New Brunswick
Friday 27 February
Bouctouche
As in my previous trip to PEI I decided that leaving in the morning made more sense than leaving the evening before, this time mostly because it saved paying for a night's accomadation. As it was most definitely still winter I'd be paying in a youth hostel. Still nice and cheap but I saw no point in paying for another night.
I arrived in Bouctouche in the early afternoon and after getting some lunch tried to find somewhere to go snowshoeing. The place I'd looked up before leaving and was intending to go to was a non-starter. The bit I could find was over the dunes but it really didn't look that exciitng in the winter - somewhere to go back to in summer. The other portion I could not find the trail at all so it was off to try to find my second choice which was also easier said than done but I did eventually find it and manage to go snowshoeing. Once I did get going I did rather enjoy it - especially crossing a frozen estuary, first on the bridge and then actually on the, snow topped, ice. That was an entirely new experience for me and pretty damn cool.
One other cool thing I did see why driving around was several cabins on the frozen bays, which I assume were for ice fishing. Unfortunately I took no photos. After my snowshoe I headed to the youth hostel where it turned out I was their only guest.
Saturday 28 February
Fundy National Park
Next day I headed to Fundy National Park. This isn't a winter park and so there are no services but they still plough the main road through the park. After a drive through the park I decided to try a snowshoe on a trail that led to a waterfall. To do so I started off snowhoeing up a road following someone else's tracks. So far so good. The tracks continued once I was on the actual trail but I soon met the people who had made them who said they'd gone a bit further, decided they'd last the trail and turned round. I carried on got to the end of their tracks, went a bit further and made the same decision. Was an enjoyable snowshoe in the woods but nothing too exciting. The most exciting bit of the hike was probably the 'gateway' at the start of the trail that did rather highlight how much snow we were on.
After that I hiked along a different road for a bit, the snow being compacted enough that snowshoes were not needed. This made a nice change from the first snowshoe as the scenery was a lot more open for a lot of it. After making it up a bit of a hill I made it to the turn off to another waterfall trail. Getting to the waterfall was impossible but a short way in was a nice viewpoint, which I hadn't know was there, and which made the hike up the hill worthwhile.
Sunday 01 March
Kouchibouguac National Park
For my final day I headed to Kouchibouguac National Park which was a winter park and so had limited services. These seemed mainly tailored to cross-country skiers but it was still nice to have warming huts and toilets. I started off on a snowshoe and went past the turning I was planning to take and soon arrived at one of the warming huts where there were a couple of people marshalling a cross-country event. They told me that the trail was back a bit and clearly hadn't been used since the last snow fall. A couple were also trying to find the trail and we agreed to take turns breaking trail but they quickly outpaced me so I was soon on my own. Eventually their tracks disappeared off to one of the groomed cross-country trails while I kept on the snow-shoe trail. That was hard work, but eventually I made it to the end. I went back via the groomed trails! I took a few photos but the best thing about the day was the sense of achievement I had in what I had managed as the hike itself wasn't that spectacular. There's also a couple of photos of an icicle at the youth hostel in Moncton. After getting some Indian food, which was a little disappointing, in Moncton I headed home.
Copyright Daniel Money 2015