Hogg's Falls Walk

I've posted pictures of Hogg's Falls before here.  It's a favourite place to go practice waterfall photography, and the starting point for several interesting walks on the Bruce Trail.  This time a friend and I tried out the Lower Side Trail.  It turned out to be an easier walk than I expected.

The trail starts out along the side of the river, providing great looks at the rushing water.  I was on snowshoes which really weren't needed, but did provide better footing because of the metal cleats on the bottom.

Soon you come to the falls itself, the place I first learned how to take pictures that 'slow down' the water as in this picture.  The falls is about 15 feet high and nearly 30 feet wide.

There are two side trails here, as well as the main trail, so blazes and signs are important.  We followed the lower loop, as I tend to find serious hills slow me down a lot.

Blue blazes mark the side trails on the Bruce Trail.  I was partly scouting this trail out as the possible location for a tree ID hike next year, and I did find at least a dozen different tree species, but this part was mainly a sugar maple forest.

Some of the maples had some interesting moss and fungi patterns on their trunk.

A fallen forest giant.  A volunteer chain-saw crew cuts trees that fall across the trail, and standing dead trees too close to the trail, but this one fell on its own.

Before I knew it, we were back to the river, here split into three channels through the flat gravel bars in the valley, through mostly a cedar forest.

Here the river is back into one channel, headed downstream for the falls.  A nice winter outing, followed by coffee and politics in the nearest coffee shop.