See, Kattina and I have put together a couple's bucket list (which can be found in an earlier post for those interested) and we've decided to start big (really big).
The Bruce Trail spans 885km across Southern and Central Ontario. It follows the Niagara Escarpment starting in St.Catharines and ending in Tobermory. Yeah. It's big. And yeah, we're going to hike it...please pray.
The trail is named after James Bruce, the 8th Earl of Elgin. This dude had some serious hair and oversaw the second Opium War in China. He has a ton of stuff named after him including The Bruce Trail, Port Elgin, The Lord Elgin Hotel (Ottawa), Kincardine, and Bruce and Elgin County. Needless to say, this dude was a baller and a viceroy!
In preparation for this hefty task we had to pick up a Bruce Trail Reference ($34) at our local giant bookstore. I was advised to do so by the trusty Bruce Trail website where I also found a fantastic little motivator; the Bruce Trail End to End Badge.
Yes, this glorious piece of badge is given to those who successfully hike the Bruce in his entirety. It's the satisfaction of knowing you'll have a little something something to show for all the blood, sweat and tears put into this adventure. Now there are a few prerequisites to earning this badge...
To be recognized as an official End-to-Ender with the Bruce Trail
Conservancy, you will need to do the following:
Send us your trail logs*
Be a member at the time you complete your end-to-end
Provide us with the date you completed your end-to-end.
Send us $15 to cover the costs of processing your end-to-end and to pay for your end-to-end badge.
*The trail logs can be as simple as list of where you started and where you ended on a particular day. It might be worth having a separate page for each club section.
So now the $15 is no problem, the date of completion has yet to be decided, we're in the process of becoming members (which, by the way, is half price until October thanks to KEEN (Hey KEEN! Send us some boots! :P...But seriously, send us some boots)),now we can start on our trail logs, which is what you are experiencing right now! Awesome! Woohoo! It's like you're right there with us!
So here we go.
We got up around 9 and enjoyed some oatmeal with apples and cinnamon topped with soy milk and a half grapefruit (Daniel Fast breakfast special). We packed our backpacks with the essentials.
- Lunch and Snacks (Spinach Salad, Bananas, Trail Mix, Grapes)
- Rain Coats
- Bathing Suit
- Extra Socks
- Pocket Knife (a la Curt Hesselink)
- Trail Map
- Journal
- Camera (Canon Rebel XS)
- Head Lamps (Petzl 15 lumin, Black Diamond 70 lumin)
- Water (3Litres)
- Wallets
- Phones
We left the apartment at about 9:50 to make our first important stop of the day. We had to get our pal Drew. Drew is a good brother who often joins our little adventures and often ends up with toys and gadgets necessary for our survival. Seriously, the dudes got more toys than 'r' Us. He's pretty knowledgeable on outdoors stuff and the man can fix just about anything that can be broken. Anyways, Drew brought along his own pack of food and supplies for the day and ended up having a compass and GPS which ended up being pretty sweet! That's Drew on the right rockin out in Everton with some waterproof flashlights (toys)! Ladies?
So we grabbed Drew and headed out Victoria to Claire Rd. so we could take Highway 6 to the QEW. We stopped on Claire to grab some Subway and head out 6. Now, as a friend/canoe partner once taught me, Viva La Vida is an incredible driving soundtrack and my awesome wife remembered this little fact and hit the old play button just outside of town. It seemed to be smooth sailing until we got to the QEW and then disaster struck! What we theorized was gas company employees staging an accident in order to cause hundreds of drivers to burn more fuel turned out to be an "unexpected collision" on the road ahead. Not checking the traffic report was our first mistake and we immediately took note to check the traffic before heading out for our second leg of the trail.
As we sat in traffic we ran out of Coldplay and promptly threw on some Jay-May (John Mayer) because we are hard to the core. We watched a lot of BMW drivers refuse to let anyone into their lane towards the exits and we had a nice tow truck driver tell us to take the next exit to Burlington before letting us into his lane (we later saw a collision between said BMW and said tow-truck as two DBs attempted to speed past traffic on the shoulder thus claiming their importance over the rest of us non-specials).
We had a choice to make. Do we sit in traffic for 3 hours of what should be a 90 minute drive? Or do we head home and count our losses? Well, Kattina had something in her nostrils, it was close, it was big, it was calling, it was MEC. I think I may begin to call it MECca because just as every good Muslim must journey to Mecca once in their life so must every good, true, pure hearted camper/hiker/biker/canoer/climber and anyone else who has a fondness of the outdoors travel to MEC(ca)!
Now before you all go running to MEC(ca) I should warn you that it is easy to find yourself broke after only an hour of exploring its depths because it seems like there's always a new thing to discover and/or buy! Usually buy.
Luckily we were already in need of some climbing bags and chalk and we were able to stay relatively focused.
Kattina and I walked out with two climbing bags, a bag of climbing chalk, a magnesium fire starter and an all weather note pad which works like a dream! All in all a pretty cheap time at MEC(ca).
In the parking lot we fuelled up with some peanuts and water and resolved to kick Bruce where it hurts...on the trail! We got back on the highway and after a quick exit and a recalibration got back onto the highway again, this time in the right direction. We got through traffic and showed up near the U.S border and more importantly Queenston Heights Park!
We arrived at the park at 2:17pm after a drive that was nearly double the length in time it should've been. Queenston Heights Park is where the Southern Terminus of the Bruce is located. The terminus is marked by a cairn which was a neat stone pillar with an arrow in the top. Upon closer inspection I noticed a keychain in the cairn and upon even closer inspection I noticed it had a little note from an old book inscribed on it. The note said "...and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8". I thought it was fitting considering the three of us were going on a walk. In true geocaching fashion I replaced the keychain with a pen that read, and sometimes wrote Jesus Loves Me.
Now if you're parking at Queenston Heights Park, it can be a bit confusing to find the trail. We learned this quickly. After a little visit to the General Brock Monument and a quick trip to the washroom, we were able to get our bearings and find ourselves pointed in the right direction.
0.01km - As we headed through a crowded park towards a thickly forested trail, the reality of the adventure started to set in and I got excited. High fives were in order.
0.07km - As we trekked toward the woods edge we happened to notice a park employee using a gas powered back pack blower to dust off the shop truck's driveway while another employee stood by and watched. Needless to say we were very proud of how our dollars contribute to city parks and recreation areas.
0.8km - We took our first steps into the bush and instantly we were showered with the song of cicadas looking to get laid. To our right, we had vineyards with their bird bangers on high alert and to our left we could hear the faint sounds of the highway.
The well compacted path was refreshing after the long drive in.
approx 1.8km - We find a fire pit surrounded by large sitting stones and an old rusted structure that upon further research turned out to be a Cold War era radio microwave communication tower! I was half way up the structure when we realized our second mistake of the journey; we had forgotten bug spray...in the car. The mosquitos were thirsty and quickly used their built in straws to slurp up our blood from our now flailing arms. We decided we better move on so as to be tougher targets for the vampires.
We came out of a clearing and noticed a quarry on our left side. We paused to attempt some photos of a downey woodpecker hard at work.
2.2km - To our left Drew noticed a foundation of some kind. The stone sided holes were about 5 feet deep and housed some old bottles and sticks. I noticed there was a water pipe leading into the hole closest to the trail. We noticed a wooden post opposite the holes that read Canada Trust. These holes have since been referred to as The Bank.
2.3km- We walked out to this massive arena like formation of rock and tree and moss that was literally 'awe' inspiring and we stopped as Drew snapped some pics. We heard a scream and turned quickly and ready to defend. It was Kattina, she had realized that her hand was very close to a cicada shell. No biggie. She's okay now.
We found a staircase not far from the arena which had a placard reading 1000 and we're still unsure what to make of it.
2.5km - Lunch time! We found a little hill not far from the stairs that had some nice seating where could eat our salad with our hands and catch some wind. We dubbed it Lunch Hill.
As we hiked on we found ourselves at a great pace enjoying the sound of roaring golf carts on the right and enjoying the view of amazing rocks on the left. I came around one bend to find a Scarlet Tanager in the middle of the trail and I called Drew to bring his camera as he was focussing in, the little guy decided to fly away, but his colours were amazing!! We soon realized that our water supply was running out and we didn't have a pump to purify any water...
5.3km - We came to a side street near the highway leading into St.Davids. We passed by an old yellow Massey Ferguson tractor sitting by the river. We took a little detour into a trailer park and asked a kind woman if there was a corner store nearby where we could perhaps replenish our liquids. She told us to head to Orchard Glen and said, "it's a bit of a walk but you'll make it." It's good to know we weren't going to die.
Once we reached Orchard Glen we were happy to find the produce clerks of St.Davids to be as friendly as their reputation would suggest. The youngster was more than eager to fill up our 3 bottles and show me to the washroom where I obeyed the sign to 'please keep the washroom tidy' and yet still I managed to blow out a double flusher. Outside we downed an aloe and wheatgrass drink that promised to re-energize us (and I won't say it didn't deliver) and we ate some of the most sour grapefruit these lips have ever had the pleasure of being completely numbed by. After a short rest and a quick map check we were back on the Bruce!
The end of our first leg was near. We walked on knowing we had less than 2km to go.
We found ourselves on one of the many road sections Bruce has to offer and noticed a turtle completely flattened on the side of the road. Kattina was sad. Moving on.
5.8km - After the short-ish road section we re-entered the forest and took note of how much lower the temperature is in the forest. As we walked the winding final section we came to a spring of water pouring out of a concrete box looking thing. We were able to look into the box and determine it could make a cool spelunking experience had we the time or energy. Maybe another day.
Somewhere between here and the park there was a large puddle in the trail caused by dinks who like to ride ATV's and rip up the trail. We noticed some little heads sticking out of the water like little spies. They were frogs! We caught one for a picture and so Kattina could touch a frog. We let him go and gave him our best. I think he was excited and ran home to tell his friends he'd be on FaceBook.
7km - 6:00pm We emerge on a road with the most confusing trail markers ever and notice a spray painted arrow with the letters BT beside it. Thanks Graffiti. We look where the arrow is pointing in time to see some kids scatter and a passenger train go right through where they had been standing. We push it to get up the hill. It's a good one, but we make it. And to our right, Fireman's Park! We've made it to the 7km point! We walk down the stairs to the pavilion where a big yellow table reads respect across the top of it. Kinda like the table was giving us props. I looked for a fist to bump but couldn't find it. High fives were in order.
We hung out at this park for a bit and watched a sixty something year old man throw a ball for his miniature schnauzer. As we munched our trail mix and downed our water we wondered, 'how are we getting back to our car?' We tried calling a friend in St.Catharines to see if we could get him to make a little trip but he was out of town, which we kind of already knew but thought it couldn't hurt to call. We called a cab to see how much it would cost to take us back to Queenston Heights Park and did some simple math coming to the conclusion that $24 cab fare plus a tip was a bit steep. We looked at the Schnauzer dude. He was walking towards his car. I ran up and asked him if he was able to get us to the park and he responded with this. "Normally, I would just drive you there but to be honest I just smoked a joint and I'm wasted so I've got to go straight home." I looked sideways at him and I think he noticed because he smiled real big and hopped in his car and drove off. I hustled back to the pavilion to share the news with my compadres that the senior citizen couldn't drive us because he was too high...True story.
Anyways, we took a quick survey and decided to just hike it back.
Now, normally the story would end here but there was a rumbling, a tumbling, a tiny earthquake in Kattina's belly. It took place very close to the old Massey mentioned earlier and we needed to find cover. We looked left. We looked right. We ran into the forest. Drew went up ahead. I hung back. Kattina found herself against a tree somewhere in the middle. It's a good thing she thought to snag some toilet paper from that park washroom at the beginning of the hike!
Now it was smooth, turd free sailing from here on. We moved quickly, knowing the way ahead. No need to follow blazes. We knew where we were going. Joints were achy. Hills were brutal. Feet were on fire. We had to make it out.
Past the golf course.
Past the rock formations.
Past Lunch Hill.
Up the stairs marked 1000.
Past the stone arena.
Past The Bank.
Past the Cold War era radio microwave communication tower.
The cicadas seem louder now.
We can see the end of the forest.
We exit the forest and get rid of the added weight of garbage picked up off the trail. We start to get excited to be near the car. As we talk we start to figure that maybe next time we'll do two vehicles and have one at the end of the trail to take us back to our original parking spot. We talk about how awesome it would be to sit by Lake Ontario and enjoy a hotdog. But then we start to lose the feeling of hunger and just want to get home.
We get back to the car at 8:23pm and take off our shoes. We drive straight home in 90 minutes listening to Ben Harper's Fight for Your Mind most of the way.
We drop Drew off and we head home. Leave everything in the car. Give me my bed.
Done.
So what did we learn?
We learned that the journey seems like forever when you can't see the end. As fun as it was, we were tired and sore and didn't have enough food. The end seemed like a tall tale. It's kind of like life when it gets tough. We start to focus on the pain or other factors rather than the end goal. We see hills as mountains and creeks as oceans. It's easy to lose focus of the goal but all it takes is for us to trek on and to not lose hope in the one who has trekked the trail before us.
We learned 3L of water is not enough for 2 people on a 14km hike.
We learned calories are our friend!
We learned to pack toilet paper and probably a trowel.
We learned bug spray is always a good idea.
We learned cotton bras should not be worn hiking.
We learn that doing hard stuff together and with friends is WAY better than doing it alone.
Thanks Bruce for the first leg of this journey. We'll see you very soon to walk all over you again. xoxo.
Zach & Kattina & Drew
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