Tuesday, May 29 – 2007
12:15 – 15:45
Start: 12:30
Roads: Dry / clear
Visibility: 24km
Temp: +19C
Area: Niagara Gorge, Niagara Falls Canada
Vehicle: Suburban
Weather: Sunny / Clear
Trail Conditions: Dry rock
Hikers: Tori, Wolf, Lupis, Merlin, Morgana
Plan: Use the metal stairs and hike barefoot in the gorge
12:15 We arrived at the top of the gorge but now there is some Indian totem thing in the field. I wondered to the ticket wicket to ask and was told by the asian man in the wicket that you can still get to the steel metal stairs.
12:30 We headed out onto the trails and down the steel steps. The scenery here is always beautiful. Giant rocks, huge towering trees, and ferns. We made our way down to the waters edge of the magnificent Niagara river.
12:45 We arrived at the edge of the river and spent some time on a large rock and got some great photographs
13:41 We headed back to the trails and cool canopy of the forest floor to begin our hike. It is very relaxing here. We followed along the river trail which I saw up top was listed as partially closed.
14:18 We found a small natural spring which has been here for many moons. There was a lot of fallen rock that had come from the cliffs above. We met a couple – man in sandals, beige shorts and grey shirt, woman in white running shoes, white shorts and top with medium length blond hair. They were enamored by the dogs and took photos of Merlin and Morgana. They also found it amasing we hike barefoot.
14:40 We came out of the closed trail onto the regular blue trail pathway and stopped to fill out the logbook. We have already used small tripod Brian bought me for my birthday quite a few times. It’s a very useful tool.
15:02 We headed up to where the blue trail joins the green trail and started to head back towards the truck. We stopped to give the dogs water and passed a couple from Texas or the deep south by their accent. They said they lost their black lab a few months ago. He had trouble with his back-end and they had to have him killed. I wore my camouflage pants, an ex-officio brown shirt with Jeep patch, black hat and our new Camelbak Viper hydration packs. Tori wore her black cargo pants, light blue and purple wavey-patterned shirt and beige adventure hat with camelbak viper hydration pack. We had a great hike which was quite relaxing even with the dogs. By the end of the hike, Tori’s ankle was troubling her and she had to take one of her pain pills.
15:38 We got back to the truck and headed home after filling out the hike journal.
