This time I started in the early afternoon. A lot of ups and downs, and our favourite road makes another appearance.

The hike began with some pretty standard trails through the woods. I noticed some flowers I haven’t seen before and lots of that strange puffball fungi. Eventually I stumbled upon some nice rock formations, including a cave.

I enjoy looking at the layers of rock that you see along the escarpment. Since the escarpment itself is essentially the shoreline of an ancient sea, each “layer” represents millions of years of sand, silt, and sea creatures. It’s very humbling to think that these layers of rock were originally formed about 200 million years before the dinosaurs. They’re as far back in the dinosaurs’ past as the dinosaurs are to us. Two hundred million years from now nothing that humanity has done will survive, except perhaps a layer of rock with elevated radioisotope levels.

Shortly after this I was spit out onto… you guessed it… Guelph Line! Why not just call the Bruce Trail the Guelph Line Trail.

After this the trail started climbing, and I found myself on top of the escarpment, looking out over Nassagaweya Canyon. There was another hiker up here cooling her heels. As in literally, she was taking her shoes off and hanging her feet over the edge. Here I was reunited with my old friends the vultures. More than two this time. Yes, I’m assuming they’re still the same ones.

As you can see from the map, the trail really zig-zags through the valley. There are side trails that allow you to short-cut your way through, but I resolved to stick to the main trail. The valley was really quite lovely, something about the late afternoon sun peeking through the clouds really made the colours pop.

After a brief on-road stint on Applebee Line, I entered Kelso Conservation Area. I’d really love to meet whoever named the trails here, they are hilarious. In addition to the pictured “Old Dump Trail”, “Energy Damping Field”, “Declined”, and “Fire” there is “Rough Trade, “Road to Ruin”, and “Disco Inferno”. After climbing up the back of the escarpment towards Glen Eden I was excited when I heard what I thought was falling water. But it turns out it was just a strong wind blowing through the maple trees.

After the view the trail descends Glen Eden “ski hill” which seems pretty tame as fas as ski hills go. It looked like they were setting up a course for some sort of mountain biking competition. After crossing a rail line I stopped in the Glen Eden parking lot. Kelso is the end of the Iroquois section of the trail, so I can apply for another end-to-end badge!

Only 666.7km to go!