Oh Canada! You green beauty (At Least for the summer). So what you live in a highly populous place called Toronto. There is no dearth of naturescapes near this beautiful city. There are numerous beautiful trails and provincial parks around the city which can be easily reached and are ideal for a day hike, biking and other activities either solo or with family.
This time we decided to check out the Nottawasaga Bluffs Conservation area. We had heard of this place for quite a long and couldn’t defer the trip anymore as the beautiful summer weather was calling us out. Hence we packed some food, grabbed the sunscreen and off we were to explore the place.
-Quick Tips-
- The parking fees are $6.50 for for whole day
- To avoid crowd start the hike around 8 AM when the park opens, specially in summer
- Carry an insect repellent as there are a lot of annoying bugs and mosquitoes in the forest.
- Don’t forget to carry enough water as there is no source of drinking water inside.
- Carry some snacks if you are planning for a whole day hike.
- We didn’t find any washroom in the area
This was our story about a day hike near Toronto to Nottawasaga Bluffs Conservation Area. We are a roaming couple who likes short trips and budget travel. We generally don’t spend a long time in a particular place. As our blog name suggests, we hop around quite frequently. So if we suit your travel style please subscribe to us or connect with us on the social network of your choice.
Nottawasaga Bluffs Conservation Area
Nottawasaga Bluffs is a unique place indeed. The trails pass through caves, hardwood and coniferous forests, and open meadows. But the most notable feature of the region is definitely the huge rock crevices and cliff structures that can be found inside the area.
It is less than two hours’ drive from Toronto through some really scenic country roads that pass through stunning farms. There is no particular opening and closing time for this park, only notable restriction is no overnight parking is allowed in the parking lot.
Car Parking and Amenities
The parking lot in front of the park is not a huge one. There is space for maybe only 10-12 cars. We arrived there at 8AM and we were the first one there. When we were leaving at around 12 noon, the parking lot was already full and more people were arriving and had started to park on the other side of the road.
Daily parking rate is $6.50 per vehicle. Please note that there is no parking payment machine there and it is only payable online, through the app or through the website. So you must either have your smartphone with you or pay the parking charges before arriving. Also to note, we didn’t find any washroom in the area.
The Hike Through The Trails
There are multiple trails that run through the Nottawasaga Bluffs Conservation Area. Some of the trails are actually part of the Bruce trail https://brucetrail.org/ which runs all the way from Niagara to Tobermory. Here is a map of the park showing all the available trails.
The main attraction of the area is definitely the Cliff and the rock caves and crevices which is actually a pretty short walk from the parking lot from where the trail starts. Since we had a little more time to spend, we decided to take the longer route. This the route we took as marked on the map.
Immediately when we entered the parking, there was a path that went right and another one straight. The straight one is the path you should take if you want to reach the cliffs quickly. We took the right one which is actually the Bruce main trail. The initial section of this trail passes through some dense vegetation. This path is not very well maintained but is really well marked so that people don’t get lost.
As we marched along this trail, we realized that this path is not very well trodden as the trail path at some places is indistinguishable from the general forest. But the markings on the trees were very well placed and always guided us in the right direction.
After maybe around 2 km of hiking through the jungle and being constantly at war with some annoying mosquitoes and flies (we had insect repellent but they were pretty stubborn too), we reached a green opening. Suddenly the insects subsided and we were in the middle of a wild-flower field.
This must be some kind of marshland when it rains as a beautiful wooden pathway was constructed there to cross the field.
After some 15 minutes more of walking, we were at the intersection with the Bluffs lookout side trail. Now this is the actual trial that we needed to explore for the cliffs and caves. We bade the Bruce trail goodbye and took the side trail.
In between this trail passed over a beautiful wooden bridge over a small stream. Other than that the path was pretty basic.
Then we met with the Keyhole trail. Now the keyhole trail is actually a loop and you can traverse the whole of it within say half an hour. We took the longer branch (the one where the binoculars are marked) of it.
Soon after we entered the keyhole trail, the landscape started looking different. It was getting more rocky. We were navigating by stepping on large rocks to continue on the trail.
And then started the much famous rock formations. We literally were finding our way through narrow rock caves to continue on our path.
The rock formations were truly marvelous. We hadn’t seen anything like this before I must say. Some places the rock crevices were maybe more than 20ft deep. And while standing inside a crevice we felt it was amazingly chilly. Even with the day being at 30 degree centigrade, in between the rock structures it felt like a natural air conditioner.
Soon after, the Keyhole trail came to an end where the map shows a Privy (but there was actually none). We took the leg of the Bruce main trail to the right (away from the parking) and walked maybe five minutes to reach the cliffs. The view from there was indeed amazing, farm lands and greeneries as far as we could see.
And through a bit of exploration we met this pretty little guy. The beautiful Garter snake (non-poisonous) didn’t approve much of our presence but still gave a mighty good pose.
After exploring the cliffs, we followed the Bruce trail back to our parking lot and ended our hike. But not before we did manage to take some shots of the many butterflies that flock the forest.
It was a beautiful experience indeed. Maybe we covered only around 5-6 kilometres in around 3 hours, but we were stopping a lot to absorb and click the pretty scenery around us. We believe it is possible to cover all the major scenes within 2 hours if you take the shorter path.
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