Hiking Trails and Trips

a beautiful trail starts with a waterfall right at the trail head.  The trail continues along the Sand River, past couple more waterfalls, rapids and quiet sections of the river.  We did a short hike and return.  The entire trail is about 6 km return along the river.

This is a popular trail for fall colours. It winds through flat forests and climbs up to a ridge with two lookouts over the Killarney Park.  To the south of the first lookout is Georgian Bay.  To the north of the 2nd lookout is the spectacular fall colours of La Cloche Mountains.

3 hrs driving from Toronto to Frontenac Park, it has been more than 25 years since I first visited Frontenac Park for a 2-day canoe camp.  After so many years, there wasn’t a trace of memory of how the park looks like.  Today’s visit gave me a completely new experience, thus worth the 3 hours drive from Toronto. I left home at 6am and grouping with friends together at the 401 service station...

While my original plan was to take some nice pictures at Happy Isles capturing the motion of water flowing from Merced River cascading over a series of smooth granite rocks, the beauty of Mist Trail kept me walking all the way to Vernal Falls.  The Mist Trail is one of the most popular trails in the valley.  It is the same trail that we can hike to the Half Dome.  The trail...

The drive from Yosemite village to Mariposa Grove was certainly worth the effort.  Entering from the trail head of the Mariposa Grove, in the next 10 km walk, we were about to see some of the world tallest and oldest trees, although they are not necessarily the oldest (bristlecone pine: 4,600 years), tallest (coastal redwoods: 378 ft) and have the greatest basal diameters (Sierra redwoods: 310 ft).  The giant sequoias I was...

From Merced, we entered the park through the Arch Rock entrance on Hwy 140, the Tuolumne Grove was our first stop inside the park. The Tuolumne Grove is one of the three sequoia groves in the park, the other 2 being Merced Grove and Mariposa Grove, that has magnificent giant sequoia trees that we have never seen before elsewhere. This is a short trail easy to access. Less than 2 km downhill...

The last weekend of Sept is usually the peak of the fall colour in Algonquin Park. We were there on Sunday Sept 25, just a day before the park officially declared the colour at ‘peak’. Having hiked most of the trails along the Highway 60 corridor, it is about time to finish the few remaining day hike trails.  The Booth’s Rock Trail remains one of the few left for me. It didn’t take too...

It was pouring with rain the first night we were camping at the George Lake compound, the only campground designated for car camping.  The remaining parts of this large park can only be accessed through backpacking or paddling. The next morning, the sun started to come up when we were gathered at the trail head.  This is a short 4 km loop trail accessed from the west side of the campground at site...

After leaving the Webster’s Falls Conservation Area (http://www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=1057574), we drove more than 60km south along QEW to the Ball’s Falls Conservation Area.  From the parking lot, we walked along the Cataract Trail on the west side of the bridge to the Upper Ball’s Falls and returned back to the trail head.  We then crossed the bridge at Twenty Mile Creek and hiked along the path passing the Historical Church and a barn,...

Finished the 4 1/2 hours Grand Ave Tour at 3pm.  Classified in the park brochure as ‘physically demanding’, this 4-mile hike inside the cave was far from strenuous as advertised.  After finishing the tour, as we still had time and energy left, we decided to hike the Green River Bluffs Trail to log another 5 km before calling off a day. We walked down the same path from the Visitor Centre to the...