Road Trips – either you love them, or you hate them and there’s really no in between.
I was raised doing road trips – the whole family getting up at 3am, piling in the car and driving for ten hours was a fairly normal occurence for us. My partner Rob logged countless hours with his family, travelling back and forth between Ontario and Saskatchenwan when he was growing up. We’ve both been through the kinked necks, numb butts and car sickness, the family sing-alongs, impromptu sight seeing and and endless games of I Spy. Despite the ups and downs, we both ended up loving roadtrips – at least, with one another.
Because my goal to reach the highest points in every province and territory in Canada was sparked by my grandparents’ roadtrip adventures, what better way to kick off the whole thing than with a road trip?
In August of 2022, we packed our bags, flew to Fredericton, NB to pick up our rental car and started an 8 day tour ending in Halifax, NS.
Day one involved driving from Frederickton to Mount Carleton Provincial Park where we were booked to stay two nights. We stopped at a few places along the way – picking up camp fuel, some groceries, doing a little sight seeing. Eventually the well travelled tarmac gave way to grey, patched roads, the towns got smaller and the trees taller and denser.
We pulled into the park a few hours before sunset, set up camp and got to know the lay of the land. Since we’d be living out of our tent and the car for the next week, I organized the truck and the back seat so that, aside from the tent, we won’t need to do much setup at each location.
After a good night’s sleep and a 7am start to our day, we were on the road to the trailhead at 9am. The drive was about 30 minutes, including backtracking after a wrong turn. We took a short break to use the trail head pit toilet and headed out on the trail at 9:45.
The first part of the trail is fairly flat, though undulating. Eventually you get to a sign at the junction of two trails – one heads up to the ridge route, the other to a more protected route to the top. It was at this point, when I asked Rob if he’d be ok taking the ridge route, that he relized we were actually going to climb the mountain today – apparently he’d thought we were just doing a scouting hike. Ha!
We chose the ridge route and continued hiking the trail, which began to become steeper, rockier and eventually transitioned into a scramble marked with spray paint directionals. We put away our hiking poles and picked our way through the rocks, eventually reaching the summit and the fire-spotting hut located there. We took a few pictures, and a small break to rest. Most of the ridge portion of the hike had been quite windy, and we could see clouds moving in along the horizon line, but things really started to take a turn while we were at the summit. It didn’t look like the incoming storm would be dangerous, but, with this being a new area for us, and only the beginning of our trip, we decided to take the protected route down and not to dally on the way.
The protected route is a well marked, well worn trail all the way from the summit to the trail head, which passes by the cabin where, formerly, the persons staffing the fire watch hut had lived. There was evidence that parts of the trail become a river when it rains, which kept us moving to stay ahead of the incoming weather.
We reached the trailhead at 1:55pm and signed the register. Our round-trip was a total of 4h and 10min in length – not bad considering the party limitations. As we stripped off our day packs and our damp shirts, rain started falling HARD – we’d made it back just in time!
With the first one officially in the bag, we went back to the campsite. The rain had yet to reach the area there, and we headed to the beach for a quick dip – both to celebrate and to wash the sweat off. Dinner that night was just a dehydrated meal, but it tasted SO GOOD! There were thunder storms through the night, but we slept well in preparation for the long drive we’d be doing the next day…..
[end of part 1]