Length - 8.9 km
Elevation - 257 m
Time - 2 hours 51 minutes
AllTrails Map of Pine Point Rapids and Viburnum Falls Trail
This was the first of four trails we tackled the weekend of June 9th and 10th during our Brereton Lake Campground trip. It is also my favorite trail of the trip.
So, a group of us made of of myself, Roslyn, and our friends Tyler, Steve, Curtis, and Patrick met at our apartment at 6:45 am on June 9, jumped into two cars and set off for Pine Point Rapids trail in White Shell Provincial Park. The drive was pretty standard for Manitoba, but became interesting once we got to the Pinawa Dam area and started driving through the park.
Once we hit the trail head we quickly got our day hiking gear on and set out down the trail.
Start of the Pine Point Rapids Trail
The start of the trail is a quad and snowmobile route our to a warming shack that operates year round, so it was well developed and fairly road like. About 700 m in, the trail branches off from this "road" and the trip becomes much more trail like. 500 m into the actual trail a look out branches off which we headed up to see the view. Unfortunately it was mainly tree tops, but there were also a bunch of flowers!
One of the flowers at the look out
From the look out the trail headed down through the forest to the river. The trail followed along the river bank, which gave us great views and a horde of fish flies! We had dozens of them clinging onto us as we walked, but they're pretty harmless.
Picturesque River Bend
About 3 km into the hike we went down and walked right on the waters edge during the approach to pine point rapids. The river bank in a wide slab of bedrock, so the going was pretty easy. Once we actually arrived at Pine Point Rapids we did our best to explore the entire area.
Tyler jumping back to shore
The top of Pine Point Rapids
More of the top
Panorama shot from a small island in the middle of the rapids
View downstream from the island
The trail around the Rapids opens up quite a bit, with three picnic areas and a warming shack that has firewood supplied. The "road" trail connects here after a very flat and easy 2.4 km walk in from the parking lot. This is definitely a family friendly area that the park tries to make accessible for everyone.
Further along the trail at the 4 km mark we arrived at a waterfall, which I unfortunately forgot the name of. Roslyn spent some time getting a close up of the water cascading down it.
Close up of the first set of falls
Continuing down the trail, a bit past the halfway point you get to Viburnum Falls, which was the best part of the trail. We spent 10 to 15 minutes poking around taking pictures and exploring. I managed to get out onto an island in the middle of the flow to take some head on pictures of the falls.
The approach to the island
Panorama looking upstream from the island
Panorama looking down stream from the island
View of Viburnum Falls from the boulder beach at the bottom of it
Hiking out from Viburnum falls takes you back to the Pine Point Rapids picnic areas, where we decided to hike out back along the road just to say we hiked all of trail in the area.
In Roslyn's words:
I really liked this trail. It was the first time I was able to be that close to a natural waterfall or rapids and they were quite incredible to this prairie girl. The fact that the river was flowing over the same rock I was standing on alone was a neat concept to me. The trail itself is very accommodating. The north path of the first loop is fairly flat, wide, and well groomed. That 2.4 km section would be a very doable walk (terrain at least) for those with limited mobility. The rest of the hike (south path of first loop and whole of second loop) is moderately difficult, with a wonderful mix of forest walks and rock clearings and will take you all the way to the Viburnum Falls. We spent a good amount of time exploring the falls, jumping from rock to rock, and watching the water. Overall, it was a very lovely and adventurous hike with options for everyone.
This was a great hike that everyone should try to get out on. If you're like us, I suggest you use Brereton Lake campground as a base camp and try to do a bunch of day hiking in the area. We also did Cabin Lake Trail, Amisk Trail with the Inverness Falls addition, and Rainbow Falls from Jessica Lake Lodge, which we will be reviewing over the next few weeks.
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