This next episode in my southern Ontario travels is actually the "Daily Double," since it encompasses two destinations. But there's method in my madness, because the two locations are two of the many beauty spots in the province that share a single common feature: the Niagara Escarpment.
The Escarpment of course takes its name from its single most famous and most-visited attraction, the world-renowned Niagara Falls. By far the largest, Niagara is, all the same, only one of the hundreds of streams of all sizes that tumble over the edge of this cliff throughout its length, some falling dramatically in a straight line, others cascading over multiple tiers of rocks. Here's another one: Webster's Falls on Spencer Creek, in Hamilton, in a photo from April 2014.
The sheer size of the Niagara Escarpment eludes many people -- and I'm not referring here to its height, but rather to its length. Here's a map to illustrate the approximate path of the escarpment across New York, Ontario, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The upper level above the cliff or slope is always in the part of the map below the red line
The height and shape of the Escarpment also can vary dramatically from place to place. One of the highest points I've visited is the lookout at Ten Mile Point on the northeast corner of Manitoulin Island, with its spectacular view towards the mountainous La Cloche region on the North Shore of Lake Huron.
The vertical edge which is the most characteristic shape of the Escarpment is the result of a simple trick of the geological formation. The rock structure is composed of multiple layers of sedimentary rocks, mostly sandstones and shales, but with a top or cap layer of notably harder dolostone. As the forces of wind, weather, and falling water eat away at the rocks, the process of erosion happens faster in the soft under-layers. A section of the cap layer is left protruding, eventually breaking off and falling, but leaving behind a new, sharp edge to the cliff. This gives the Escarpment its characteristic form of a vertical drop with a sizable heap of loose rock rubble at the base, usually extending up about half the height of the cliff.
Diagram from whaton.uwaterloo.ca
The earliest long-distance hiking trail in Ontario is the Bruce Trail, which was already in existence over half a century ago. In its final form, this trail follows the course of the Niagara Escarpment all the way from the Niagara River to Tobermory at the northern tip of the Bruce Peninsula. The trail passes through all the hiking locations I'm discussing in this blog post.
So, let's go Escarpment hunting in the regions not too far either from Toronto, or from my home.
Our first destination is easier to spot, visually, than any of the other places I've visited on this series because it is right beside the longest freeway in Ontario, Highway 401, and in the Region of Halton, a mere 25 minutes or so driving time west of Toronto airport. Although it shares the characteristic features of the Escarpment, this massive headland is actually not part of the main feature but a separate formation known as the Milton Outlier. Think of it as an island. Indeed, if this region were to be flooded beneath 30 metres or so of water (as it was at the end of the last Ice Age), the Milton Outlier would appear as a sizable, oval-shaped island a short distance offshore from the Escarpment proper.
Word to the wise, though -- if you're planning to visit the parks on and around the Milton Outlier, you'd do well to study a map of the region in advance. Right beside Highway 401 it may be, but there is no direct exit from the freeway to take you right there. Also, the largest park -- Kelso Conservation Area -- has sections both above and below the Escarpment, and you certainly want to wind up in the right place in that park, depending on what sort of activity you're seeking -- hiking and mountain biking above or rock climbing, swimming, kayaking, and canoeing at the reservoir below. On the other side of the highway is another sizable conservation park on the Escarpment proper, with multiple hiking trails, at Hilton Falls.
Most important point of all: although the park at Rattlesnake Point looks easy to get to from the QEW or Highway 407 -- a straightforward run up Appleby Line from interchanges on those freeways -- the narrow, contorted hill which carries Appleby Line up the Escarpment to the park is closed to coaches, motorhomes, and other long vehicles, and could easily give other drivers unused to such roads the heebie-jeebies, to cite an ancient medical description. What else can be said about a road which includes a hairpin bend that's not just signposted at a 10 kilometres per hour speed limit, but also equipped with a roadside mirror to help you see if anyone is approaching said hairpin bend from the other direction?
Either the 14th Side Road or Steeles Avenue provides an easier and safer drive up the Escarpment on the eastern side from Tremaine Road (Regional Road 22).
Next step: a critically important one. Due to the Covid-19 outbreak, and to minimize crowding by controlling numbers of visitors, all facilities at Kelso, Rattlesnake Point, and the other major conservation parks in Halton Region, are subject to advance visitor reservations, which can be made online. Reality check: if you try at the last minute, you will likely not be able to get a reservation at all on Saturday or Sunday! The driver who arrived ahead of me had been forced to pull over to one side at the gatehouse while searching frantically through the website for an available time.
Here's the link to make a reservation as required at any Halton Conservation Park:
Conservation Halton Parks Reserved Visits
My biggest reason for choosing to head for Rattlesnake Point: the view does not include the six traffic-jammed lanes of Highway 401! Before anyone panics over the name of the park, I'd just add that I doubt any rattlesnakes are ever seen there nowadays -- their habitat is generally much further north, on the Canadian Shield. Perhaps the name dates back to some incident in the earliest days of European settlement here. I'm sure that if snakes were likely to appear, the fact would be mentioned in the park's website and on signs in the park itself.
Once you are inside the park at Rattlesnake Point, bear right on the circular driveway. There are two main parking areas, and from either one it's a short, easy walk over level ground through the forest towards the rim of the cliff. I chose to start by heading for the Upper Parking area, clearly signposted inside the park. Here's a map of the park and its trails on the signboard at the upper parking lot.
My hike here took me right around the entire loop marked in green, with a little add-on for a few minutes along the Bruce Trail beyond the Nassagaweya Canyon Lookout, and took about 50 minutes.
The first leg is deceptively simple. The trail here is wide and level, indeed completely suitable for people of almost any level of mobility.
The forest is mature but fairly open and light, not deeply shaded.
As you approach the cliff, you begin to glimpse through the trees the view over the edge. Note that the edge of the cliff in this park is in many areas unprotected by fences or walls. Hikers with small children need to remain alert. Up the hill to the right you can see the beginning of the old stone wall which marks the Nelson Lookout. Climb up and enjoy the view.
It's almost shocking that such a pleasant rural landscape can exist so close to one of the continent's biggest conurbations, the eight-million-plus people of the Greater Toronto Area. This is the success story of the Greenbelt, created back in the year 2005 by the Province of Ontario to protect environmentally sensitive lands in an arc around the Toronto urban area. At a size of 7,284 km² or 2,812 mi², the Greenbelt is one of the largest and most successful near-urban land preservation schemes in the world.
And what is that you see in the distance, which looks like it could be another section of the Escarpment? It is indeed. That is Mount Nemo, on the northwestern outskirts of Burlington, the location of yet another Halton Conservation Park.
I took a pass on the Trafalgar Lookout, which turns the view further around to the east, because some people were already up there and the scramble up the rocks at that point didn't look like providing a safe social distance.
Close to the Nelson Lookout, though, is the Pinnacle Lookout, and here a staircase descends the cliff in a series of flights that give spectacular views of the Escarpment's underpinnings.
Plainly visible are the fracture lines running horizontally between rock layers, and cutting vertically across the layers. It's these cracks and the resulting water penetration which erode the rocks and eventually allow the edge to crack off and recede. The tree roots penetrating and loosening the rock from above play a role too. Of course the undercutting process is necessarily much slower than it is at Niagara, where the tons and tons of falling water hammer incessantly at the rock face.
Proceeding west from the Nelson Lookout around the rim of the park brings you onto a wild and rugged stretch of trail. The ground becomes in places very broken and uneven, and you descend a considerable distance during this leg of the hike as the rim of the Escarpment becomes much lower on the west side.
I'd say it's a 50-50 tossup whether this stretch of the hike would be more strenuous if you were going clockwise or (as I was) counterclockwise. Along the way, trail markers help to keep you on course. The green and yellow discs correspond to the green and yellow colours marking the trails on the park map (see above). The vertical blue paint blazes are the markers of the Bruce Trail, which shares this part of the Rattlesnake Point trail system.
Eventually you come around to the more westerly view of the Nassagaweya Canyon Lookout, although the Canyon itself (farther to your right) is not readily visible because of the way the trees have grown up around the lookout area through the years.
Cutting through the trees below you, you can trace the gap which marks the course of a small river. This is Limestone Creek, which flows south through the Nassagaweya Canyon. The Canyon, by the way, separates the Milton Outlier where you are standing, from the main Niagara Escarpment proper, just to the west. Limestone Creek empties its waters into Bronte Creek, on the way south to Lake Ontario.
From this point, it's a short distance to the Lower Parking area, and from there you can follow the trail markers onto the final stretch of the Vista Adventure trail, a short walk through the woods which climbs back up to the upper level, but with a much smoother surface than the trail along the edge of the cliff. You then follow the paved road back to the parking lot where you started.
In the areas around the parking lots there is a good deal of open space, some parts of which are dotted with picnic tables. This open area provides a place for games and activities as part of more leisurely warm-weather visiting. Sadly, at this time, the length of visits to the park is capped at 2 hours, again, to avoid overcrowding and give more visitors a chance to get in under the current pandemic conditions.
My second Escarpment expedition took me to the area just north of Orangeville, more or less half way from Lake Ontario to Georgian Bay. In the heart of Mono Township you'll find the Mono Cliffs Provincial Park. This is a natural environment park, with limited day use facilities only. It preserves a particularly picturesque portion of the Niagara Escarpment, consisting of the main escarpment itself and two outliers -- a larger one at the south end of the park, and a smaller one to the north.
Unlike some of the smaller parks I've visited earlier in this series of posts, Mono Cliffs calls for some serious hiking with a fair degree of care and attention to your surroundings. The trails are rugged, the climbs have stiff grades, and rocks and tree roots protruding through the ground on the trails are a dime a dozen. You need proper shoes or hiking boots for this kind of wild terrain. Like the Vista Adventure Trail at Rattlesnake Point, this most definitely is not the place for a casual stroll in your flip-flops.
Mono Cliffs is easily reached by following provincial Highway 10 north of Orangeville to the village of Camilla, then turning right on County Road 8 and following the signs. If you're arriving by car and you search the park on Google Maps, for instance, you'll get directed to the main, fairly sizable parking lot on Township Road 3. There are vault toilets here. The only fee is for the use of the parking lot, at a pay-and-display machine. It offers two choices: a 4-hour permit, or an all-day permit. Unless you plan to hike every single inch of every single trail in the park, the 4-hour permit should suffice. My little hike up to the lookout point and back lasted for 1 hour 45 minutes.
The trail out of the parking lot is called the Carriage Trail, and since it is wide enough to drive a carriage or wagon along, I'd guess it was originally built to serve one or more farms. The first sight on the right is a small forest pond, basking in the sunshine.
Along the way, you pass through a couple of overgrown clearings which were probably farms at one time. You also pass through a substantial forest of white cedar...
...and other more assorted forest types.
The trail is firm, but has very deep ruts and washdowns which no doubt occur after heavy rains. That's because the trail is climbing almost all the way.
This trail is not overly steep, although you do have to watch your footing around some of the deeper ruts -- and since this route is also available for horseback riding, you definitely have to keep one eye on the ground to avoid a disagreeable encounter with certain equine byproducts. The path keeps climbing at a steady grade for a considerable distance -- it took me about 15 minutes of uphill walking time, before I reached the centre of the park.
I mention this fact because it was not until this trail junction, fifteen minutes in, that the park finally deigned to post a signboard with a map of the trails. It was also the only such map that I saw.
At this point, you have to do a short zigzag, first to the right, and then, a minute later, back about the same distance to the left. This is clearly shown on that map board, and on the slightly less clear map on the Ontario Parks website. Just keep following the signs for the Carriage Trail.
Which is ironic, because no carriage would ever get up the next part. All the climbing you've down till now has been just positioning. Now, you're going to actually start up the Escarpment. The trail gets truly steep now, and very bumpy with rocks and roots. After a good stiff climb you come to a wooden staircase in several flights, totalling about 80 steps. At the top of the stairs, there follows another steep and rugged incline finishing the climb up onto the more-or-less level ground at the top. Only about one-third of that upper grade above the stairs is visible in this photo before the trail bends to the left.
My guess is that the stairs represent about one third of the total climb up the Escarpment.
On more-or-less level ground at the top of the hill, there's a junction. The signpost indicates trails with specific names going straight ahead and to the left. But on the right there's a third, much narrower trail which is not indicated by name on the signpost. This is the trail you want -- the Clifftop Trail. It snakes through the forest, basically a single-file path all the way, with plenty of smaller ups and downs. Just off to the right you can see the drop-off of the Escarpment falling away, but the path never gets too close to the edge.
After about 10 minutes of this, you come to a wider path, turn right a short distance, and you reach the viewpoint over the cliff. At the end of the short steel walkway projecting out into the free air, you enjoy this vista. Over to the left is the North Outlier, plainly visible and appearing like a flat-topped mesa covered with trees.
Below you, among the trees, you can glimpse one of several small lakes in the park.
If you look straight ahead, you can see in the distance another high ridge closing the horizon. That ridge marks a sizable height of land west of Lake Simcoe which slopes down into the valley of the Nottawasaga River just to the west of Simcoe Road 27 (and therefore just a few kilometres west of Highway 400). It was easy to see on this crystal clear summer morning. At a rough guesstimate it would be about 35 kilometres away to the east from the Mono Cliffs lookout.
Directly below the lookout (yes, you can look straight down over the edge, and even through the walkway's steel grid), there's a curious hole in the forest and the open forest floor is littered with pieces of tree branches. I have no idea how this might have happened.
Continue a little further north along the clifftop trail, and you come to another staircase down the cliff. Unlike the route you took coming up, but like the one at Rattlesnake Point, this set of stairs goes down only part way, onto a walkway which then comes to a dead end. But this is a perfect spot to get up close and personal with some very peculiar geological features -- two large chunks of the Escarpment which have become completely separated from the main body by erosion. The walkway passes between the isolated rock masses and the main cliff, with the hard top layer slightly overhanging the walkway. Difficult place to photograph with a phone because of the odd lighting through the trees -- I only got one good picture. I should have taken my regular camera. Lesson learned for the next visit.
At this point, I'd been walking for about an hour, and time was beginning to press on me. I therefore turned around and retraced my steps, still leaving plenty of trails to explore another time. The hike back to the car was much easier, since it was now 80% or more downhill -- although the really steep bits before and after the staircase forced me to slow right down. After all, you wouldn't want your intrepid blogger to tumble down the hill ass over teakettle, to quote an old British saying. Actually, that part of the climb down became like a trip back into childhood, bringing back a memory: "You may take 487 baby steps." Or something of that sort.
If you want the thundering drama of the Rocky Mountains, you're not going to find it at either Mono Cliffs or Rattlesnake Point. But you will find some eye-catching viewpoints, and get to experience some diverse and beautiful natural environments during the course or an hour or three of walking time.
To conclude, this map shows the approximate locations of these two natural attractions.
