Coxheath Hills Wilderness Trail

Its been a while since we went for a good hike and when we got up in the morning it was so beautiful .... 3C not a flake of snow on the ground to be seen, perfect day for a jaunt. MineRP a local caching legend placed a series of caches on the developing Coxheath Hills Wilderness Trail. Good excuse if you ask me! He provided coordinates for a new parking area as well. We got to the lot at about 1:30 and set off. As we made our way UP, and I stress up, the road that was chained off at the bottom we soon noticed that there was quite a bit of snow on the ground here. I was also a little disappointed because we were walking on a wide road and not a trail as I had pictured. We figured that at any point the road would disappear and we would be on a wilderness trail, but the road continued on. As we made our way up I would stop and turn around an take in the views of Sydney River, looks pretty from up there. We started closing in on the first cache location and the gps was pointing to a cliff to our right and 70 meters in so we assumed the trail would cut in above, we could not see around the next turn in the road because the cliff on the right blocked our view. Once around the next bend in the road we saw a side trail that the gps was pointing down, we went in about a hundred meters but the gps seemed to be pointing down over the side of the cliff. We decided not to put too much effort into this one yet because we had to return this way and decided to leave it for now. We were still travelling on a wide road as we made our way up the mountain, we stopped referring to it as a hill by this point :-). We started closing in on the second set of coordinates and began our search, we soon noticed a dead standing tree that was riddled with woodpecker holes, a perfect spot to hide a micro cache. and sure enough there it was, a 35 mm film can inside a woodpecker hole. Nice hide.

We were still pretty disappointed that we were walking on a road and not a wilderness trail, it was still beautiful though, just not what we expected. We headed off up what looked like the last real climb of the trek, didn't look like there was anymore hills in the skyline, wrong :-). We came to a huge mound of gravel and as we made our way around it we saw the end of the road and the beginning of the trail 2 km from the truck. There was some equipment here at the trailhead that was being used for trail construction. I had been talking to one of my coworkers and he is on the committee that is developing the trail, thats why I had such high expectations for the trail, we were not disappointed after all. The thing is when we left home there wasn't a speck of snow to be seen on the ground anywhere, as we made our way into the trail we started to sink in spots up to our knees. The trail soon began going through some high stands of mixed forest, with a stream meandering alongside. We were coming up on the next set of coordinates but were confused as they were showing a hundred meters off trail, not typical of MineRP's hides, he made a point of mentioning Leave No Trace principals in his cache listings so it was unlikely that they were that far off trail. I had to head in a bit to check though, and once in the woods a bit I noticed there there was a huge swamp between me and the coordinates,  not likely that that was the right way to go. Martha always says that I'm too quick to head into the woods and start bushwacking, need to follow the trail more. Whats the fun in that I say :-) hehehe, I should have learned to trust the cache hiders coordinates by now, his hides are always super accurate. We continued along the trail, uphill all the way so far, or so it seemed and soon came to Pittman Lodge. The cabin is open year round for rest and warmth and can be used for overnight stays with arrangements. Its really great. There is a table and chairs, four spots for sleeping bags a wood stove and a huge supply of firewood. There are solar powered led lighting in the cabin and a really clean outhouse by the woodshed.

We bypassed the cabin on the way in planning on stopping on the return trip. I looked at the map on the gps and figured by the placement of the caches the trail, which diverged into 3 here made a loop around the cabin so we set off for the one numbered 4 thinking that MineRP was taking us on a tour of the trail system. We made our way along to the location for the next cache, the one I had headed into the woods a km back. Again the coordinates were smack on and we headed off for the cache numbered 5. As we made our way along the beautiful trail we came across a wooden footbridge that crossed a pretty deep gorge cut by a stream. We noticed a sign for the 45 Engineer Squadron in Sydney. I remembered that Miles had told me that for practice the Engineers from Victoria Park Armories came up and built the bridge for them, great experience for them and great help to the trail association. Bridge looks great!   Notice the snow in the pictures as well, not a flake in St. Peter's, and what you see in the below images in Coxheath...who woulda thought!

We continued along the trail for another 300 meters or so to the location of cache number 5. This time Martha went in first to look for the cache. We had a look around for a few minutes then I remembered the accuracy of the previous sets of coordinates so I trusted them and went to 0 on the gps. Usually I get within 5 meters and put away the gps and start looking but I followed the ticker right to 0 and looked around and sure enough there it was. Nice. The deep snow and climb up the hills was starting to take a toll on our legs by this point and as we made our way up the next set of rolling bumps in the trail we both noticed at the same time that our pace had slowed already, we were only 4 km in but it felt like a lot further! The trail started to get a little rougher and the snow deeper a this point as well we both went through the crusty snow into a brook at one point the snow was up to my thigh. No wonder we were getting a little tired, still having a great time as well. We were closing in on the next cache location and headed off trail to find it. It was hidden in a hollow tree stump and I had to stand on a dead tree to get it, Caoimhe decided to jump up with me, she was there for a few minutes then fell off :-) hehehe my dainty little girl. 

We set off for the last cache in the series, dragging our butts by now! Caoimhe was even starting to slow down, a little. This section of the trail didn't see any attention yet in the development area of things and we were taking much smaller steps on what seemed impossible still going up. We made it to within a hundred meters of the cache and saw that it was on a trail offshoot, uphill at a good incline, ughh :-) We made our way up, Martha in the lead with the gps and we emerged from the trail at the top of the hill, an almost unobstructed 360 degree view, absolutely worth every step of the trek! This was my idea of geocaching! This is why we do it. Going to buy MineRP a beer if we ever meet him. We had to climb over some pretty big boulders over the side of the hill to the base of a big pine where Martha found the last cache, a well turned out ammo can. We appreciated the view for a bit, rummaged through the can and grabbed a travel bug and a geocoin. The coin was released in honor of our soldiers lost in Afghanistan. The owner is releasing a coin for every ten soldiers lost .. this was the 14th. A great spot to find a coin like this. We took a few pictures of the view, we really need a new camera :-( and headed out. The gps was saying 560 meters in a straight line to the cabin, ughh. 

 

The tree cover here must have been a little thicker than the rest of the trail, satellite reception was sketchy and I had to "connect the dots" on Basecamp when I got home to complete the trail log where it lost reception. We made our way along the trail which turned out to be over a km to the cabin, the least developed and most snow of the whole trip, for the first time in my life I felt old, my hip hurt for god's sake!! hehe The cabin was the most beautiful site in the world when we made it there! A little deck on the front with a bench, bird feeders well stocked with seed, and more inside to refill them. We flipped through the book they left in the cabin for people to sign. It is well used and people really take care of the cabin. There were logs from Christmas eve, boxing day, etc. It must really be a special place for people that have been using the lodge, a lot of kids in and out. I'd really like to go back and spend the night, I'll start working on Martha now and maybe by our 15th anniversary :-) hehe she's not a fan of "camping" although this isn't camping but a good start maybe! Next step a tent hehe. We sat and drank some water and munched on some trail mix to rest our weary bones before heading back down, and I stress down, although somehow there still seemed to be hills to climb on our way out! We made sure the bird feeders were full, which they were, there was a log in the book from earlier in the day, we didn't see anyone else on the trail though. The sun was slipping beneath the tree line as we made our way out of the trail onto the road. We were feeling a little refreshed as we made our way back to the cache titled 2. It was the last in the series and we were determined to make sure we got the cache. We went back out the look off trail we had tried on the way in but continued out further. It took every bit of energy I had left to make to ground zero, my legs were actually starting to cramp! That had never happened to me before! There it was, whew, it really would have been a bit of a disappointment if we didn't complete the series. We had a great day! I suggest everyone to go for a hike on the Coxheath Hills Wilderness trail, just take the day to do it, not an afternoon! We really want to thank MineRP for placing the series to show us the trail.

Coxheath Hills Wilderness Trail

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Geocaching Movie

Haven't seen it yet ...it might suck ... :-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FxrMY91jJU

Isle Madame Geocaching

Its been a while since we went for a hike and even longer since we went after some caches. This morning while we were sitting around being lazy we decided to get our asses off the couch and go for a little jaunt. After taking a peek at geocaching.com we decided to go for a few caches that we hadn't tried for on Isle Madame.

The first cache is in a Provincial picnic Park in Lennox Passage. We had driven past it a few times but had never stopped to see what the park was like. We parked the truck at the gate next to the road and walked in. We followed the road that you would normally drive in on in the summer months but it added to our walk. We came to the trailhead and followed it in. A narrow but well maintained trail very easy to walk on with little clearings along it with picnic tables. We came to the area where the cache should be and started looking around. Previous logs had mentioned about the signal being a little wonky in the area where the cache was and they were right. We searched in the general vicinity for about 25 minutes then called it a did not find (DNF)  Martha gets pretty pissed when we can't find a cache and the owners are lucky they can't hear her when we can't find it :-) hehe We really enjoyed the walk even though it was a bit muddy and soggy and Caoimhe decided to be a brat most of the way, thats what we get for not getting her out of the house yesterday.  I'll upload the track log for this hike but the other caches we went after were within a couple of hundred meters of the truck. The next geocache we went for was called Celtic Caching on Cap la Ronde. What a beautiful spot this was, going to come back when the weather is a little more pleasant to walk the beach.

The cache was only 50 meters from where we parked but on top of a little hill with a really great view. Its caches like this that keep us interested in the hobby, we may not have ever had a reason to stand on top of that little hill on Isle Madame, and thats the allure of geocaching for me. The next cache was less than a km from this one and we actually saw it from the truck as we pulled up, no view, no reason for it to be there other than another hide for someone to boost their numbers. Its caches like this that bug the hell out of me! hehe The next cache was on Pondville beach down the road about 5 kms. We had been there last spring and really noticed a lot of coastal erosion since then. The cache was in a pretty spot but was not where it was supposed to be, it was on the ground right out in the open and it was full of water which meant the logbook was soaked. Thank goodness my lovely wife got me  a "space pen" for my birthday. hehe. It writes in zero gravity, underwater, on wet paper! I like gadgets! Right, back to geocaching. When you come across a geocache that needs a little tlc like this one, when you log on the website you add a needs maintenance log and the owner gets notified that they need to fix up their cache. The last cache we went to was at the head of the Cap Auget Eco Trail. We had hiked this trail not long after we first met. The cache was easily found and we are looking forward to coming back and hiking the trail and getting the 5 caches that are on it. Looking forward to a nice day long hike once the weather is more cooperative. Bye for now!

Lennox Passage Provincial Park

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The Big Ice Walk ... or not

After the latest cold snap we thought that the Bras d'Or finally had enough ice for our "big loop"  walk. We called Tara and she and the Beagles came up and we set off up the lake road to give it a hook for the first time this winter. It was a pretty warm day and when we got to Crawley Lake there was a bit of slush on top of the ice.  The trail looked like it was used quite a bit over the past few days by ATV's and we met up with a couple of bikes as we made our way around the trails. We made it around the back loop and down to the Bras d'Or. We got out on the ice but soon realized that it didn't look very welcoming. There were a few brave souls out around there fishing hole but there was a pretty big skim of water on the ice in places and as we made it around the first bend of the shore the ice looked pretty black, not a good sign. Even thought there was a pretty good cold snap the ice was still pretty thin in places so we changed our minds, but instead of walking along the West Bay Highway we backtracked up the trail to Crawley Lake. The hill from West Bay Highway to the lake is a pretty steep climb and by the time we made it to the top our legs were burning pretty good :-) Caoimhe entertained us for a stretch by deciding to drag along a stick that was at least twice her length. Hopefully we will be able to make the full loop that we walked everyday almost last February.

Lake Walk

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Lake Walk ... almost

Bday hike to Beauvais Lake

  The trail is very wide and seemed to be used quite often by ATV's. We soon discovered that there were quite a few offshoots to either side of the trail. I had taken the image of the map I found on Trails NS and overlayed it in Google earth and traced out the track and loaded into the gps. It seems that the map is pretty dated cause parts of the trail are not even slightly visible so we walked where we thought we might join up with the original. It was a nice walk, quite easy to walk lots of hills. We eventually met up with the trail on the map. We came to the end of the trail and somebody's personal dump, makes me angry and wonder, it takes more effort to haul garbage up in the woods than to put it at the roadside for collection, I really don't get it. Instead of walking out on the side of the road we decided to back track and try to find the right trail to make a kind of loop. We ended up at the other end of the lake and had to backtrack again. We made our way back along the same track and before we went out to the care we made a quick detour so we could get a view of Beauvais Lake.

After Caoimhe rolled and slid around on the ice for a bit we started back to the car. It was a beautiful way to spend a birthday!! The trail is easy to walk on, at least in the winter, looks like it might get pretty swampy and wet in the summer. Nothing really spectacular to rate a return visit. A few big hardwoods, lots of rabbit tracks and thats about it. We ticked another published trail off the list though. It makes me wonder how accurate some of the other maps I have found on the web are. The wonderful thing of the Oregon and the upgraded maps is that it makes it quite easy to keep track of our progress, where we are going and witch way to get back. Hopefully the weather keeps cooperating and we get lots more hikes in.

Beauvais Lake Bday Hike

Beauvais Lake Hike

East Bay Hills

We have been looking at the sign leading to this newly upgraded walking trail for some time. Woke up this morning to a beautiful winter day, the last of January so wanted to take advantage of it. There is a parking area at the trail  with a welcome sign and a map of the trail with a quick description. There were a few walking sticks leaning against the entrance to the trail, enjoyed seeing this as it speaks to the trail being used as well as a good hint that it is looked after, no "punks" wrecking the trail or the sticks would be long gone. There is a bit of a climb as you head up the trail with a few signs showing the different species of trees which there are lots of. Really enjoyed the stand of Hemlock at the top of the hill. Feels so comforting under the canopy of such large trees. Where the trail goes through swampy areas there are wooden boardwalks. There are also a few offshoots from the trail highlighting different features such as a stand of old growth birch and a brook meandering through a stand of Hemlock. Look forward to going back to the trail. The batteries kicked out on the camera so now pictures. Will update when we make it back.

East Bay Hills

East Bay Hills

The Curse of Pringle Mountain

We decided last night that it might be fun to go for a hike and maybe try for a geocache that we had previously attempted early last summer, but didn't get close to. Grey skies and a few flurries in the morning but why not try the most difficult cache listed in Richmond County, 5 star difficulty, 5 star terrain. Geocaches are rated by the star system 1 is the easiest 5 the hardest. We left the house around 10 am and drove up to Oban and parked at the end of the trail to Pringle Mountain. I used Garmin Basecamp last night to plan the route out. I set up a couple of waypoints along the route because when we made the trek in the summer we did a lot of exploring and backtracking trying to find the right way into the lake where the cache is located. There was quite a bit more snow on the ground here than there was at home. We left the car at 10:30. The first part of the hike is all uphill (180m over 2 km) It didn't seem too bad going up, but about 1 km in; the 4 wheeler track that we were walking in stopped and we were in soft snow that was over our ankles. It doesn't sound like a lot of snow, but it makes a big difference. By the time we got to the top of the hill we had worked up quite a sweat. There were quite a few coyote tracks around so I kept a good eye out. I wasn't worried but since the attack this summer in the Highlands NP it makes me a little more wary than I used to be. There were lots of other tracks in the snow as well. We came across one track across the path that looked like something was drug across the path. 

I thought that maybe it was a bobcat or lynx that was dragging its kill?? Just guessing. Anyway the hike was so nice going in. The shelter of the trees was making it very nice and it was getting sunny as we got closer to the lake. We got to the waypoint I set at the entrance to the trail that led into the lake at 11:30. It was just a quick walk into the shore of the lake from the main trail. Once we got there it was good to see that there was ice on the lake because the cache is on a small island in the middle of the lake. We set out along the shore, not quite ready to trust the ice because of the mild weather we have been having all winter. It was a lot colder out of the lee of the trees. Once out on the ice we soon saw that there was lots of ice on the lake.

The small island was easily visible once we were out on the lake and we set off at a good pace once we were confident that there was enough ice. There are a few islands in Pringle Lake, its pretty rocky as well. As we walked past the biggest of the islands we could see tracks made by otters sliding in the snow. By the time we made it ti the island that the cache was on we were feeling a little chilled because of how warm we got on the way up the mountain in the shelter of the trail, out on the lake the wind didn't take too long chilling us.

The gps was pointing 30 m inland on the island and once we broke through the thick brush on the shore there was a clearing on the highest point of the island. The hint for the cache read "sit under a log in the clearing" well there were a few logs but none high enough or big enough to sit under. We started searching and spent an hour searching this little clearing and its surrounding brush, no cache. We started to get a chill from standing still after being so warm on the way up. As we searched it got darker and started to snow, quite a bit :-( ughh. By now it was lunchtime so I grabbed my bacon cheeseburger meatloaf sandwich and a cup of coffee to take a minute and hopefully find the cache with fresh eyes. Caoimhe was having a good time chewing sticks and bumming meatloaf sandwich from me and tea biscuit and jam from Martha. I re read the hint and logs of the people who found the cache before us to try and get a hint of where it was.

After another half an hour of searching we called it quits. The hiders ears must have been burning cause Martha had a few choice names for him :-). We set off the way we came except this time the wind and blowing snow was in our faces as we crossed the lake. It felt like a tropical beach when we made the tree line on the opposite shore.

We kept moving to warm ourselves up and after a few minutes of walking in the shelter of the trail we were warm again. A little disappointed with a second no find on this cache. We noticed the hill as we made our way back up to the top of Pringle Mountain before going back down the other side. Still enjoying the still quiet in the shelter of the trail, all of us moving a little slower than on the way in. The burn in the legs pretty pronounced :-)

So we made it back to the car at 2:00, 10.6 km later. The lesson learned this trek was not to go too hard at the start of the hike and work up a sweat, when you stop later, or take a break it doesn't take too long to get chilled. This is a great hike. The trail goes all the way to West Bay, and maybe next time we hit this trail we might try to go all the way there instead of trying to find that damn cache again. I'll email the cache owner and ask him if the cache is on the ground, he is inexperienced and did not give enough detail for such a difficult cache. I'll give the Everytrail map below, but under that will be the link to Garmin connect too.

Pringle Mountain Geocache

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Pringle Mountain Rubix Geocache hike