Recounting the Memories: Cape Chignecto – Day 1

When you wake up one morning in February thinking you should circumnavigate Cape Chignecto you either shake your head and ignore the silly thought or you start conditioning. I first found myself a hiking partner with Cape Chignecto experience and then started training.

Each journey starts with a single step and the preparation for me started by reading as much about individual hiking experiences as possible. The trail is marked as “difficult” and that definition is consistent in the trail descriptions. What throws people off are the highly inaccurate videos and slideshows that pop up on Facebook and are widely distributed to promote circumnavigating Cape Chignecto Provincial Park as a “Fun Day in the Bay of FunDay” the messages get blurred. I had to find out for myself!

We set out Friday, May 5th at approximately 11 am. We pushed out starting time back to allow a little drying time after a rainy Thursday. Decomposing leaves and steep ascends present a huge challenge while balancing a 35 lb backpack.

We followed our plan of hiking counter-clockwise. This meant that we started at the usual trailhead, Red Rocks, to the staircase at McGahey Brook. We followed the trail to the sign pointing to Eatonville and headed off into the mostly wooded terrain.

After a long and mostly gentle descent we arrived at our first campsite. Setting up our tents and hammock, turning our attention to dinner and, best of all, getting our boots off was a definite highlight.

There was some worry about squirrels, mice and bears, so we did our best to suspend food supplies from a rope. Sunset treated us to soft pink skies through the trees… a full moon was rising and the temperature dropped well below freezing.😏

What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, right? Check back tomorrow for instalment two.

Happy Tuesday, Anna