Sometimes I am amazed at how pretty the landscape is along the trail. It’s one thing to assume that it’s going to be nice, after all why would they put the trail there unless there is something to see.  It is another thing to actually see it.

The trio from the last hike, Ron, Chris and I met again in Sault Ste. Marie to head over to Blind River. Andy P. offered to help us with the shuttle, so we met him at the Cataract Falls Parking lot where we had started from on the last hike. This time, I planned on doing the hike from the other end of Lake Duborne back to Cataract Falls, a distance of 14kms on the map. Since the weather forecast was indicating that the rain would hold off until late in the afternoon or early evening, we decided to stick to the plan.

During our drive over to the start point, Andy mentioned that he would be joining us for a short bit as he wanted to do some clipping on a new portion of the Fire Tower Lookout side trail. This was a boon for us as Andy is very knowledgeable about the trail and the area. As we were approaching the parking area, we crossed a bridge over the river connecting the two lakes. There are some pretty falls/rapids there, so we got out there to take some pictures and walked the extra half mile to the parking lot.

After meeting up with Andy, who had driven over to the parking lot, we began our adventure for the day. The trail runs along the entire length of Lake Duborne in this area. It immediately starts to climb up the hill through a hardwood forest populated with lots of oak and maple trees. The leaves had all fallen, covering the wet ground, so we had to be careful of our footing.  Plenty of hidden rocks could easily twist an ankle.

We steadily climbed the hill, from the main trail to the Fire Tower Lookout trail, along a steep section, up to the first viewpoint. Wow, that view was spectacular even with the weather being somewhat gray. You could see both lakes, the river connecting them where we had taken pictures earlier and then the view just kept going on. You could see not only the north shore of Lake Huron but Manitoulin Island in the distance and that was just at the first viewpoint. You continue up on some large rock faces, until you get to a plaque dedicated to Norm Lediett, one of the founding members of the Voyageur Trail. 

At the top, you can see pretty much completely around. The back of the hill faces an impressive cliff that stretches off into the distance.

Andy showed us a different way  back to the main trail, using the new section which took advantage of an existing trail that the cottagers on the lake use.  The trail goes down and around some rocky areas that we carefully made our way down on. The footing was still slippery and often the leaves would mask tricky areas. It did not take long before we reached a level area where the new section branched off the cottager's trail. The blue blazed trail wanders back into the hardwood forest until it meets the main trail. At this point, Andy left us to do his trail maintenance. We thanked him for all his help and headed down the trail.

We were walking along the backside of the ridge, in a valley between the ridge and the cliff face we had seen earlier from above. At one point we came to some house sized rocks and the first ice formations I have seen this year. A few pictures taken and on we went. Shortly afterwards we heard a large crack and smash as another set of ice formations crumbled. We crossed a creek and the trail started to head down. 

Ron, spied a good picture opportunity where we decided to have lunch. We pulled out the maps and checked out our position. We figured that we had about 10km left to go. I was pretty sure that we could set a good pace but even if we were going at 3km/hour that still would be a bit over 3 hours. In mid-November the sun sets pretty early so we decided to get moving and not dawdle too much.

Through the tree trunks, we could just start making out Lower Cranberry Lake, one of the small lakes north of Lake Duborne that we would be skirting. We meandered along the edge of the forest on some outcroppings that offered lots of views of the all the lakes in the area. Once in a while the sun poked out of the clouds but shortly after lunch it disappeared. We crossed a couple of creeks and eventually joined a snowmobile trail which led to an old bush road that led us out of the hills to the shores of Upper Cranberry Lake. The trail follows that paved road around the lake until we were almost directly across from where we first came out of the woods.

Although we had encountered some wet spots previously, the next section of the trail was really really wet and muddy. The trail continues to follow the snowmobile trail at this point which offered easy access to ATVers. Normally, I don’t have an issue with these machines but when the trails are so wet they do a lot of damage and it was no different along this section. From the lake we climbed back up into the hills along this wet multi-use trail until the footpath veered off towards another great viewpoint.

The final few kilometres of our hike were along a cottage road that runs parallel to the shoreline. Many of the cottages were large vacation homes that had obviously been closed for the season. We came upon another section of the pipeline where we realized that we could see the overlook that we had climbed a couple of weeks ago. It didn’t take too long before we rounded the corner to see our vehicle in the parking lot. Good thing because I had pretty much reached the limit of my energy for the day. I was pleasantly surprised that it was only 3:40 when we got to the car, despite the fact that I had slowed down considerably during the last kilometre or two.

Another great hike, one that I will do again in another season.  This will be the last post on hiking until next spring when I start up the Challenge hikes again. I plan on cross country skiing and snowshoeing over the winter months. Who knows, maybe I will post on some of the winter adventures to come.