Shvilist

When the weather became to cold for me (around -7 Celsius… ) I fled towards Vancouver. It really is a nice place, and I spent there about a week (defrosting, touring it’s many parks and frequently visiting Glenville island brewery… ) but since I dedicated this site to treks – this is not the place to write about a city experience…

… So I moved on to Victoria, and spend an entire day over there (way too much) , then went to Tofino, spent an hour and a half before taking the ferry to Flores island – which is  an Indigenous reserve. On this Island, they cleared out a beautiful trail that goes along the coasts of the island, starting at the village of Ahousaht and ending at the beautiful beach of cow bay.

The trail is about 22 Km long, and there are camps in which you can stay over. However – there are no water sources along the trail (well, there is this one river, but since you’re too close to the sea, the water are not so fresh…. and if you climb higher, the water were muddy, so i didn’t drink from it). It’s an easy walk, very well paved and marked – and highly recommended : some of the most magnificent trees I’ve seen in Canada are there…. unfortunately, I failed to capture the SIZE of the trees in my pictures (I do have one in which I used my walking pole as a scale – but all you see in this one is a trunk. So you’ll have to use your imagination, or better yet – go there and see for yourselves )

A  word about the cute dog in the picture above : upon arrival in the village, he came to greet me. I instinctively pet him – and from that moment on he was my loyal companion, never leaving me for three days (I started the trail on Monday evening, at about 17:00, and finished it on Wednesday morning at eight). Apparently, he likes the cereal which I had…

some more pictures…..

Obviously I have many stories to tell about these places and hikes. But since they have more to do with my personal experience than with the places themselves, i’d rather let the picture talk instead….

If I was forced to sum it up, there are two places i would definitely go back to : Gaspe region (forllion forest and the rest of the Appalachian trail) and here – for a more strenuous trail…

Watch out for birds. We were sitting and eating a  sandwich, when this little guy appeared out of nowhere, and snatched a bite. Very rude of him…

Walking on Mount Jack-Cartier in the Gaspesie park ( I probably misspelled it. It is a french name, after all…) I was not dressed properly for the snow, heights and winds – and so I got pneumonia (later they claimed it was actually the swine flue, and I got it probably two weeks earlier, on a plane… ) either way – I was really sick when I got to the rockies, and so I did not do and strenuous hike there – but many nice and short, day hikes.

My visit was mainly around Banff – but I also got a ride all the way to Jasper. I spent a total of two weeks in the area, and not a single day resting in the hotel…. (despite the doctor’s orders…. but i did some resting in the car, driving to Jasper)

I have a total of 624 different pictures, so it’s really hard choosing … but you get the idea : beautiful mountain sceneries, lots of wild life, amazing emerald coloured lakes and multi-colour trees

By the time I got better, it started snowing unfortunately. While it practically rendered my plans of several day hike as impossible (or at least – a very stupid idea, considering that I just got better) it did gave me the opportunity to do some hike in the snow (something that is impossible in Israel, unfortunately)

Well, there are so many pictures to choose from, that I simply had to publish another post….

I’ve walked for about a week – and it was definitely not enough, and given the chance i would have walked all the way to the Forillon forest, where I’ve heard that a beaver dam could be seen. It’s also the last part of the Appalachian trail in Quebec… well – that gives me another place to come back to, i guess

I had several funny encounters with french tourists – the thing that made them funny was the  fact that they did not speak English, and, as I said before, my French is practically non-existent. So spending an entire night, sharing dinner and everything become an amusing task, where each side uses what little words he knows, and a lot of hand gestures…

After a short and a quite disappointing visit to the Niagara falls (much too touristic to my taste), I went to Montreal, to visit a friend of mine. From there, an 18 hour train ride took me to gaspe, and another 4 hour bus ride took me to cap-chat, where I spent the night. The following morning I began the trail, walking along the river till I found the international Appalachian trail (SIA in french – this is in Quebec….), and then I headed east – towards the parc de la Gaspesie.

Unlike the Bruce trail, this trail climbs mountains (well, this IS the Appalachian trail…..), so you walk from one peak to another. Though much more strenuous than the Bruce, it offers  what the Bruce lacks: variety. The scenery from the mountain-tops is absolutely breath taking, the wild life is much more diverse (among the animals I saw there are  caribou, fox, moose and many types of birds), and as you climb, the trees change to bush and then to bare rocks – so you can measure your height just by looking at the growth. I arrived there by September 10th, and the trees already started to change their colours. There aren’t many flowers, but the undergrowth also changed it’s colours into magnificent red and golden yellow.

Once you enter the park, road is clearly marked and the rangers take good care of it – flooring swampy areas with wood and making sure that each cabin has enough fire wood. Oh, and yes – they have sleeping cabins there. You still need a sleeping bag, and food and water, obviously, but no tent is necessary.  On the down side, the park authorities do require you to register your entrance and declare (and pay…) for each night exactly where you’ll stay. Since the path is strenuous, I’d recommend you not to plan for more than 15 KM a day – at worse case you’ll have more time to sit and enjoy the view….

My Canada trip was both urban trip – visiting family and friends and resting from the hikes – and, of course, the hikes.

Prior to the visit I thought a lot about how, what and where should I go. I had a distinctive time frame – from the end of August till the weather gets too cold – and so I decided NOT to focus myself at a single trail , but rather spend some time in different locations across the country  and see as much wildlife, nature and friends as my time (and money. Canada’s expensive!) will allow.

The first hike was the Bruce trail - a 800 KM long hike, out of which I walked about 200 – started in tobermory, up in the bruce peninsula, walking to wiarton, then hopping to Owen sound and ending in the Inglis falls.

The trail is quite an easy one, and follows the white lime stone cliffs and shores of the George bay – a part of lake Huron – an amazingly clear fresh water lake.

This was my first encounter with Canada huge spaces (Canada’s the second largest in the world). Coming from the packed Israel, it was quite a shock – never in my life have I experienced such a vastness… on top of that, coming from the drought plagued country into the one which posses 20 % of the entire fresh water supplies in the world left me astounded … at least for the first day or so.

And so – if I had to sum the trail up in three words – one of them will definitly be HUMONGOUS. Huge, crystal clear lake, it’s shores are either beautiful white low cliffs (about 250 meter max) or just simple stones reaching the water (there are some sandy beaches – but they are rare). The second word will be BEAUTIFUL – the entire region is covered by forest (still green by the end of august) – so you have the beautiful cliffs, magnificant trees, amazing clear lake…

BUT – the problem is that for 200 km, the views are too repetitive. As I mentioned earlier, the trail moves between the elevation of the sea level and 250 meters – which means that there’s not much diversity in vegetation. You are owed at the first day. The second day is nice. The third day may be ok, but you get real excited when you finally spot a squirl, for it breaks the MONOTONY of the trail. Compared to the Israel National Trail, where you get to see at least two new sceneries each days, the Bruce is, unfortunately, boring .

SUMMERY: definitely worth visiting, but not for more than a week. I’d also suggest having a car – the public transportation to this region  is awful and expensive – take a car and do day hikes on different parts of the trail.

for the past three weeks or so I’ve been hiking in Canada – basically hopping from one nature reserve to the next.

So far I hiked the northern part of the bruce trail (took me about a week to get from Tobermory to Wiarton – with many adventures and encounters on the way.

Three of the most excited ones where a close meeting with a black bear (he was to fast for me – so I wasn’t able to take a photo of him), sleeping on a 250 meter cliff above the goerge bay – and watching the sun rises from the water, and a meeting with one of the pioneers familly .

The second hike was a 150 Km long hike  – part of the international appalacian trail in Quebec, in the national park called the gaspesie, which contain one of the largest caribou herd (about 200 animals). much more strenouos than the bruce, much better views, many more animals, and almost no mosquitos, so personally I rank  it much better than the bruce.

The trip is still on going, and I have not yet decided where to go next from here – and it’ll take me some time till I publish it all. So these are just the tip of the iceberg pictures, brought here as appetizers …