MOUNTAIN LIFE - Blue Mountains | Summer 2018

SUMMER 2018 ML BLUE 21 MICROTRIPS The mid-route lookout. GLEN HARRIS 1 Loree Bruce Trail Loop Run This is a fast, swooping trail-run if you like your workouts short and to the point. Start about a kilometre east of Loree Forest where Sideroad 21 ends (and the 4 th Line begins). Stop and park here at the bend, where you’ll see that a dirt-track version of 21 continues past an iron barrier. This is the Bruce Trail’s Intercept Side Trail, which will take you to the main trail in about 500 metres. Follow the main Trail (white blazes) left, or west. (Heading east would take you along the top of Blue Mountain Resort.) You’ll descend steeply into a thickly forested valley, over a creek and up again in stages. Stay with the white blazes until you see the blue blazes of the Loree Side Trail heading left, or south. Turn here. It will lead you up more ascents and past a bench lookout with views of the Bay, then through open fields to Sideroad 21. Here you could cross 21 and follow the side trail back to the main Bruce Trail, but to close our short loop, instead turn left (east) and jog the short distance on the shoulder of 21 back to your vehicle. If you’ve run this at a decent pace, this is your lightning leg- burn for the day. DIY: For topo-quality maps at your fingertips, download The Bruce Trail app for iOS or Android. 2 History Hike: Trout Hollow Trail This volunteer-maintained 14-km hiking trail covers both banks of the Bighead River. Beginning in Meaford at the Bakeshop Bridge (across from Beautiful Joe Park), walking its full length will take you out to the 7th Line and back again, taking hikers through plenty of steep, rugged and thickly forested terrain. The many historical sites include remains of a sawmill, gristmill and power dam from the 19th and early 20th centuries. Most notably, on the west bank of the Bighead you can walk though Trout Hollow, the site of a mill and broom factory where a young John Muir—the father of the U.S. environmental and national parks movement—lived and worked in the 1860s. Now augmented with new informational panels, this site and the others along the Trail serve as reminders of how central the river was to commerce and daily life in the days before centralized electricity. John Muir wrote of the region: “When I came to the Georgian Bay of Lake Huron, whose waters are so transparent and beautiful, and the forests about its shores with their ferny, mossy dells and deposits of boulder clay, it seemed to be a most favorable place for study…” DIY: See also the JohnMuir exhibit at theMeafordMuseum: meaford.ca. There are several access points to the trail; see map at trouthollow.ca NOLAN DUBEAU