Slough of Despond, hike #29.

Cue the dramatic sinister music....

today we hiked the Slough of Despond.

Sounds depressing, creepy, somewhere Eeyore would stake his tent, doesn't it?

With trees just starting to show their fall colours, that couldn't be further from the truth of this beautiful hike.

Scot and I started from a BTC parking lot that we've been to before. Head west into the woods for one of the most celebrated hikes in the area, the Skinners Bluff loop. Head east over this style, and you journey around THE SLOUGH of DESPOND (all caps to indicate a booming sinister voice this time)

The hike starts out in a nice meadow on the edge of farmed fields and climbs another style to a fork in the blue trails. We've been on the Slough of Despond side trail since we started, and we carry along to the left instead of taking the blue President's Path in front of us.

It's a wooded wonderland of fairly even footing with such a variety of mushrooms out in all their glory and I keep stopping to take photos. Lots of moss covered rocks and little splits in the rock floor.

It's a Tuesday, so we didn't expect to see many people out, (really, we rarely do, even on the weekend) but the forest is very quiet. We didn't hear birds, or frogs, and we didn't see a single chipmunk or snake. I have no answer for this? We weren't trying to be quiet, we were chatting the whole time, but it was still a little strange.

One of these hikes I'm going to try and photograph each of the ferns and identify them, there are usually at least 10 distinct ferns on the trail. But this beautiful girl is my favorite and always has been; Adiantum pedatum, Northern Maidenhair Fern.

I need to get my hands in it. It is so delicate with a slender red/black stemed quivering frond, but this is a hardy northern girl ready with withstand -40C temperatures.

A rocky outcrop suddenly gives up this amazing view! This is the slough. Huh.

So here's the basics of a slough according to Jen. Once upon a time, our whole area was either under, or the shores of lake Algonquin, and what we're seeing here would have been a cove. But when water receded and the ridge that we're standing on divided this area from the main lake stranding a small lake and wetland, well then it became a slough.

Over time the lake at the centre has been getting smaller and smaller to what we're seeing today. Not so sinister at all really. I didn't find a good explanation of why or when it earned the Despond part of it's name. Just a unique moniker for a lovely lake in a wetland!

To loop back to the car we split off of the Slough of Despond side trail and walked back along the President's Path. Some of this trail is shared in the winter with snowmobiles, so it widens nicely to allow us to walk beside each other for a change.

We spent a little under two hours hiking on September 15, 2020, and covered about 5km. The perfect way to spend my birthday, and a really really (really really) rare year that mother nature arranged that Scot could spend the day with me between fall field work.

P.S. If my simplified description didn't impress you, try here to learn more about the Slough of Despond. The Slough of Despond is apparently a big deal in glacial geology circles!

As mentioned at the start of this post, this hike shares a parking lot with what people refer to as the Skinners Bluff hike which is a loop created with the Chris Walker side trail and the main trail and takes you along to top of....can you guess....Skinners Bluff overlooking Colpoys Bay. IMO this is not the best hike in the Sydenham Club, but it's PDG!

For the Slough of Despond tour, head EAST over the style out of the parking lot into a meadow, not the woods!