail entrance, along that trail cutting onto the Marsh Trail and finishing out where it hits the living Edge trail came to almost 2 km of hiking. At this point, we got back onto the Living Edge Trail to head back to the car.
The Living Edge Trail - 1 km, Moderate
As with the high points on the Marsh Trail, there are several points on this trail where you really need to look for the worn out paint marks.
At one point, you really have to look to see the marker arrow... it’s there, but it looks like it’s pointing to an area with no trail beyond it. We likened it to the bridge in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade - you have to basically get right on top of the spot, trust there’s a trail, and it just kind of materializes!
Anyway, this trail passes a few nice scenic areas near water before meeting up with the David Milne Trail entrance points. We skipped doing that trail a second time, and just went straight back to the car.
All told, starting out at the South end of the trail system, getting on the the first David Milne trail entrance, taking that trail to the Marsh Trail, hooking back on to living Edge trail and back to the parking lot came to 2.88 km. It took us about 2 hours, but we were screwing around a lot, birding and taking a lot of photos.
Biking
Six Mile Lake Provincial Park doesn’t have any cycling trails, and none of the hiking trails are mixed use.
Cycling isn’t allowed on the hiking trails at all, but IS allowed on the park roads.
Swimming
There are two swimming beaches - the Day Use Beach / Birch Beach, another small beach next to the Oak & Maple Campgrounds, and one dog beach. The dog beach is next to the day use beach.
All three are sandy beaches - and well manicured - though the sand has a weird texture. The sand seems to be actual sand - and ALL sand, rather than sand mixed with mud or clay.
I think - after talking to the employee that was grooming them when we arrived - that the sand is just SUPER saturated with water.
He told me that a nearby dam was being fixed, and that they haven’t had any control of the water levels. Apparently the entire dog beach was under water in the spring, and they only recently gained back 3 feet of next beach over that they’d “lost” to the water levels.
The best way I can describe it was like if you were walking on a slurpee. In NO way was it like any regular wet sand I’d been on before.
Anyway, the water appeared clean but maybe a little marshy in places (I’m not a fan of swimming with vegetation!).
As with most/all provincial park campgrounds, there are no lifeguards on duty at any of the beaches.
Birding, Wildlife, and Nature
We kind of expected the park to be really great for birding, given all the wetland areas and such.
Even with walking the trail system early, in good weather, we didn’t turn up much in the way of birds on our first day. The lighting conditions were too poor to really photograph the ones we did see. and we were kind of disappointed.
During the entirety of our stay, we saw: American Robin, Black-Capped Chickadee, Barred Owl, Blue Jay, Chipping Sparrow, Common Starling, Dark-Eyed Junco, Eastern Phoebe, Great Blue Heron, Hairy Woodpecker, White-Breasted Nuthatch, White-Throated Sparrow.
and we heard: American Redstart, Golden-Crowned Kinglet.
Row 2: Downy Woodpecker, Great Blue Heron
Row 3: White-Breasted Nuthatch, White-Crowned Sparrow
We also saw a few different types of fungi on the hiking trails.
Sitting in our campsite that night, I heard kind of a whoosh and looked over to watch a big owl fly and land, not even 8 metres from us!
He just chilled there for a bit, cool with us taking his photo and everything... until someone in another site talked. When that happened, he whipped his head around, then just noped out.
He came back to visit us later that evening, then supervised Porter doing laundry the next day.
So, we decided we should name him, rather than just refer to our repeat visitor as “the owl”.
We’d both thought it was “Barn Owl”, only learning that it was “BARRED Owl” at a presentation when we were staying at Mew Lake Campground, Algonquin Provincial Park this summer.
SO I was thinking we should call him “Barney”. THEN I learned that Porter had thought they meant “BARD owl”, and that just opened up a whole other realm of naming possibilities.
After polling friends - who contributed “Othello”, “Jareth”, “Barnaby”, “Shakespeare”, “Bart”, “and “Barney Miller the Barred Owl”, we ended up deciding on Bowman.
As in ... Bowman the Barred (Bard), a play on Bard the Bowman. LOL!
Boating
Six Mile Lake seems to be a really nice destination for recreational boating .
The boat launch area is really cute, and can accommodate small and medium sized boats. There’s not really any room for trailer parking there, but the road itself is a loop that starts on one section of the campground road, and exits a bit further down.
There are a few docks and two launches, one seems to be more for motor boats, and the other maybe more of a canoe launch.
Anyway, a whole section of the lake - around the beach - looks to be blocked off from power boating and pretty sheltered in general. It looks like a really nice setup if you want to standup paddle board, go canoeing, kayaking, use a pedal boat, etc.
Fishing
Six Mile Lake Provincial Park is located in fishing Zone 15 - Muskoka.
You can fish from the docks or out on the lake, and the most popular catches are Largemouth Bass, Northern Pike, and Smallmouth Bass.
It used to be a popular spot for Crappie fishing, but apparently that’s seen a ton of decline in the past 5-10 years or so.
Discovery Program
Six Mile Lake Provincial Park runs a bit of a Discovery Program, but only during July and August.
As we camped there in October, we didn’t even see signage of what the programming looked like. There isn’t anything like an amphitheatre or visitor center at the park, though, so I suspect it’s mostly Exploration Stations and the Discovery Activity Book.
After all, the website description is really generic, and it’s a small park!
Niantic Games
There are a few Pokestops / Gyms / Ingress Portals in the park, but few and far between.
We had enough internet access to be able to load and play a bit during our stay, but it’s not an ideal place to be during a major event.
Final Thoughts
Maybe it was just the time of year - after the main season, and during a holiday weekend at the end of the operating season - but we had a hard time deciding on what the vibe of this park was.
I’m guessing it varies wildly - it was very quiet and peaceful during our stay. That said, we could totally see it being much more active in the summer, when kids are off school and all the activities are operational.
We liked the view of all the little islands around the area, breaking up the view of the larger lake. It looked like it would be lot of fun to explore - we really need to invest in a kayak.
Anyway, no shade at all to the park, but pretty much everything else that weekend was completely eclipsed by Bowman’s presence. Having an owl visit us in our site, repeatedly... how can anything else compete with that?
Overall, a cute park. Maybe not among our top ten, but I could absolutely see this being a favourite for families with young kids, etc.
More Provincial Park Campground Reviews
Want to read some more of what we have to say about the campgrounds we've stayed at? Here are some more reviews!
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