Last Saturday I had suggested we take a short excursion to Gatineau, to hike an old familiar trail. It's a popular trail, because it's close to a popular little Quebec town called Chelsea featuring attractions for foodies. Not far from Chelsea is the MacKenzie King Estate, and some trails radiating out from there. It's really a short drive to get there, and the trail we most often take is no more than an hour's brisk walking.

This morning my husband took me by surprise when I asked what he'd like to do with another Saturday and he responded by asking me what I thought about driving up to the Masham-Eardley corridor which once, about 40 and more years ago was our take-off point for a variety of very long hikes at Gatineau Park. Even back then the trails were seldom used; we would rarely see anyone on any of them. But we loved them and hiked them regularly with our three then-teen-age-children.

Back then, you had to know where to look to find the trail connections in order to do a giant loop. Our younger son was adept at finding the faded old yellow blazes on trees. Sometimes the blazes were so old the trees had long fallen, and he'd find them regardless. Once we became familiar with the routes we easily knew our way around a variety of such trails, leading into forest, onto meadowed plateaus, from there to marshy areas, up long hills, down into valleys.

purple loosestrife

So the idea was we'd look for one of those old trails and even if we couldn't manage to do an entire loop it would be fun and a challenge to embark on one and see how things look from the perspective of so many years later. Presumably as well how our energy level held up. 'So many years' later was today, and everything has changed. Where we used to park and where the trailheads were positioned is now lost. And where some of the trails were, there are now 'equestrian' trails, and those are no-gos for hikers. We had some experience with equestrian trails in the mountains of North Carolina (Great Smokies) and horse hooves really destroy trails, particularly after a rain.

Getting there was a miserable experience to begin with; we drove up Mountain Road, a narrow, winding route with more bumps than an alligator-hide. Poor little Jack and Jill found it impossible to nap the drive away; they woke as soon as we reached that road, and it didn't take long for the uneven passage to prod Jackie to throw up his breakfast. And it's quite a distance, taking a good chunk of time to traverse it.

When we did finally reach what we thought was our destination our disappointment was profound. But we decided to drive on, and after a half-hour of additional driving we came to a place we recall, Ramsay Lake. Right across the road from it was a gate to a cart track, or fire road. Signage informed us that it was 11 kilometres long and ended at Lac Philippe, one of the three main Gatineau Lakes we used to canoe on weekly.

So off we set; we put harnesses and leashes on Jack and Jill and released them from the vehicle, and us as well. It didn't look too promising at first, very damp, and the presence of black flies seemed fairly discouraging. But we pressed on, and soon came across a species of plant totally unfamiliar to us. We'd seen fleabane, daisies, goldenrod and Queen Anne's Lace, Purple Loosestrife and Mullein, cowslips and cowvetch on either side of the trail, but couldn't figure out what that large, lobed and attractive foliage, tall-stemmed (some ten feet in height) dried flower head could possibly be. And then it occurred to my husband that we were looking at those monster plants that had invaded Ontario, whose sap is capable of causing serious skin problems, and even blindness.

Giant Hogweed

Very attractive in appearance, however. And on we went, glad to be out on a cool, partially sunny day in the wild fastness of Gatineau Park. And then we came to a lake we'd not known existed. This was turning out to be an interesting hike, after all.