Riding Mountain National Park - May 2019, Part 1

Date: May 18, 2019
Length: 16.8 km
Elevation: 398 m
Time: 5 hours 9 minutes

Long Lake Trail to White Water Lake

Last year for May Long weekend we decided to head out to the central portion of Riding Mountain National Park and enjoy a three day trip. May Long is usually pretty hit or miss with the weather, but we decided to use the motto 'If there's no snow, then we're gonna go!'. It's always an interesting to hike this time of year here because on Day 1 we are usually walking through a brown, dried out landscape and by Day 3 the trees are budding and the grass is starting to come out!

To start the trip Roslyn, Tyler and I, drove into Riding Mountain and stayed with Roslyn's mom at a cabin on the Friday night. Saturday morning we drove two vehicles out and dropped ours off at the end of the trail, with Roslyn's mom giving us a ride to the trailhead we were planning on starting at.

Us at the Trailhead!

It was a fairly late start, with us hitting the trail at 10 am. We spent a couple hours hiking along through some stark looking scenery. Come summer the area would be nice and vibrant, but May Long is still spring and the cool temperatures keep everything from growing too well. 

Some of the mornings trail scenery

We also happened to find a knife lodged in a tree at one of our break spots. We spent the next hour trying to figure out what nefarious deeds and led to it being abandoned in a perfectly nice fir tree.

The now infamous knife!

Near lunch we arrive at a camping area and took advantage of the picnic tables to eat on. During lunch and a bit before it, we could hear some trees snapping and falling over due to the wind, which was pretty cool. Before heading out again we filtered some water and enjoyed sitting by the lake.

Long Lake

The rest of the day was spent hiking along a nicely treed trail with a few small creeks to cross over. We arrived at our camp site around 3 pm and explored a bit since it was a former POW camp in World War 2. We read some of the placards and walked out around the area. Roslyn also saw her first cow and calf moose! We didn't manage to get any good pictures tough because it was too close, so we shot some blurry video then walked off to safety.

Long Green Tunnel

Summer is coming!

That night we built a campfire with the wood provided and ate supper fairly early. Our tent nearly blew away while trying to set it up, and we ended up in bed around 7 pm just to get out of it. Over night the temperature dropped to about -1C, so between that and the wind we were convinced to stay in our sleeping bags!

The first day of the trip was pretty enjoyable. Long Lake Trail and the section of the Central Trail in Riding Mountain National Park are easy to walk on, clear of debris, and wide enough for 2-3 people to walk side by side. Getting to walk and talk was a nice change from always being in front of or behind someone and trying to yell at each other!

Riding Mountain remains a consistently nice place to hike no matter where we go, and we suggest you try it out if you're ever in the area!

Goals and Plans for 2020

We are 8 weeks into 2020 now, and I figure I should talk about our 2020 goals!

Each year so far we've set a distance we want to get to and track it on the side bar to the right. This year we are upping the total distance we want to travel to 600 km, instead of the 500 km we wanted to get to last year. That's 70 km further than we traveled last year, but we get to do it in the same number of weeks while trying to renovate our house!

Three things are working for us to help get to 600 km. We are getting out more during the winter so far doing about 30 km of cross country skiing so far this year. We are going to be doing at least 3 to 4 canoe trips, and we can travel further in a day by canoe than by backpacking. And we are planning some more aggressive trips, with longer days required to complete them in our time frame.

Other than travelling 600 km, we want to do the following things:

1 - A trip with a resupply point in the middle

The next step in our backpacking journey is to do a trip long enough that we need to resupply part way through. We are currently looking at doing an 8 day/140 km trip where we resupply late on day 4 or early on day 5 around 70 km into it. Becoming comfortable with a resupply is the next step to going on longer trips!

2 - Take a course to handle Class 1 Rapids

We want to take a course to learn how to safely canoe through moving water and Class 1 Rapids. This will help us become more comfortable with canoeing and open up a lot more canoe routes with our new skill set.

3 - Get more involved with the community!

We want to get more involved with Paddle Manitoba, which is a local not-for-profit that is trying to foster the paddling community, while encouraging safe paddling practices, and offering quality instruction through a national standards program.

We also want to try to get more involved with the small community we are building around our Facebook page, YouTube Channel, Blog, and Instagram accounts! Whether that's answering questions, doing more gear demonstrations or reviews, or helping people out we want to interact with everyone more.

So those are out goals and plans for 2020. We find that goal setting helps us shoot for a target and gives us some more motivation to get out and do more!

Falcon Lake Trails - Top of the World and High Lake

Date: April 27, 2019
Length: 10.6 km
Elevation: 131 m
Time: 4 hours 5 minutes

Top of the World and High Lake Loop

This is a nice hike that starts and ends near Falcon Trails Resort. The hike starts with a nice climb to stretch your legs then settles in for a pretty trip. About 1.5 km in you get to the 'Top of the World' which has a nice view looking north over Falcon lake as you stand at the top of a cliff face.

Around the halfway point in the hike, you start walking on some access roads for the cabins that are in the area. The roads are dirt tracks that didn't have too many ruts or much mud on them, making them easy to travel over. We ended up finding a spot down between some cabins on High Lake to sit and have lunch at before moving on again.

On the way back we noticed a couple of large eagles circling overhead. We walked under them and enjoyed their company for 15 or 20 minutes before they flew off. We also saw a couple of wood peckers, and a bunch of other pretty colorful birds I don't know the name of.

Unfortunately, the last 1.5 km is a bit of a road walk back to the parking lot, but there wasn't much traffic at the time and the road is wide enough for two vehicles and some people on it. Just be careful and make sure people see you.

This hike was a pretty fun way to spend an afternoon and this trail can be hiked as soon as the weather starts to warm up and the snow begins to melt. This makes it a pretty nice start of the season hike when a lot of other more challenging trails would still be too snow or water covered to tackle.

Winter Trail Collection - 2019

Continuing from the last post about Defeating the Off Season Blues, here are a couple of small trails we did last winter to try and keep our minds in the right place. All of these are pretty short, but with the snow and the cold they were all pretty satisfying and kept our spirits up.

Cedar Bog Trail - Birds Hill Park

Cedar Bog Trail

Cedar Bog Trail is a nice 2.5 km trail winding through some cedar trees at Birds Hill Provincial Park. It's got a nice wide trail, pretty minimal elevation gain, and is very well marked. It was a nice 45 minute walk just after the sunset for us, and the moon light shining off the snow was a cool sight. For some more detail, we've talked about this trail before on our First Hike of 2019 post.

Bunn's Creek Trail - Winnipeg Manitoba

Bunn's Creek

We've mentioned Bunn's Creek trail before here, and it's a solid trail for a quick get outdoors moment. The route we walked was 7.1 km long on this trip with a nice coffee break halfway through.

Esker Trail - Birds Hill Provincial Park

Esker Trail

Esker Trail is a pleasant 6.6 km trail that we did our first cross country skiing experience on. At a spot called Griffith's Hill about halfway along the trail there is a look out tower and a warming hut with a fireplace, which was a great spot to stop and eat lunch. This excursion has led to us doing a two day cross country ski trip this year, and we will be buying our own skis now in time for next season.

Seine River Greenway - Winnipeg Manitoba

Seine River Greenway

The last trail I'll highlight as a good example of trying to get outside during the winter is the Seine River Greenway. It was a 6 km round trip for us with a stop for coffee at the halfway point and lost of small deer to see during the walk. In the winter its a bit barren and you can see some of the houses outside the green way, but it was still pretty satisfying.

As you can see from the above, getting out to do some small local hikes or short cross country ski trips can really help take the edge off of winter. We will definitely be trying to get out more with our new skis next season.