While living on the beach in the tropics is beautiful, one thing that I have felt has been missing from my life lately are the mountains and forests. Therefore, something I felt a strong urge to do while in Canada was a camping or hiking trip. Luckily, my dad felt a similar motivation, so we planned to set off to Lac Stukley, a new place we had never explored before, to do some hiking.
Of course, we packed up the trusty Desert Wolf. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a Desert Wolf trip, and I must say as soon as I was hit with the familiar summer smell of the inside of our westy, I realized how much I had missed it. We arrived at our camping spot in the afternoon, quickly set up camp, and then set out for an exploratory hike of about 11 kms.
The trail had many crossings, either of full rivers or extended puddles, but was extremely well marked. Here, for example, we found a nice little rock bridge set up to avoid getting our feet wet.
The tree roots and rocky paths showed in complex tangles and patterns.
The view from our first viewpoint. Canada always astounds me in how green it is (except in winter, when everything is blanketed in white).
Looking over the lakes.
Pops on the trail.
After the first day’s hike, we had a nice evening by the bus.
Fuel for tomorrow’s longer hike.
Evening on one of the docks going out into Lac Stukley. The campground is an excellent one, and even provides little kayaks and canoes for guests to use on the lake. We did not test these out, but made plans to do so on a return journey.
The next morning, we set out at around 6am for our longer hike (it turned out to be about 22km). The terrain was quite rocky, as you can see. We began by climbing, climbing, and climbing…
One of the first viewpoints. We are still perhaps a little tired, haha.
The good thing about lots of climbing is that we got to appreciate a lot of views. One thing you may notice here is the encroaching weather…The morning began bright and sunny, but as we climbed higher, a fierce wind began whipping our hair around our heads and our packs around our backs.
We were walking along a slightly treacherous, exposed rocky trail, right on the top of the mountain. Therefore, the wind was not entirely welcome.
By the time we got to the next viewpoint, here, we were hearing thunder. You can see from my added fleece and my flying hair that the weather was getting steadily worse. With the thunder, we started to worry (being in such an exposed area) about whether to continue our hike or abandon ship.
Luckily, we persevered. As we came out of the exposed areas, we entered the shelter of the forest and left the rougher weather behind.
The whole trail was very well marked with signs such as this one.
In fact, we came into soft trails covered by gentle dirt and leaves, and discovered some beautiful little biomes dotting the path.
Here, for instance, are some delicate little flowers poking up between prickly, star shaped greens.
Teensy little pinecones nestled in the greens.
This is my favorite photo. It looks like a mini fairy habitat or something from a woodland realm. The sun filtered through the trees to hit this mossy, broken stump, and the surrounding leaves and flowers stretched up to drink it in.
After hitting a bit of a valley, we started to climb again. Our goal was to reach the top of Mt. Orford, a mountain about 12 kms from our beginning. We crossed along the mountain peaks, up and down, though the valley, and then out again. We did reach our destination, ending in a very hard climb up a ski run, but I don’t have any photos because, as we crested the peak, we realized suddenly that we had only a couple of hours to be back to the campsite in time to check out before the next campers might arrive. So, we turned around and raced back down the mountain, through the valley, up the next mountain, and back down to the campsite.
I did get this nice photo of a small waterfall on the way back. Upon reaching camp, we quickly packed up, jumped in the bus, and drove the 1.5 hours back home to Montreal. It was a wonderful trip!