North Mountain, N.S. – Summer 2009

Before heading off to Nova Scotia, I printed out or photocopied and then laminated maps of the areas I would find myself in.

I was intrigued by the area right across the Annapolis Basin from Smiths Cove where my brother is. Generally called the North Mountain, it and the South Mountain, and the area in between make up the Annapolis Valley. Interestingly, the North Mountain is a continuation of the Appalachian Mountain Range. Glaciation has seen to it that it really can’t in good conscience be called a “mountain” anymore. It’s about the height of the Niagara Escarpment. An area I’m very familiar with. The maps showed very little settlement, and a network of trails and logging roads. Driven by that relentless human desire to “see what’s over there”, the possibility of some nice views out across the Bay of Fundy and the Annapolis Basin, I made a plan to hike around the Annapolis Basin. I only had two days, so that was perhaps a bit ambitious, but my brother said to walk as far as I could and he’d pick me up.

I asked my sister in law if she knew anyone with a boat that could give me a lift across to the Digby Gap. She got on the phone and called a few people. Sure enough, I was told to meet Reg Hazleton at his boat the Shark Patrol at 08:00 on Thursday morning. I was in Digby the previous afternoon, so I checked out where the boat was, so that I would know where it was. The next morning my brother dropped me off, at a pier that had dropped a good 2 stories at least. Introductions were made, I jumped on and off we went. Well, there was some difficulty actually getting out of the harbour, since according to Reg, the water was particularly low that day. All four occupants of the boat were retired Digby fishermen who were now cataloguing sharks in the Bay of Fundy.

At high tide, you can step right off the dock into those fishing boats.
“Gee fella, that’s some big pack you got there. You’re planning to walk around the Basin? And then you’re gonna hike around Keji? That’s wild.” I take it big guys with big packs walking big distances, is something of a rarity in these parts.

The ride across was fantastic. It took about a half hour, and it was really fun chatting with all those guys. It gave me a great perspective on the area being out on the water, despite it being somewhat foggy.

My destination. North Mountain. The east side of the Digby Gap.

The west side of the Digby Gap. The prominent hill is Lynch’s Mountain. On the right is the Bay of Fundy through the Digby Gap. On the left in the distance is Digby.

The ferry from Saint John, New Brunswick, docking at Pollys Point.

Approaching Victoria Beach.

I had the vague notion in my head that when we got to Victoria Beach, I would heave my pack onto a dock and step up after it. This was not to be.

Victoria Beach is a tiny fishing village situated right in the Digby Gap (or the Digby Gut as some people call it). It’s protected by a caisson that forms a harbour. As we got closer I could see that getting ashore was going to be an adventure. Reg yelled for someone to go up on the bow and hook on. A nimble old lad scurried to the bow, and hooked a gaff onto a ladder running up the side of the caisson to pull the boat close. I took a deep breath, strapped my pack on and clambered along the narrow running board on the side of the boat, and then scrambled up the ladder. This is definitely the most interesting start to a hike I’ve ever had.

Thanks for the ride!

The fog had lifted for a few minutes as we approached Victoria Beach, and shortly after going ashore, it descended again.

The view from atop the dock.

I walked around to the other pier to take some photos, and chatted with some of the fishermen there. They were definitely intrigued by a hiker being dropped off by boat and climbing up onto their pier. I gather it was the first time they’d ever witnessed that.
“You’re going hiking across the mountain eh? We don’t get too many hikers around here.”

I had intended to climb up a really steep path to the top of the mountain, but I couldn’t find the trail. I suspect that it may have been behind someone’s house, hidden from view. I continued on along the road which wound along the Bay of Fundy. Whichever route I took was fine with me. This route gave me the chance to marvel over this community of wooden houses (brick is very rare in this area) perched on a hundred meter wide strip of land, between the strait dividing the Annapolis Basin and Bay of Fundy and its rushing tides, and a steep verdant cliff, with numerous waterfalls pouring over it.

I walked along the road until the pavement ended and gravel road continued. There were really no good views out, partly because the view was obscured by forest and also by the dense fog. Eventually I came to a clearing.

Figured this was a good spot for a break. 

The terrain here has a coastal rainforest feel to it. The combination of the hill serving as a barrier, along with the frequent bathing in ocean mist and fog, and gusts of rain blowing in, make for a distinct eco-system.

I tried making my way down to the shore, but quickly stopped that, as the ferns concealed a boulder field. After dropping up past my knee into one hole and then doing it again with the other leg a few steps on, I realized this was a great way to break a leg.

The rocks I was sitting on had some really neat striations running through the rocks

Eventually I heard some voices and waved to a couple coming up the road. They expressed surprise to find anyone out there at all. We ended up chatting for about 25 minutes. When I told them where I was from, the man told me he was from Stoney Creek originally.

“Yeah we decided we’d had enough of life in crowded urban areas. So we came out here. The house just before the road turns into gravel, that’s our house. This is our daily morning walk."

Wow. Some walk.

“We live in this area for half the year and sail out of Victoria Beach and then spent the winter on our sail boat in the Bahamas.

Wow. Some life.

I asked them some questions about the area and with the aid of the maps I had, they gave me the lay of the land.

“You can walk pretty much anywhere you want here. It’s all privately owned land, but the neat thing about this area is that you’ll rarely see a No Trespassing sign. It’s a lot like England in that sense, the whole common access ideal.”

“Yeah that’s kind of my attitude as well. I just want to walk here. I’m not going to harm anyone or anything, interfere with anyone’s livelihood, leave behind a mess. The only thing I plan to leave behind are footprints.”

We chatted for a while longer, but eventually I realized I needed to get going. The fog had started to dissipate during our conversation and a bright sunny day appeared. I headed up the hill and continued on in an easterly direction.

Not really a whole lot of great views from up here where I walked. Certainly none of the Annapolis Basin, and only a handful of the Bay of Fundy. But it was nice seeing what I did.

One of many brooks rushing down the hill.

At one point in my wander I came across a quarry used for making and maintaining the road. Today it is just used as a logging road by the people who own the land. This whole route had at one time been a road maintained by the province, but they had abandoned it decades ago. I’d say at least fifteen kilometers or so, between the point past Victoria Beach where the paved road ended, to Delaps Cove further east. You could conceivably drive the whole length, although an ATV might be a better conveyance than a car.

Cool rocks in this area.

I could hear an engine and before long an old guy on a tractor, towing a trailer of cut wood came along. We stopped and chatted for a while. He seemed surprised to see me.

“I’ve never seen anybody hiking in these parts.” He asked me how I’d gotten here. Told him I got a lift across the Basin and dropped off at Victoria Beach.

“Wow, never heard of anybody doing that before. ”

I got the sense that he’d spent the bulk of his life up here on the mountain, with a few trips to the big city of Halifax, and for the rest hadn’t ventured much beyond this area. Kind of envied him to be honest.

The area had had a lot of rain in the preceding days and the streams were bursting. Getting water was very easy on this hike.

Lots of little amphibians hopping about.

Shortly after I took this shot, a pair of guys who had been out clearing a trail came along.

“Gee, we don’t get too many hikers out around here.”

Most of the streams here (and the ones in Kejimkujik I was to discover later also) are fed by bogs and consequently are stained by tannin. It looks like weak tea. Tastes fine, but just looks a bit odd at first.

Gravel eventually gave way to pavement again when I got to Delaps Cove. The road had travelled along the top of the mountain, but had gradually descended towards the Bay of Fundy side. Eventually I needed to get back over to the Basin side. After consulting my maps and seeing what one map identified as a red line (ie a proper road) and a sign grandly indicated was the McKenzie Mountain Road. What the heck, I'll take this one up and over. It was already about 19:00 by this point, and I’d been humping a ruck since about 08:30 that morning. I figured I’d go up the mountain as far as I realistically could, maybe see if I could find a spot with a nice vista and pitch the hammock for the night.

What the map said was a road, and a proper sign indicated was a road, proved to be a nasty piece of work. It was nothing more than an abandoned skidder trail. It was about two meters wide, with two deep ruts, at least a half meter deep in many places. This had just been a piece of regular hillside, but now these ruts acted as conduits for water to stream down, for all intents and purposes forming a creek. It was obvious that some effort had been made to remediate the erosion damage, by the amount of gravel and rocks that had been dumped into the ruts. But this had only been done for a few hundred meters, and then stopped. I think in some ways the gravel and rock dumping had made it even worse. Several kilometers of water filled ruts wasn’t going to be hindered by some rock in its way. You could tell where water had pooled up and then eroded other areas to continue flowing downhill.

After about a half kilometer of jumping from rock to rock, I decided that nice vista or not, it was time to call it a day. I found an area with an opening, and some trees far enough apart to pitch the hammock.

It’s there. Rolled up in the SnakeSkins.

Home for the night.

The warm glow of my stove...

...before I put the Caldera Cone over it to boil water.

I enjoyed my after dinner aperitif before dinner. :-)

All during the walk there was plenty of evidence to indicate that this area had been logged. A lot. I doubted any trees were older than me. If I had any doubt that I was in bush and not forest, it was erased when I tried to find a tree to hoist my food bag into. All the trees are at most a few years old, with only the spindliest branches, nothing remotely strong enough to support the weight of even two days worth of food. Eventually I found something a  little thicker than my finger about ten feet up. Best I could do. 

The view I had as I sat under the tarp making my breakfast. Not quite as grandiose a view as I’d hoped for, but a night in the woods is better than a night in the city any time.

For a good portion of the early morning, gusts of wind had blown in off the ocean, each gust bringing with it some rain. The wind would abate, and so would the rain. Just as I got ready to set off the rain started up in earnest. Living in Ontario, I just don’t experience the sort of biblical rain you get so close to the ocean. Unreal the amount of rain that falls here.

This side of the mountain is a fairly gradual incline that goes on for about 5 kilometers. All along an overgrown skidder trail. For most of it, really all there was to walk on was a raised area between the ruts, not even a half meter wide.

It went on...

...and on...

...and on...

...and on.

And this was the better part of the trail. It became more overgrown as I went on. Eventually it turned into bushwhacking, and in various areas I had to handrail through the forest in order to go around totally flooded areas. The idea that I might have to turn completely around and go back did go through my mind, but what kept me going were horse tracks. Someone had come through here on a horse, from the direction I was headed in. And at most two or three days before. I figured that if a horse could come through here, I could.

At last! After hour after hour of non stop walking, I finally caught a glimpse of the Annapolis Basin. That buoyed my spirits.

I still had a ways to go ahead of me, all diagonally down a much steeper decline. While still rough and overgrown, I would come to occasional areas where it almost looked as though someone had come through with a Bushhog. And then it would end, and I’d be plunged back into over grown scrub again. Eventually though I ended up on a paved road that ran past a few houses, and eventually back onto the main road. And here too I was taunted by a sign with an arrow pointing towards Mount McKenzie Road. An ATV couldn’t get through there. A mountain bike couldn’t get through there.

Looking back at the hill I’d just descended. Pretty amazing spot to live though. Annapolis Basin out the front, big hill out the back.

What I walked across.

What I walked past.

The relentless rain that had battered down all day finally started to abate. A shot across the Basin towards the South Mountain.

Finally at about 17:30, I was beat. I had set out at 09:30 and it had taken me most of the day to slog across the mountain, through overgrown, swampy terrain, in driving torrents of rain. Holy hell did it rain. I hadn’t taken my pack off all day, and really hadn’t stopped for a proper break at any point. There wasn’t really anywhere to stop. It was all a sodden morass. I had wanted to go a lot further, but I hadn’t counted on it taking me so long to get across. Oh well. Still had a great time. I got about as far as Annapolis Royal, where I called my brother, who came and picked me up.

I definitely want to come back and check out some other trails in the area. And this time I’ll know to avoid the “McKenzie Mountain Road.”