Spring Weather Hiking: Avoid the Darshy Areas!

This winter has been the coldest and longest I can remember - which makes sense, considering that it's been the coldest winter in twenty years for a lot of North America. Living in Lakefield made all the difference for me - if I don't have to drive in it, I love winter! I loved walking to work while the snow was coming down and seeing everything all white and sparkly. But even so, it has been nice to finally have the spring thaw. It's been entertaining to watch the river get higher and higher even as we've had a bit of flooding panic at our house. We had water coming through the ceiling in one of the heavy rains and the basement flooded 6" deep because the sump pump was (stupidly) not plugged in.

After all of that, it was really nice to have a long Easter weekend at home. We took a drive every day to check the flood waters and Tim got lots of yard work done. We had a couple of family dinners and I ate at least a pound of Cadbury mini eggs. On Sunday we decided that the weather was nice enough to head up to High Falls and attempt a hike. We haven't really done anything like this since Christmas on the Bruce Peninsula, when I wasn't really showing. I haven't put on a ton of weight yet with my pregnancy, but we're five and a half months now and the eight pounds I have put on feels like a ton sometimes! (Mostly when I'm bloated - how can air feel so HEAVY?)

Tim was more than a little jealous that there were a couple of families camping there. He had really wanted to go camping this weekend when we found out we weren't going to London to see my family. But it was encouraging to see three other vehicles in the parking lot - we had been worried the trail would be a mess with flooding. We passed a couple of guys coming back along the trail and Tim asked them if it was possible to reach the falls. Their response was, "Yes, you can make it almost all the way, there are just a few darshy areas."

We thanked them and moved on, but then had a hilariously puzzled conversation about the exact definition of "darshy". Damp and marshy? Dodgy and marshy? Perhaps even dangerous and marshy? It remained entertaining over a couple of saturated and muddy patches, until we reached the first stream you have to cross. This was where we had some of our High Falls engagement photos done, and it usually looks something like this:

 

I mean, as creeks go, it's not insignificant - but now you couldn't even see this tangle of logs that usually makes up the path across. The "creek" went right from the embankment on the east to probably fifty feet across and was at least four or five feet deep, maybe more. (Even Tim didn't test it.) There were definitely some logs and mushy ground across it, but nothing that we could see that connected or looked particularly stable. Not to be discouraged, we turned upstream and thought that we could probably find a crossing further up where it wouldn't be so wide. Fifteen minutes . . . No good crossing sites. Thirty minutes . . . One good crossing log, but it was fairly narrow and at least three feet above the water line (although now that I type that, why does it seem more stable if the log is closer to the water?). I would have skeptically attempted it, but Tim decided he didn't want to risk the hike and drive back home with what would have been an extremely pissy me if I had fallen in the water. We all know I would have blamed him for it somehow. I did cross a couple of smaller logs without mishap.

There was still quite a bit of snow back in the trees, but hopefully this melts slowly enough that it won't contribute to the current flooding.

Forty minutes or so of hiking upstream though and Tim alerted me to the rumbling water he was hearing. We thought for a few minutes that maybe we had managed to cut inland and significantly shorten the usually hour and a half-ish hike to the falls! No such luck, but we did find an absolutely gorgeous set of smaller falls.

Low Falls?

Sunbathing with the baby!

So much love.

Tim spent some time playing with the settings on his camera to blur the water, but I think we should have brought the tripod.

There was also a little camping site on the other side of the creek at the falls. The creek has a sandy bottom, so both Tim and I were thinking of how nice that camp site would be in the summer.

Sierra made hiking so much harder! Level trail wasn't bad, but the off-trail hiking and all the ups and downs were exhausting. So after we found the waterfall, we went a bit upstream and found a big patch of sun and sat for a while. It was unbelievably gorgeous weather. 

We made boats and sent them in a boat race down to the waterfall. Can you pick up the design flaw on Tim's flashy and furry boat? It shouldn't come as a surprise that my tried-and-true bark and twig schooner won!

Why is it that the hike out is always so much shorter than the hike in? We probably took an hour to get out to the little waterfall, but it only took us a half hour to get back. True to my statement before of how me falling in the water would have been Tim's fault, I was crossing a log on the way back and Tim stepped on it and it broke. And it was totally his fault! He said that he wasn't anywhere near where it broke, but I'm sure that if he hadn't stepped on it I would have been fine. Luckily it was just over a little ditch and not over a bunch of water. Tim being Tim, that was not the only time he almost killed me on the way back. He likes to find dead trees that have fallen into other trees and untangle them so that he can push them down. He found a big one on our hike back - maybe 8-10" wide at the base of the trunk and thirty feet tall or so. I got out of the way of where he indicated he would drop it, but then he gave a big push and I looked up and it was coming straight for me! Tim said I looked the Road Runner spinning my wheels when I ran away. I ran behind a big tree and looked back and Tim just had this shocked and terrified look on his face with both of his arms wrapped around the trunk. Like that would have stopped it from falling! Luckily it caught on another tree. But I still hid behind a big tree until Tim had pushed it all the way over. 

Oh, I forgot - on our way in Tim spotted a trio of otters playing in the main part of the river! I haven't seen otters since I was in my early teens, and it was so much fun to watch them watching us and swimming with each other. I always forget how BIG they are! 

Two of them were pretty shy and slipped away soon after we started watching them, but the third pulled himself up on a log and watched us back. He almost seemed to be posing for the camera!

Finally, here's a map to show where we should have gone versus where we did go - so much for us thinking that maybe we had found a shortcut to High Falls!

I love the area - it's not quite like the hiking back on the Bruce Pen, but it's a nice spot close to home. We need to get out camping some time before I have the baby!