Slowpoke Walk

Just a couple of weeks ago I led a 'slowpoke walk' for the local Bruce Trail Club, which took us through a beautiful golden forest out past a waterfall, out to the Cuckoo Valley Overlook, a viewpoint over the upper Beaver Valley.

This part of the trail has a few great big old trees, mostly Sugar Maples, surrounded by hundreds of younger saplings.  All of it was a beautiful gold colour on this day.

We followed the Bruce Trail blazes along the side of the slope south of Johnston's Sideroad.  See the white blaze on the Beech tree?

After a while we came to the waterfall - a very difficult one to photograph.  It drops about 30 feet, but the trail just passes above it, leaving you with only a limited view through the trees.   One of my pet projects is to create a side trail that would lead you safely to a viewpoint below the falls.

 But the tumbling stream above the falls is beautiful never-the-less.

We followed it upstream for a distance, past a lot of striking yellow Beech saplings.

 And discovered that the stream had more water than I've ever seen before.  We had had a lot of rain in the previous days, and the stream was running full, tumbling over the rocks.

At this point there usually isn't any stream at all; it is simply a trickle emerging from beneath those rocks.  I love little streams like this, and could stop for hours and take pictures of small portions of it (as I once did on Roaring Fork in the Great Smokies), but as I was leading an organized hike, I didn't this time.  Maybe next year.

At the highest point of the trail I peeked around a fallen tree which was blocking the view to find the stream tumbling down from ever higher up the slope - I've never seen water at all at this point.

Tomorrow, the Cuckoo Valley Overlook, perhaps the most spectacular fall colours I saw this year.

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