Remembrance Day hike

Well I missed it… The snow fell last week(just 36 hours off my predicted time) and then disappeared almost as quickly! Sadly I must have overslept because I didn’t think to go ski on it… and now it looks like it could be a few weeks before we see any more snow . Back to roller skiing and hiking for me… Wednesday was Remembrance day and - with the day off work - an opportunity to take a hike . Bryan, Mike and I have gone hiking the last couple of years on Remembrance Day and the weather was looking like this year would be another fine one. At the last minute I spotted a new geocache planted deep in the northern end of the park so we headed off to check it out. Met a few other cars full of hikers as we hit the Eardley escarpment road but no one was at our trail head so we had the back woods to ourselves. The route principally followed a high tension hydro easement through the woods. I thought it would be a pretty dull hike but it turned out to be quite nice. The trail dipped and rolled, in and out of the woods and provided scenic and varied views the whole length. The Gatineaus obviously aren’t high enough to have much “above treeline” hiking but in the hydro easement we had all kinds of views so this worked out as a nice alternative. At the end of the trail a sizeable summit presented itself – I dubbed Mount Hydro Pylon – and after a tough scramble up we topped out to great views of the northern end of the park. I had brought the stove so we heated up some soup and had a little lunch in the warm fall sunshine. Took a few moments to remember why we had the day off and relaxed a while before making the call to head back down for the car. All in all another great day out on the trails. I’d rather be skiing but I guess patience will be the word this year.