Bruce Trail 03b Short Hills

Muddy Spring

I decided to get back on the trail quite quickly, two days after my last visit, so that I could get in a little more progress before impending rainstorms arrive in the area over the forthcoming days. What better welcome to Spring than potential thunder and lightning!

I parked exactly where I left off last time, at the 35.2km mark in “Parking Lot C” at Short Hills Provincial Park and began today’s hike by heading due-south for a while. Short Hills Provincial Park is unattended and free to use (including parking). The park is occasionally closed during November/December while the First Nations people hunt deer. Birds were quite active as soon as I began. Once again, Song Sparrows were in full tune. Chickadees flitted amongst the bare trees. A pair of Robins fought territorially. Let me get the mud-moaning out of the way. The mud was terrible! My footwear is just about wrecked and it was quite hazardous in steeper areas – I was having to grab trees and shrubs just to be able to stay upright on the more challenging terrain.

Terrace Falls

The advantage of all this extra water run-off from melted snow and rainfall is that there is greater flow over waterfalls. Thanks to the way the land was formed in Southern Ontario, there are a great many waterfalls to be seen and The Bruce Trail offers views of some of them. Due to re-routes, I missed DeCew Falls (more on that later), but I came across Terrance Falls and was certainly not disappointed. Ideally, waterfall photography makes use of special tools including a tripod, but I can’t be lugging all that stuff around with me…. I still managed to get a pretty nice shot thanks to the overcast weather which lends a hand to these kinds of technical shots.

The other advantage to mud is that it reveals who has passed through ahead of your arrival. Continuing through the woodland, I saw canid prints and coyote scat as well as very small deer prints – probably a fawn. Later I would see beaver prints and a couple of dams, though I don’t think the prints were recent and the dams seemed a little worse for wear. Research later showed me that beavers were active here at least last year.

Soon the trail climbed into a meadow where there was much bird activity. Dark-eyed Juncos bickered in the trees, Robins searched for grubs in the grass, the unusual call of a Field Sparrow which increases in rapidity, and a Northern Flicker “wik-a wik-a” call could be heard as he clung to a tree in the distance. A beautiful Eastern Bluebird landed on a branch nearby just long enough for me to steal a shot.

At the 40.5km mark, I came across Swayze Falls, the largest of the waterfalls in Short Hills Provincial Park. Access to get a good photograph would have been challenging and time-consuming, so I snapped one from a viewing platform and continued on my way until I came upon a bridge where I paused to eat a sandwich and a snack of some nuts. I would like to have finished Map 03 today, but I couldn’t financially justify another Uber and I didn’t want to hike back through all that mud. I was getting tired from the exertion. Checking a couple of different maps, I realised that I had a couple of options. I could stop right here and turn back. I wasn’t too far from some parking off on a side-trail so that I could pick up the trail again next time. The other option was to continue a little further until I came upon Effingham Street. A little way up the street, my progress on The Bruce would be done for the day, but a turning would take me back towards my car performing a kind-of loop around the park, skipping most of the mud.

I decided to continue and climbed a ridge where I enjoyed watching three Red-bellied Woodpeckers quarrelling over the ownership of an attractive tree cavity. Agreement between the birds seemed increasingly unlikely, so I made my way onwards past a couple of culverts channelling water into creeks that disappeared into the body of the park. I eventually came upon the street. I turned right and after a short distance, I came to a bend in the road. The trail continued to the left. This is where I was finished for the day, at 41.9km, as my car lay some distance to the right first along a stretch of backroads and then back into the park for a while. Today I completed 6.7km. I am 4.68% of the way through the whole trail.

Addendum: DeCew Falls

In my previous visit to The Bruce Trail, I noticed that I came close to DeCew Falls without ever actually passing them. Since I was nearby again, I decided to drive there on the way home. There is a picturesque mill and a lovely waterfall. Unfortunately, there is never a particularly good view of the falls. There is a wire fence for safety, but it is ugly and blocks the chance to get a photograph. It is possible but pretty dangerous (and not permitted), especially in the muddy conditions present, to get down to the bottom of the falls, a little further away along a trail – there is even a rope that someone has placed which you would be able to use to essentially rappel down the steep drop. I considered it, but time was getting on and I didn’t fancy an injury. I took an inadequate photo from atop the ridge instead.

Next Time

I left off where there is no parking, so on my next visit, I will need to figure that out – either parking further along the trail and walking backwards, or parking further back along the trail and repeating some. I will certainly have to finish Map 03. It will involve hiking through a couple of conservation areas. Until then, there is a patch of bad weather to get through as we get closer to some nice weather, wildflowers, birds and all the good stuff!

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