Hiking

Refuge Le Mésangeai on Montagne Noire

My first hike with @toeslad since getting off the long trail in September.

That was a busy fall!

Hiking at Chute à Bull with Brienne. A short fall hike.

To reach this Rogart Mountain trail, Google maps directed me down Kemptown Road, a dirt road which wouldn't have been my first choice. But it turned out for the best. Good driving conditions and en route passed a parking lot with info sign for the remote 13K wilderness part of the Gully Lake Trail system - where I will hike another day!! https://www.sugarmoon.ca/hike/trail-maps/

If you're a waterfalls chaser this falls would be disappointing - although in a rainy season it would be a bit more impressive. Jane's Falls: "a thin falls on a wide grand rock wall. Named for Jane (Matheson) MacDonald who emigrated from Rogart, Scotland by 1818."

Rogart Mountain hike: trailhead is at Sugar Moon Farm (https://www.sugarmoon.ca/hike/) near Earltown, NS. Of the three seasons I've trekked this trail - springtime without leaves, winter with snowshoes - I think this was my favourite. A mix of colourful foliage and organic scent of fallen leaves.

Bushwhacked our way around many rootball clumps and trees criss-crossed everywhere. There's a lot of cleanup here for those volunteers who maintain this Cape George trail, a job which will certainly carry on into next year.

Due to hurricane Dorian a couple weeks earlier , it was slow-going on this beautiful wilderness trail: blocked by many huge timber blowdowns that we had to circumvent, then search in the underbrush for the next orange trail markers. Branches and random-sized twigs with leaves littered the forest floor. Quite an adventure - we had a paper guide but again I was thankful for having downloaded the route on my AllTrails App to help direct us back towards the trail.

Moss-covered rock face on the final descent.

In our four hours we saw two other hikers. Jamie offered to take our photo, which wasn't your typical scenario of "say cheese and shoot". Joanne and I obliged with his specific instructions for our pose: though we prefer the au natural look :-)

The previous night we'd heard sleet-ice-pellets pinging on the windows of the cottage but not enough to stay on the ground like the occasional little patch we saw in this hike's higher elevation.