Pakwash Provincial Park is a tiny campground in Northwestern Ontario, known for its waterfront sites and fishing, Here's our review & guide!
After months of meticulously planning the entire road trip, we blew out a tire at Caliper Lake Provincial Park were able to use a spare to get as far as Rushing River Provincial Park - ahead of schedule, due to proximity to a Canadian Tire- then got stranded there for 10 days.
Toward the end of the delivery window CT gave us, we called for an update and were told it was going to extend beyond the 10 days, as they’re closed over the weekend.
Seeing how stressed I was about the timeline, doing reviews with lost days - and the rain in the forecast - Porter offered to drive us up to Pakwash on the Friday. He figured at least we could get the information and photos we needed, so I could start working ahead.
SO, we drove 2.5 hours from Rushing River to go check out the park we were slated to stay at... some time. We had no idea what the schedule was looking like, without knowing when we’d actually get the tire.
Anyway, Pakwash Provincial Park is a tiny, natural environment park in Northwestern Ontario. It’s just over an hour north of the Trans Canada Highway, in the town of Ear Falls.
Given the layout of the park - stretched along the shores of Pakwash Lake - it’s not surprising to hear that it’s a popular destination for fishing.
I think we saw more people fishing at Pakwash - again, a super tiny, very rural northern park - than we saw at the 10+ parks leading up to it, combined!
Anyway, lots to talk about, so let’s get right to it!
The Basics:
Campground Name: Pakwash Provincial Park
Address: Park Rd, Ear Falls ON. Click here for the Google Maps location.
Website:https://www.ontarioparks.ca/park/pakwash
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: Natural Environment
Season: May 16, 2025 to September 14, 2025
Logistics
Some basic information to help you plan your stay at Pakwash Provincial Park.
Registration and Check In
I had booked a 3 night stay at Pakwash 5 months ahead of time, at 7am. As it turns out, this was wholly unnecessary - the park was mostly empty, when we visited.
Also, those registration plans had ended up right out the window, during our time stranded in Kenora. I had to rebook the site, then eventually cancel it. In the end, we visited on a day use pass.
The gatehouse was closed - and we were well within business hours - with a big sign saying that the office was not staffed. There was a QR code to sign in... but no cellular reception.
It was odd.
Maps and Signage
As it turns out, it was a really good thing that I had downloaded a PDF copy of the Pakwash Provincial Park Map before headed out that morning!
With the gatehouse unstaffed - and no internet! - that pdf file was the only map I had access to during our visit.
I was a bit annoyed that they didn’t have any maps at all outside. Some parks will have almost a mail box / newspaper box kind of self-serve thing for maps... you’d think one that was specifically not-staffed would do the same.
At the very least, have a map as a road sign... but no.
In terms of signage, it was OK. Not a lot of it, kind of small... but high contrast. If you have a map, you’ll have no trouble getting around Pakwash Provincial Park.
If you don’t, you won’t have trouble finding your campsite, you just might have more of a difficult time figuring out what and where the amenities are. A lot are in eyesight of the central campground, though - so maybe not.
Services
There is a single trailer sanitation station, but it’s a weird setup.
It’s placed to the right side of the road as you’re coming in, basically an elongated half loop. Coming from that direction, there’s a dump platform and a fill platform on the passenger side, with no bypass lane.
The thing is, if you’re looking to dump/fill on the way into the park, it’s not really set up for you to be able to turn into it from the other direction. MUCH too tight of a U-turn for most RVs or trailers.
In order to get the taps on your driver’s side, you’re going to want to pass the trailer sanitation area, turn into the middle campground area (with the sites in the 40s-60s), and loop around back to the sanitation station.
Just a really odd setup.
Anyway, the fill tap is not threaded.
Connectivity
On Rogers Wireless, we had basically no internet at any point we looked. Near the comfort station, we had enough signal that a few notifications came in... but not enough to load any of them.
Accessibility
Pakwash Provincial Park is not a very accessible park.
The park’s website mentions the comfort station as having barrier free access, and there being a wheelchair ramp at the day use area.
I would definitely take both of those statements with a grain of salt.
The comfort station has a ramp up to it, but then about a 3" lip to actually get into the stalls.
We didn’t see a wheelchair ramp at the day use area, but maybe we were looking in the wrong spot? There’s no accessibility information marked on the map - not even on the “Accessible” comfort station - so I’m not sure where the ramp would be located.
Pets
The only information we’ve seen about pets at Pakwash Provincial Park is that they’re not allowed on the beach. There didn’t seem to be any dog beaches or pet exercise area at the park - on the map or in person.
So, I’d imagine all the standard rules apply - on leash and attended to at all times, not allowed to make excessive noise or harass other people and wildlife, and that they’re to be picked up after, with droppings properly disposed of.
Parking
The sites mostly all seemed big enough for an extra car, and there was plenty of parking around the park. Probably more than a park that size - and that remote - would need, really.
It’s also all well marked on the map, assuming you download one before you arrive!
Miscellaneous
Some miscellaneous info, specific to Pakwash Provincial Park:
The Roads
The road out to sites # 63-73 is horrendous. I’ve never seen anything like that in a provincial park before, it was pretty nerve wracking to drive!
Huge stretches of that road are covered in large rocks, the kind you’d see as an underlayment to an actual road. This didn’t appear to be a matter of being a work in progress, as deep ruts had been worn into it.
It was VERY high centered, and we kept hearing the underside of the car dragging along rocks.
The thing is, that road is the only way to get to the nicer sites - all the waterfront sites are down that way!
We ended up VERY thankful that we’d ended up going in on a day use permit, as we would NOT have wanted to drive the RV & towed car over that mess.
It’s also a single lane, with no bypass. There’s only one place to turn around, about halfway up. If you end up with another trailer coming towards you, and you’re not at that opening... you’re going to have a bad time.
Aurora Borealis
The beach at Pakwash Provincial Park is more or less north facing, and in an area of very little light pollution. It’s also quite far north - which would make Pakwash Provincial Park an excellent place for seeing the northern lights.
Unfortunately, we had to truncate our planned stay into a day use visit. Also, there was far too much wildfire smoke at the time of our visit, for seeing the Northern Lights to even be a possibility.
If you’re interested in possibly seeing the northern lights, check out our posts: Aurora Hunting, How to Photograph the Northern Lights, Can I See the Northern Lights Tonight?, and Where to See Northern Lights in Ontario.
Campground Amenities & Info
Pakwash Provincial Park is a VERY small park, and we visited in the shoulder season. There aren’t a lot of amenities, and some of the ones they do offer... weren’t available at the time of our visit.
Creature Comforts
There’s a small, rustic comfort station that’s pretty centrally located. It’s got flush toilets, laundry facilities, and showers.
Due to the road between the camping area and the comfort station, those in #63-73 shouldn’t necessarily consider the comfort station easily accessed. Without a big truck, it would be an ADVENTURE to go take a shower!
At the time of our visit, the men’s room accessible toilet and the urinal were out of order, leaving only a single stall working.
There were boil water advisories zip tied to the sinks in both the women’s and men’s washrooms, and the laundry room looked absolutely ancient.
Aside from the single comfort station, there were a few outhouses around the campground.
Park Store
According to the park’s website, Pakwash Provincial Park has a small store in the park office, with camping supplies, ice, firewood, and souvenirs.
I saw a shirt through the window... But if the building isn’t staffed, you’re not going to be able to buy anything! Maybe it opens up later in the year, but you’d think a Friday in mid June would be open, right?
Anyway, the park is about 20 km north of Ear Falls, and you can get groceries and some supplies there.
Visitor Centre
There is no visitor center at Pakwash Provincial Park.
Rentals
We didn’t see anything about Rentals on the Pakwash website, nor did we see any signage about possible rentals while at the park.
Day Use Area
The day use area at Pakwash Provincial Park is small, but cute. There’s a beach, a bit of a field, a basketball court, a playground, and a volleyball court.
I’ll get to the beach in a bit, but wanted to talk about those ball courts!
The basketball court had a REALLY nice concrete pad. It had to be new - it looked really smooth and level. It looked like the kind of place I’d actually have done inline figure skating on, before being incapacitated.
There aren’t a lot of outdoor spaces smooth and level enough for those kinds of skates, so that’s saying something.
The other thing is that both the basketball court and volleyball court were set up and ready for play. Both were set up with the appropriate net - something we don’t tend to see in Provincial Parks, especially in the shoulder season.
The thing that REALLY stood out, was that each had a holder for a ball... with a ball! Usually parks either won’t supply the balls, or will require you to go borrow or rent them from the office.
This seemed nice!
One thing to note: The map indicated a covered pavilion in the day use area, which we didn’t see. Further down the bad road - and on the other side of the road - there was a covered picnic shelter that was NOT on the map, though.
Campsite Details
Pakwash Provincial Park has a really small, quiet campground area.
There are a few different styles of campsite available at Pakwash Provincial Park:
Car Camping
There are just over 50 campsites in the park, and about half of those are electrical sites.
The campsites are divided into 3 sections, but they aren’t named. In order of coming into the park:
1 - The first section are more private sites, at least side-to-side. They’re all set into treed areas, with the sites themselves mostly being open. You can see the road and the site across from you, but not the ones beside you. A couple of sites in this section - I think it was #20 and #21 - had a water view, but didn’t look to have water access.
2 - The second section is the middle campground, and it has the easiest access to the day use area, beach, and boat launch. This is a wide open area with a bit of a trailer park vibe.
3 - The third campground section is a set of 11 waterfront sites, along the end of that awful road we mentioned. The sites themselves are SUPER cute, and seem to all have beach access and a great view of the water. Apparently you can actually fish right from your site, in this section!
Group Camping
Pakwash has a single group campsite, intended to accommodate anywhere from 15-25 people. It’s located across from the day use area, and has water taps and their own vault toilets on the site.
I have NO idea how we managed to miss it, when we visited... but apparently we drove right past it, and never noticed it. So, apologies, I don’t have a photo or first-hand description for you!
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Entertainment and Activity
While Pakwash Provincial Park is a tiny park, there are still quite a few options when it comes to outdoor recreation!
Here are some details about the outdoor activities you can enjoy:
Hiking
There’s a single hiking trail at Pakwash Provincial Park:
Nature Trail: 5 km, Moderate
As represented on the park map, this trail starts and ends near the picnic shelter on the bad road.
Between the heavy smoke and the bugs, we didn’t end up doing the trail during our visit, so I don’t have a lot to tell you.
We’d been looking forward to it, had we been able to keep our original planned stay. It’s supposed to take you through a few different types of environment - a beaver pond, boreal forest, a marsh, etc - with a bunch of interpretive stops along the way.
One thing I can note, though:
There is a marked trailhead across from one of the waterfront campsites, labeled “Lookout Trail”. Neither the trail nor the trail entrance are indicated on the map or the Pakwash Provincial Park’s website. There’s also no trail information on the sign, just the name.
Not sure if it’s a cut through to the Nature Trail, or something completely separate!
Biking
The park doesn’t have any cycling trails, but invites you to bike through the campground.
I would HIGHLY recommend keeping any biking to those first two campground areas, and not on that road out to the waterfront sites.
Swimming
The park’s website mentions having a long sandy beach.
Well, there’s a divide between the grassy area /campgrounds and the waterline, and there’s some sand there... but calling it a beach seems to be a bit of a stretch.
It’s a very narrow strip of wet sand and rocks, no where you’d want to lay out on. Also, there was no roped off swim area as mentioned on the website - but we did see piles of that floating rope on the shore.
Birding, Wildlife, and Nature
Usually, Ontario Provincial Parks mentions something about birding on a park’s site... but Pakwash Provincial Park didn’t even have a section for it.
There were multiple signs about a black bear in the area, and a protected bird nest on the side of the bad road out to the waterfront sites.
We looked at the location and joked “what kind of an idiot bird would nest THERE? Must be a Killdeer!”
Sure enough - a few minutes later at the boat launch - we saw a Killdeer.
Anyway, we didn’t get much birding done, all we saw or heard were Canada Goose, Killdeer, and Red-Eyed Vireo.
This was on account of the OTHER wildlife that was wildly abundant at Pakwash Provincial Park: The bugs. I’m not talking the black flies or even horse flies that you see at other campgrounds.
No, I’m talking about giant flying bugs - of several types - hat looked like they belonged in Australia, Costa Rica, or on one of the Jurassic Park movies.
We had NO idea what they were (beyond the horse flies that were easily twice the size as normal ones we've seen!), but they were kind of terrifying. They swarmed the bottom of the car door when I was trying to get back in at the front gate, they followed the car wherever we went, a few got IN the car.
I’ve never seen anything like it. We didn’t know if they were biters or not, but we definitely didn’t want to find out!
The weird thing is that we had just been at Blue Lake Provincial Park a few hours earlier. Nearby, also on a lake.. But with NOTHING like this. It was weird - I wonder what they were?
Some looked like giant wasps, others were more like flys, and still others... I just don’t even know what they were!
Boating
Pakwash Lake - and the surrounding area - seems to be a popular place for boating. Nearby Lac Seul is HUGE, and I guess both lakes are entry points for various northern canoe routes.
Pakwash lake was VERY choppy at the time of our visit, and it looks like rough waters and high winds are pretty common there.
There’s a small boat launch next to the fish cleaning hut. It was... something. The same kind of rock as the bad road, with wonky planks across it. Have fun?
Fishing
Pakwash Provincial Park is the first time we’ve seen a Provincial Park’s website describe the lakes around them as “teeming” with fish - in this case, Lake Trout, Northern Pike, and Walleye.
I think whoever wrote the description might be a Newfie - it says you can “catch a feed of walleye from the shoreline of your campsite” in early June.
There were a BUNCH of people fishing close to the shore in that area, though - so there probably really IS a ton of fish there. Almost everyone we could see on the lake, at that time, were grouped in a small area there.
Anyway, there’s a little fish cleaning hut next the boat launch, with cutting tables, lights, and running water.
I wonder if you’re supposed to take your fish there, when you catch from your campsite? I really need to acquaint myself with the logistics of fishing - and fish processing!
Discovery Program
Pakwash is an incredibly small park. Not only was there no mention of Discovery Programming on the park’s site, we didn’t see any signage about it during our visit.
Niantic Games
There is only two Ingress game points (Pokestop/ Gym / Ingress Portal/etc) in the park. They’re both located at the highway entrance to the park, as I was able to learn on the Ingress Intel site.
There’s pretty much no cell phone reception in the park, though... so I wouldn’t plan on playing. At all.
Final Thoughts
We are REALLY glad that we drove up in the car to suss the park out, rather than actually camp there as planned. Driving 1.5 hours off the highway, only to end up there... I would have been really disappointed.
... and probably ragey, after driving the RV down the road to those waterfront sites.
Overall, just a really old, poorly maintained park. We didn’t see a single park employee during our visit, which was just weird.
The bugs were next-level, and bugs usually aren’t something we’d consider a deal breaker. The non-waterfront sites weren’t awful, but they definitely weren’t anything to write home about, either.
I bet it’s a great park if you’re really into fishing, especially with the crowd we saw in that one area. Given that we don’t have a boat - and haven’t gotten into fishing yet - it’s just not a park that we’d want to drive an hour and a half out of the way for.
More Northern Ontario Provincial Parks & Places to See
Want to read some more about the parks we've camped and at places we've seen in Northern Ontario? Here are some more posts!
Northern Ontario Campground Reviews:
Agawa Bay Campground, Lake Superior Provincial Park
Blue Lake Provincial Park
Caliper Lake Provincial Park
Kakabeka Falls Provincial Park
MacLeod Provincial Park
Neys Provincial Park
Pancake Bay Provincial Park
Pukaskwa National Park
Quetico Provincial Park
Rabbit Blanket Lake, Lake Superior Provincial Park
Rainbow Falls Provincial Park
Rushing River Provincial Park
Sioux Narrows Provincial Park
Sleeping Giant Provincial Park
White Lake Provincial Park
Northern Ontario Places to See:
Aguasabon Falls & Gorge
Amethyst Mine Panorama
Batchawana Bay
Chippewa Falls
Kakabeka Falls
Mink Creek Falls
Old Woman Bay
Ouimet Canyon Provincial Park
Sand River Falls
Scenic High Falls
Temagami Fire Tower
Terrace Bay Beach
Want to explore beyond Northern Ontario? Check out our full list of Campground Reviews, Ontario Waterfalls, and other Places to See.
We also have a ton of Camping Recipes to cook up, while on your adventures!
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