Old Stone Bridge, Bowring Park

A good weekend to get out and snowshoe.

Photo Credit: Tim Rast

Silver Head Mine Path Boil-Up

Saturday turned out to be the best day this weekend for snowshoeing the East Coast Trail.  A friend and I headed out for a few hours along the Silver Head Mine Path running north towards Torbay from Middle Cove.  This trail has a good mix of woods, cliffs, and rivers.  We stopped for a few minutes and made some soup on a camp stove that Marc brought along.  Winter is definitely my favourite time to explore the trails around home.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Snowshoeing

We got out for a quick snowshoe trip around Beaver Pond in Shea Heights this weekend.  

This was the first trip of the season where it really felt like snowshoes and poles were a necessity.  

 Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Ready to Assemble

Lots of fiddly little pieces to
keep straight

I need to twist some sinew into threads and then lash the stone, wood, bone, and antler pieces together to finish the Dorset Palaeoeskimo set of reconstructed tools for Port au Choix.  Since these will be used in demos, I'll probably use a bit of natural hide glue to firm up the bonds, but everything is fitting so firmly that I think that's optional.   I'm hoping that final stage of assembly will get done tomorrow and I can ship the order by mid-week.  Maybe it should have been done by now, but we had the perfect amount of snow late last week for a snowshoe trip to Bowring Park last Friday afternoon.   

Honestly - how could I stay in the workshop when this trail is a 5 minute drive away?

A couple knives and some endscrapers have been added to the set. 

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Snowshoeing Father Troy's Trail Part II

Sunday was a perfect morning for snowshoeing.  We returned to Father Troy's Trail running between Flatrock and Torbay and did a section in the middle of the trail between Church Cove and Whale Cove.  The snow was ideal for snowshoeing, with a very thin ice glaze on top and dense wet snow underneath.  It was exactly the sort of snow that snowshoes let you stay on top of.   The trail was well marked and offered a variety of difficult, moderate, and easy options through the woods or along the coast.  The day provided a much needed break between busy weeks in the workshop. 

The cliffs at Church Cove

Little bridges - I love little bridges!

The view back towards Church Cove

The cliffs at Whale Cove

Torbay in the distance

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Snowshoeing White Hills

We had yet another perfect weekend for snowshoeing.  We had 20 or 30 cm of fluffy fresh snow fall during the week and then ideal weekend weather for getting out and playing in it.  This time we hit the trails in the White Hills on the northeast edge of St. John's.  There is a fairly extensive network of roads, footpaths, bike trails and power line right-of-ways that criss-cross over the hills.  We spent a couple hours exploring and saw some great country.  When I reviewed our path afterwards I realized that aside from the road, we didn't actually follow any designated trails.  There is certainly more ground to explore in this direction on another trip.

We cut across country for a couple kilometres, but eventually met up with a road and took that back to the cars, which were parked at the federal fisheries complex.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast

Snowshoeing Father Troy's Trail

We had another perfect Saturday morning for hitting the trails on snowshoes this past weekend.  This time we tackled a section of Father Troy's Trail on the East Cost Trail between Torbay and Flatrock.  These scenic tromps with friends are quickly becoming the highlight of the winter.  We covered a third or so of the trail, and there are lots of mid-trail access points along this particular stretch, so I'm hoping we can get back again in the coming weeks and see some more of it.

Photo Credits: Tim Rast and Lori White

Snowshoeing the Waterwitch Trail

The Waterwitch trail starts at the north end of Pouch Cove and winds towards Cape St. Francis, the northernmost point of land on the east side of Conception Bay.  We took off for a couple hours of snowshoeing there last weekend.  We've got some pretty beautiful and rugged lengths of coastline within easy access of St. John's.  Its not looking like good weather for snowshoeing this weekend, so I'm glad we got out last week.

 Photo Credits:
1-2: Lori White
3-4: Tim Rast

Snowshoeing #DarkNL

Snowshoeing the East Coast Trail
is a little tricky with a metre of
powdery snow on the ground.

Newfoundland is still in the midst of coping with a major winter storm, pre-preemptive closures, rolling blackouts and and unexpected Island-wide power failures.  The Premier and Newfoundland Power officials are warning us that this could be the new normal.  If and when the power grid becomes stable, we may be asked to conserve power for another month or two, and the dim light at the end of the tunnel that the Premier is offering us is a new power generation station in Labrador allegedly coming online in 2017.

Snow-B-Que!

Which means its going to be a great time for star-gazing, mid-winter barbeques, and winter sports.  We've got the grill set up again on the back deck, which we shovel out now before we work on the car and the front of the house.  On Sunday morning, Lori and I headed out to Cape Spear with a couple friends to snowshoe the Black Head Path. We only made it a kilometre or so along the trail before the deep powder turned us back, but it was still a great time and the Fish and Chips and pints at The Duke helped a lot.

The start of the hike had blue skies and huge waves.

The snow on the barrens leading to the foot of Black Head was easy to cross, but the drift in the trees were another story.  

We didn't make it anywhere near the top of Black Head, but we were well prepared for the mid-way break.  If this is going to be the new normal, I want snowshoe poles and a hip flask for Scotch, too.

The grey clouds and a dusting of snow had started by the time we made our way back to the car.  The waves were still impressive.

Cape Spear, Newfoundland and Labrador.  The Easternmost point in North America.

Cape Spear Light House.

Sausage, Tea, Coffee and booze to raise our spirits after an aborted attempt to cross Black Head.

A couple hours struggling through deep snow feels like a couple hours on a stair master.

There are so many great trails, I'm torn between returning to this trail and trying to finish it, or moving on to a new spot next time.

 Photo Credits: Lori White and Tim Rast

Snowshoeing the East Coast Trail

Silver Head Mine Path

Lori and I used some Christmas money to buy snow-shoes this year and we finally hit on the perfect weekend to test them out on the East Coast Trail.  The weather cooperated with fresh snow falling on Friday and Saturday nights, but with crisp blue skies during the day on both Saturday and Sunday. Breaking through new snow on even the best marked path makes you feel like a proper explorer.

The Blackhead Path - Cape Spear to Blackhead

View of the Cape Spear Lighthouse
from along the Blackhead Path

On Saturday, I drove out to Cape Spear and hiked along the Blackhead Path to the top of Blackhead, back towards St. John's.  The road to Cape Spear starts at the bottom of our street, so I really don't have an excuse to not visit more often.  I parked at the main lot and walked back along the barrens towards the small parking lot along the road where the trail head is marked and the path to Blackhead technically begins.  The trail goes through coastal barrens, woods, and up to the top of Blackhead.  It continues on to the community of Blackhead and ultimately Fort Amherst in St. John's, but I turned around at the summit.  The hike was a little less than 3 hours at a pretty leisurely pace (I took over 200 photos).  There was some thigh high drifting at the top of Blackhead, but for the most part it was a pretty comfortable hike.

The view back towards Cape Spear from Blackhead. 

Returning to Cape Spear

On a clear day, you can easily see Signal Hill from Cape Spear and Blackhead.

Cape Spear

Silver Head Mine Path - Middle Cove to Torbay

Mouth of Motion River/North Pond River 

On Sunday, we headed to Middle Cove and hiked the Silver Head Mine Path north towards Torbay.  People had hiked and snowshoed the trail on Saturday, but we had a few centimetres of new fresh powder all to ourselves.  The path starts at Middle Cove beach, quickly ascends a steep wooded cliff with a vertical drop into the Atlantic and continues along the cliff edge towards Torbay.  There are two areas of running water along the trail - the first we met was Houlihan's River, which was small enough to jump over, but a few hundred metres from the path end at Torbay there is a larger river, called either Motion River or North Pond River.  We turned around at this river and made our way back to Middle Cove.  The hike took around two hours.

Heading back towards Middle Cove. (Click to Enlarge)

Looking down into Middle Cove

The mouth of Houlihans River.  The trail skirts through the woods along the the top of the cliff in the background.

There was no way to get across the river in snowshoes, so we turned around at this point.  Its was definitely worth the trip.

Motion River/North Pond Rive enters the Atlantic in this cove.

Photo Credits:
1-10,12,13: Tim Rast
11: Lori White