Tamarak Trail

Date - April 14, 2018

Length - 16 km, 12 km of trail, 1 km to/from trailhead, 2 km getting lost

Time - ~4 hours

Unfortunately, we do not have a map of the trail as we hiked it since we didn’t have AllTrails yet. However there is a good map of Birds Hill Provincial park available at this link: https://www.gov.mb.ca/sd/parks/pdf/park_maps/birds_hill/birds_hill_park_map.pdf

Roslyn looking back down the trail we just hiked

In Roslyn’s words:

The Tamarack trail in Birds Hill provincial park is very conveniently located for Winnipeg and surrounding residents which makes it easy to get “lost” in the woods on a weeknight or a weekend where you want to get some fresh air without the driving. There is a bit of a walk to get to the actual trail head from the parking lot, but i mean, you came here for a walk anyway right? If there is still a good bit of snow on the ground however, it makes finding the start of the trail across the field difficult. (For those going to try this trail for the first time, follow the sparsely placed pylons on the left side of the field and head straight for the treeline). The path is very flat and easy to walk as well as wide which is nice for walking side by side rather than single file. Hikers share the trail with bikers and equestrian riders, which we did get to see, so be sure to yield for horses. We walked this trail while there was still a half foot of snow on the ground and found it much nicer with over the shoe cleats, although Connor and I both lost one of ours somewhere on the trail. Time to go shopping for better cleats. There are not any spectacular views, it is instead a peaceful walk through the woods, which when you live in a city is a treat in itself. With the snow on the trail, it was quite an aggressive first mid sized hike of the season, but I do look forward to walking it again when there are leaves on the trees.

This was also the first hike where I started testing some equipment. I had my Women's Ozonic OutDry Backpack  on with only about 8 pounds in it (including the pack) just to feel how it sat for a long period of time. It was very comfortable and fit the shape of my back very well. I will make a full review of this pack after a few more uses at full weight. The other piece of equipment I was testing was a Compact Walking Pole from Mountain Warehouse. I was not sure how I would feel about using a walking pole so I had only bought one. It was kind of odd carrying only one stick and I did not see much benefit but felt that with two it may be a different story. I have since bought a matching one and tried it out, it worked quite a bit better.

I found the hike to be a fun trip as well, although the snow made it much more taxing than we were expecting it to be. I had my backpack weighing in at 12 lbs for the test run and found that it went pretty well. At the time of this hike we were both slowly working up to having a 30 lb backpack.