Hell's Gate

Sadly, this post is not going to demonstrate my new-found prowess as an outdoors woman. In fact, it may do just the opposite, and reinforce the obvious - that I have a lot to learn and should probably equip myself with some basic tools (ie. compass, map, water, whistle, matches, etc.) before going into unfamiliar territory, because who knows what kind of trouble I could get myself into.

Destination: Hells Gate Falls, aka "Three Pools", which technically isn't a public hiking trail as it's on Nova Scotia Power property. With that said, it's a popular trail and as long as you're careful and not stupid (ie. climb on the slippery rocks, or jump off the 70 ft cliff into the shallow water below), you'll be fine. Also, we felt slightly justified trespassing as our grandfather used to work at Hells Gate at one point in time.

Estimated hiking distance/time: 4 km /1 hour. Time spent: 2.5+ hours.
If the hike was only 1 hour, why did it take us 2.5 hours to get in and get out you may ask? Well, we may have lost track of where we were going a few times. In our defense, we (my cousin and I) were mainly there to chat and catch-up; finding the falls was really secondary or, rather, it gave us an excuse to get out of the house and enjoy a nice afternoon. If we were truly focussed on the task at hand we would've looked up Hells Gate Falls on a map and planned our route.

The entrance we took that would, in a round about way, lead us to Hells Gate Falls/Three Pools.

Instead, our approach was to start at the entrance (a wire gate that had been vandalised) and follow the path to see where it took us. I figured it's a popular spot, it should be pretty obvious what direction we should take. This is sort of what got us in trouble a couple times - there are many, many paths in the area, none of them had signs that helped to point us to our desination. Good thing, after a bit of aimless hiking, we stumbled upon Marvin (Marvin #1 on the map), who proceeded to give us directions... which neither of us paid close enough attention to.

So here's where I think a map might be helpful. It's sort of hard to tell where the trails are on GoogleMaps, but I did my best. The pink line is our route, the blue line is Marvin's recommended route.

He said something about following the pipeline (the greyish line running from the surge towers to the dam) till we got to an ATV trail. We caught that much. So we started to walk until we reached a dam, at which point we realised we must've missed the ATV trail, so when we doubled back we took a couple side trails on the wrong side of the pipeline (duh!). Both trails took us into a pit, which clearly wasn't where the Falls would be. Unbeknownst to us, we were being watched. Marvin had seen us go in the wrong direction and knew we were "misplaced" (not lost!). He laughed when we ran into him again (Marvin #2 on map) and then proceeded to walk us to Hells Gate Falls, which was less than a 5 minute walk away.

Okay, it was a bit embarrassing how close we were and yet how far off track at the same time. Also, it was more than embarrassing when he assumed we were city girls. I mean, I am, but it's not exactly the image I was going for. Sigh.

Marvin left us at the 2nd pool, and told us how to get to the 1st. He also mentioned something about climbing down the steep hill where we would find a decent trail where he sometimes brought his 4 wheeler. Now this is where we sort of lost him again. He was telling stories about how kids would get lost in the woods all the time and find themselves in predicaments because they didn't know the terrain. His directions were basically just repeating the routes these kids would take and get themselves lost, but he did say the trail would take us out. Where "out" was wasn't clarified.

So we carried on. Have I mentioned this is a gorgeous spot? Not only are there waterfalls, but absolutely stunning woodland with moss-covered forest floor and rocks. The rock formations make it look like an ancient forest, actually. The terrain is pretty treacherous though, if you're not careful. The path starts out high, and involves a very scary descent down a steep moss-covered cliff, with loose needles and dirt that make it hard to get good footing (below). Climbing down involved a combination (for me) of grabbing roots and scooching down on my bum. The pictures are really unflattering!

This picture really doesn't do justice to the height of the cliff. Once you're at the bottom, it's a spectacular sight. Also, once you're at the bottom the walk is easy. The path follows the river and takes you right out to Hell's Gate. This is where we got confused about Marvin's directions "out". Did he mean the trail would take us here? We told him our grandfather used to work at Hell's Gate so maybe he thought this is where we were headed?

There was a road/trail to our right and we started up it (the blue line from Hell's Gate to the Surge Tanks). We got about half way up when S. started to question if it was wise to keep going up a road we didn't know (not knowing that in fact it would take us exactly to where we wanted to be), and suggested it might be best to double back the same way we came. So we did, which added an extra 4 miles (according to Marvin) onto our hike. Also, it meant having to climb up that scary cliff we had just climbed down.

Needless to say the hike was more of a workout than we had anticipated, but a fun time just the same. Best of all, it's time well spent when you get to have a good visit with family, plus enjoy the outdoors!

View of the surge towers from a distance, close to our starting point. If you look closely, you can see the red of Hell's Gate at the base of the towers inthe second picture. It gives a bit of perspective to the height of the path we started out on (same level as the surge towers) to where we ended up (at Hell's Gate).

YouTube is addictive!

This week has been all about YouTube.

First of all, an amazing collection of Nova Scotian film has been uploaded to YouTube which includes fascinating footage dating from 1917-1957. One of my favourite films is the 1928 footage of the Cherry Carnival in Bear River. But there's hours and hours of film footage I've yet to see.

Speaking of hours and hours, if you have that much time, you should also check out a BBC series on YouTube called "The Supersizers Go....". It's all about food and it's completely addictive. Once you start watching, you won't be able to stop. Each episode focusses on a different era in British history, from Ancient Roman times to the 1980s, and everything in between. But the episodes aren't more specifically focusses on the food and the culture of eating from each of these eras. It's fascinating and hilarious as the two leads (a food critic and a comic) act the part and find out for themselves what life was like in that week's time period. Oh, and at times it's revolting - sooo many pigs heads were eaten, and grotesque fish dishes, and so much gross concoctions! Each episode is 60 minutes, but broken up into 10 minute segments on YouTube and I challenge you to watch just one episode! When I discovered this, I was glued to my computer for hours!

Becoming an Outdoors Woman

...That's what I was doing last weekend.

I found out about BOW at the beginning of August and signed-up immediately. If you ask my co-workers, they'll tell you that I was bouncing off the walls with excitement the day I registered. If you haven't heard about it, BOW is short for Becoming an Outdoors Woman and is an international, non-profit organization which aims to educate women in outdoorsy skills and activities. They offer a wide variety of workshops from hunting and fishing courses to basic skills for hiking/wilderness survival, to sports like mountain biking, and kayaking and hobbies like geocaching and birding. There's something for everyone! More information and a full list of the workshops they offer is available here.

So much was packed into this BOW weekend, that it's taken me this long to digest everything. There's really so much I want to share, that I haven't quite figured out where to begin, and how to keep this post manageable without going on and on about how much fun I had, and how much I learned. Also, I wish I had more photos from the weekend, but sadly I was to busy to take pictures and only have a couple dozen to share.

I was really happy with my workshop choices this year:

1. Wilderness Navigation: learning how to read topographical maps, how to use a compass, and how to use both of these together, learning the difference between true north and magnetic north, how to calculate distance travelled. It was really, really fun and really quite empowering to learn these skills. I'm by no means an expert but it's confidence building to know that you have the skills to get yourself in and out of the woods with these tools. I'm definitely putting a compass on my Christmas list this year, if I can wait that long!

2. Mountain Biking: learning about the gear and parts of the biking, learning how to shift gears properly and use the gears for different terrain, and how to change a flat tire. I learned that I won't shy away from biking through the muck and puddles (that's the fun part about mountain biking), but that I quickly lose stamina going uphill, even in the lowest gear, and have to do the walk of shame up the hill.

3. Kayaking: This was a close tie with Wilderness Navigation for my favourite workshop of the weekend. We learned about the kayaks, paddles and the gear that goes with it all, body positioning and movements, paddlings strokes, how to recover from a capsized kayak (including some entertaining demonstrations). I started out in the tandem with a partner having never been in a kayak before and close to the end got to try out a single. I was not very stable in the single and was sure I was going to tip. It's a miracle I didn't actually!

4. Birding: This wasn't my first choice (I wanted to do the geocaching workshop as I still haven't figured out how to do certain things with my GPS yet), but I quite enjoyed it just the same! We learned about migration patterns of birds, about different species of birds and about the bird atlas for Nova Scotia, we learned about identification techniques and how to adjust binoculars (adjust the left lens first, then fine-tune the right), and we learned a great technique for attracting birds ("phish"ing: shpish-psh-psh). We spotted a couple species of vireos, grouse and finches, and of course were visited by curious chickadees. Also our instructor had a rather neat gadget that she uses to call birds - a tiny little speaker that plugs into her mp3 player and will play mp3s of bird calls! How neat!

The workshops were the main focus of the weekend, but in the evenings we had the opportunity to learn fly-tying or knot-tying. I chose knots and learned how to five knots: the bowline knot, the reef knot, the clove hitch, the handcuff knot and the monkey's fist. Now I just have to be sure to practice, so I will remember them when I need them.

On the second night the plan was to have an astronomy lesson but the weather wasn't cooperating (did I mention it rained the whole weekend?), so instead we had a demo of really neat software called Stellarium. You can type your location into the program and it will pull up the night sky, which you can then click and drag so it matches what you see from your exact location. Then, with another click the program will show you the constellations and the artwork that goes with the constellations. Really cool, eh?! And here's the best part - the software is free!

And, of course, no outdoorsy weekend would be complete without a campfire or two. Here's a picture of our second campfire, complete with planked salmon cooked by the fire!

If you're interested in hearing more about what the weekend was like, CBC's Phlis McGregor was there interviewing folks and here is her spot about BOW on CBC NS's Information Morning.

I can check one more thing off my 2010 To Do List.

Last month I finally stopped waffling and purchased a GPS with the help of a little birthday money from my grandparents. I'd been comparing different models, researching advantages and disadvantages of Garmin vs. Magellan for quite awhile; reading local geocaching forums for advice etc. And then finally decided it was time to quit with the indecision and buy one! I went into BestBuy, found one on sale, and bought it. It was a Magellan Explorist GC, a GPS specifically designed for paperless geocaching (that is, all the info for a cache gets downloaded to the GPS, not just the coordinates). It took me a little while to figure out how it worked, to play with the features (because it didn't come with a manual, only a pamphlet illustrating some of the features but not providing any instructions) and then took it out for a couple test-runs.

At first it was pretty disappointing - I wasn't finding any of the caches. Granted, the first two times I was thwarted, first by darkness and second by hot & humid weather combined with a frustrated 10 year old. But then, finally! I found my first cache, and my second cache, and then two more caches....and I was on a roll!

I'm finding out that geo-caching is actually pretty addictive. There are caches just about everywhere - over 8000 in Nova Scotia - and I'm constantly impressed by the ingenuity of geo-caches to find/make great hiding spots, often in plain sight. And, of course, there's the allure of finding "hidden treasure". Who doesn't like a good ol' treasure hunt! And I've found pretty great swag so far too...

For those of you who have never tried geocaching (aka "muggles") it's highly likely you walk by a cache daily without ever knowing it. I've been dragging anyone who is even remotely interested along for a geocache hunt - co-workers, friends, family - and I've got a much better success rate now. It's one of those activities that's more fun with other people anyway.
I'm hoping to get into it more with the Little. I think it's the kind of activity that would be really great with kids AND gives a little purpose and motivation to going for walks or hikes. Geocachers are sort of like explorers going on an expedition to find a treasure afterall...right? And very few kids will turn down an opportunity to explore or go on an expedition or an adventure.

For anyone who is interested in learning about geocaching, you're best bet is to check out geocaching.com. Go to "Hide & Seek" and see how many geocaches are in your area - I bet there's at least a few! I first signed up 3 years ago when I decided I wanted to give it a try. It's taken me 3 years to actually commit to buying a GPS (they're not cheap, and I hadn't actually gone geocaching before buying a GPS) and now that I have I'm really glad I did! I can see this being a fun activity for years to come - not just in finding caches, but also in hiding them too.