Training Log Archive: Bash

Final day of Urthbuoy's "Show Us Your Usual Haunts" photo contest. Turns out we have more haunts than days in a week - and I even cheated by starting a day early! So you won't get to see the trail run to Glen Haffy via K2 or the Palgrave single track or the run around our block (9.5 km of country roads) unless you visit. And please do.

Today was a summer weekend staple - a destination ride to The Shed Coffee Bar in Belfountain, a fantastic place owned by adventure racer Dave Corner.

'Bent and I rode to Caledon East (see Wednesday) then continued by rail trail to Inglewood. This ride took us from east Caledon into west Caledon, from the Humber River watershed into the Credit River watershed, from the Oak Ridges Moraine to the Niagara Escarpment. There is some friendly(?) rivalry between Caledon's two solitudes - the escarpment people and the moraine people. We are moraine people. Stoopid rocks and moss.

In spite of our differences, we have a few friends in west Caledon including Knobless and Gorgeous and their four pooches.



From Inglewood, there are several ways to get to The Shed but you can't avoid the big escarpment climb. Knobless joined us but his time was tight due to a lunch date, so we took roads part of the way including the infamous Grange Hill. (BTW, Knobless got his nickname because he uses a hybrid bike for everything, even the gnarliest trails.)

Belfountain is arguably the most beautiful village in Caledon, although I would never admit that in front of someone from western Caledon. Here's the little section of Bruce Trail that leads to Devil's Pulpit overlooking the area around the village. This was a 2-minute side hike from our bike ride.



Wise people generally don't post escarpment pics on Attackpoint because Hammer is so much better at it than everyone else. But I had to because that was the route to this view.



Here's the trail heading down off the escarpment by a big cliff. It gets a lot steeper, which is particularly fun in winter at night.



But we didn't go down. Today's goal was The Shed for iced latte and fresh chocolate zucchini bread.



Turns out a lot of people had the same idea to visit Belfountain, including an even larger number of motorcyclists than usual. It was a little strange to have an OPP officer watching over the village centre. Great news - there is a new ice cream place next to The Shed that has an espresso sundae with chocolate sauce. !!!

Knobless dashed off for his lunch date while 'Bent and I took the beautiful trail route back to Inglewood.







This trail network is great adventure race training. Look familiar?





As per tradition, we visited the Caledon Hills Cycling Shop in Inglewood on our way back. Had a nice chat with Don and somehow managed to find yet more gear we "need" that would fit into our bike packs. Best of all, we found Slowrunner out on her singlespeed and convinced her to ride back as far as Caledon East with us.



We stopped at the trail pavilion in Caledon East - the place where the first section of Trans Canada Trail in the country was officially designated about 15 years ago. 'Bent and I were there on that day (on a grade 8 school trip - ha!) and got our names in the first group on the first pavilion for buying a "meter of trail" each for $25.



Caledon's Walk of Fame is in the same place, with big carved rocks honouring people who live - or have lived - in Caledon, including Norman Jewison, Robertson Davies and Farley Mowat (who used to live across the road from our place and whose family still owns that house).

Thanks to Urthbuoy for challenging us to show off our back yards this week. It's been fun! It's also been interesting to see where other people play.

You saw the sweet trails at Albion Hills in yesterday's log. Next Saturday morning, you can ride them in the Caledon Navigators 2nd Annual Mountain Bike Orienteering Race! Regular or Novice course. Organized by Scooby with support from Prez Rocky and Nick de St. Croix.
http://caledonnavigators.heysport.com/

Met the Wadd Squad and guests to be the first visitors to the Following in The Footsteps of the Group of Seven exhibition at the McMichael Gallery in Kleinburg. The exhibit displays some of the results of Jim and Sue's explorations in Killarney over the past 30 years, doing detective work to find locations where the Group of Seven painted particular works. The original painting and/or sketch was hanging beside each of Jim's photos. Very, *very* cool, and so great to have a guided tour. Congratulations, Jim and Sue! The show runs till Labour Day so there's lots of time to visit.

Second last day of Urthbuoy's "Show Us Your Usual Haunts" photo contest and we aren't going to get through all our haunts! Notably absent from the list is a regular destination - Palgrave East. This is a larger block of conservation land than Palgrave West; it sits just across Duffy's Lane and 'Bent's daily trail commute passes through it.



Palgrave East has a decent network of trails including some single track. It's more rustic than Albion Hills - no admission fees, outhouses or garbage pails. It gets more visitors than Palgrave West but it's common to spend an hour biking, running, skiing or snowshoeing without seeing anyone else. 'Bent and I used to come here to ski when we were first married and lived in Schomberg. That inspired our plan to find a house in Caledon where we could ski from the door. After "starting our family", Palgrave East also became a destination for Lab Retrievers eager to swim in ponds and the Humber River.



BulletDog (aka Mocha) spends considerable time in our usual haunts and commutes with 'Bent to work most days. Patients love having a dog in the dental office - it relaxes them. (ThunderDog had that job for years but now she is semi-retired and only works when 'Bent drives to the office.) BulletDog is 7 years old, runs like the wind and acts like a puppy. She had major surgery several years ago to deal with a torn ACL. These days, she could be the poster dog for TPLO (tibial plateau levelling osteotomy). I can't even remember which knee it was. For her first 11 months, she lived in town with people who didn't have time for a dog. It took her awhile to get used to country life; she was nervous of tall meadow grass when we first got her but she's an old hand now!

Continuing with Urthbuoy's "Show Us Your Usual Haunts" photo contest, 'Bent and I rode to Albion Hills Conservation Area for some single track. To get there, we ride under the rail trail bridge on Duffy's Lane (see Wednesday) and continue another two minutes down the road.



Albion Hills has 1200 acres of forests, wetlands, rivers, creeks, meadows, trails, a public swimming area, campgrounds, picnic areas, and - of course - a lot of hills.



When it opened in 1954, it was the first conservation area in Ontario. Hurricane Hazel struck later that year. Centred north of Bolton, the storm and its flooding killed 81 people and caused devastating property damage across the greater Toronto area. In the aftermath, conservation authorities were established to manage environmental and flooding issues in watersheds across Ontario. As a result, a large amount of green space has been set aside in the Humber River watershed where we live.



Albion Hills is popular with families and hosts two educational field centres for visiting students. Local adventure athletes run, snowshoe, orienteer and ski at Albion Hills, but it's mostly known as a mountain biking destination with 40 km of rolling single and double track. Chico Racing and Superfly Racing (Adam and Sean Ruppel and team) maintain the trails and host weekly races and two huge annual 24-hour mountain bike relays. Not sure if it's still true, but these were the largest and 2nd largest 24-hr MTB relays in North America, attracting thousands of people to the park.

No racing today - just a pre-holiday weekend tour. Trails are in great shape.

If you're ever wondering why your bike might not work perfectly after an adventure race when it worked fine before, it's possible that you might have parked it overnight near the Kinetic Connection post-FAC party at Deerhurst. We just found this "drunk driving" photo of 'Bent's bike entitled "Up To No Good" linked from a race report on the Frontier website. Nice to see two (inebriated) friends keeping a close eye on the situation anyway. Hmm.

<http://www.flickr.com/photos/activesteve/461796337...>

Morning trail run with Caledon Crushers Rocky and Crash. Hottest day of the year so far but we got out well before it hit 29C. (Yes Cristina, I'm a wimp!) Tested my cute new Cherry Salomon XA Pros for Scotland and they worked just as well as the other 10 pairs of XA Pros I've owned before!



Continuing the theme of Urthbuoy's "Show Us Your Usual Haunts" photo contest, we ran part of the Humber Valley Heritage Trail today - usually abbreviated HVT in our logs. The trail starts in Albion HIlls Conservation Area in Palgrave and travels 15 km along the Humber River Valley to Bolton. Bolton is the larger town where we usually shop since Palgrave only has limited amenities (including an excellent, high-tech dental office!)

Today we ran from the Caledon Wellness Centre in Bolton to Castlederg Sideroad and back again. This meant we started up high with a great view of the valley then descended to the river. There are some steep hills with wooden steps on this run - a good place for hill training although the hills in Hockley Valley are even higher.



The trail meanders to keep things interesting - down near the river, high on a ridge, in cathedral-tall deciduous forest, in thick cedars and in open fields.











Thanks to Crash and Rocky for letting me join their super-secret Wilderness Traverse training. Hope no other competitors are reading my log!

The Dakota Rogaining Champs were a multi-media experience! I've added new links to Jim Waddington's photo album and Barb Bryant's very fun movies.

Continuing with Urthbuoy's "Show Us Your Usual Haunts" photo contest...

The Caledon Trailway runs 35 km across town. To get there from our place, we ride 3 km through F&M's property (see Monday) and Palgrave West (see Tuesday) to Duffy's Lane. A short fast ride on a quiet country road takes us to this bridge where we climb up a steep hill to the trail.



The Town of Caledon is a "community of communities". It's a single municipality covering a large physical area that contains a dozen villages surrounded by rural land and tiny hamlets. The railway used to connect some of the villages, which makes it a great way to run errands by bike, not to mention the opportunities for for ice cream along the way. Caledon Hills Cycling is in Inglewood, about 21 km from our place, so that is a typical bike trip.



Today I had a meeting at Town Hall in Caledon East so I rode over at a much higher pace than usual because I was late and wanted to change out of bike clothes before entering Council Chambers.

My ride home was a more typical small town rail trail ride. I stopped in at Gourmandissimo's in Caledon East for some goodies from Gilles and Adriana, two of our excellent local chefs. They freeze leftover prime rib and chicken from their buffets and give it to 'Bent for his homemade dog food. Like I said, it's a small town.

The scenery along the rail trail is rolling farmland, forest and wetlands.







Today it smelled amazing because of all the lilacs that probably ran wild from long forgotten farms. In pioneer days, settlers were awarded land here if they cleared it within a specified period. Where we live on the Oak Ridges Moraine, the sand and gravel made agriculture difficult, so there aren't many crop farms left. We occasionally stumble on old rock piles and rotting logs that show where the old farms were.

When I saw another rider coming toward me near Albion Hills, it turned out to be Coach LD. Small town!



Two cute lost children came up to us with a compass and an inaccurate orienteering map. They had wandered off the map during a game at the Albion Hills Field Centre and now they were worried about missing dinner. Coach LD and I turned back in the direction they needed to go and took them to where they could see the building. It's pretty common for us to encounter lost people in the Palgrave area. I'm told that a 19-year-old guy spent a night lost in Palgrave East recently, which is a little hard to fathom in an area so small.

Instead of going through Palgrave West on my return trip, I rode Duffy's Lane to Finnerty Sideroad. Crash and VO2Max live on Duffy's, which is a beautiful road. The last kilometer before Finnerty, the road becomes almost trail-like. I had to stop my car there once to let a beaver cross. One time in a snowstorm, I realized that I had snowshoed onto Duffy's Lane when I thought I had reached a clearing in the forest. It's a great road!

My STORM teammate 2-Min has poison ivy all over her ankles - no surprise given the extremely healthy PI crop up there! It's been 72 hours so if I can make it through to tomorrow without an itch, I should be OK. Well, except for the fact that my shoes are still sitting outside and I'm afraid to touch them.

Day 2 of Urthbuoy's "Show Us Your Usual Haunts" photo contest. (Time deducted for photography!) Today, instead of turning back toward our place on the 1 km F&M Loop, I ran south over a hill into the Palgrave Forest & Wildlife Area. This took me through part of the area that burned in the 70-acre fire on Labour Day 2007. Our other neighbours - country newbies who don't hike in the forest - decided to clean up some construction debris by lighting a match on a dry day. Then they stayed home while the rest of us helped 23 fire trucks fight the fire as news helicopters circled overhead.

'Bent injured his knee badly on that day - torn MCL and a small fracture. I'd phoned him during a bike ride to let him know that the firefighter had advised me to pack up and leave our home and also to tell him that he couldn't ride through the forest because it was on fire. He came home faster than he should have - skidded out on gravel to avoid some kids and couldn't unclip from the pedal. With 20/20 hindsight, I wish I hadn't called him. He would have noticed that the forest was on fire!

The meadows recovered very quickly. For the most part, the deciduous forests didn't want to burn. The coniferous forests took the brunt of it and they are still dying and falling down today.





This is the view from Thinker's Hill at the back of F&M's property. F's late father used to come up and enjoy the bench that is still found here. An elderly woman lives in the house below, which was surrounded by flames on 3 sides during the fire. She refused to leave at first but a neighbour finally talked her into getting out. The field and a ruined barn burned but firefighters saved the house.



The main Bruce Trail used to run through the Palgrave Forest and Wildlife Area until a few years ago. Now it's a side trail that runs from the main BT in Glen Haffy Conservation Area to the rail trail in the village of Palgrave. It's less than 1 km to this trail from our place. This is all part of 'Bent's daily commute.



This is the area we call Palgrave West. It's typical Oak Ridges Moraine terrain - hills and depressions, nice forest. There is a good chunk of conservation land but the best trails are found on a couple of private properties to the south - KBash & Wheelies.





For southern Ontario, I guess you'd call this old growth. It's a great place to see flowers and wild leeks in springtime. Today I surprised a wild turkey at close range and I see deer more often than not. A neighbour saw a cougar in here several years ago - and I believe her.



There is one negative in Palgrave - poison ivy. When we first moved here, I couldn't recognize it and was always being told that I was standing in it. Then I had my first reaction after a MTB fall into a patch of the stuff. These days, I've got finely tuned Ivy Radar. The biggest challenge is watching out for the dogs, since they can easily pass PI to humans.

Turns out Urthbuoy's "Show Us Your Usual Haunts" Photo Contest didn't begin till today - oops. I was awarded 1 point for cheating by posting my first entry yesterday. Woo hoo!

No training today - just a pooch hike around the F&M loop. This is a 1 km trail loop that heads from our house into our neighbours' property (Fred & Melodie - wonderful people), then weaves through their forest and meadows until the turn-off that leads to the back of our property. The return trail goes through some of our forest, then comes down a big toboggan hill toward our house. If you skip the turn-off back to our place, the trail continues a few hundred meters further through F&M's property to the Palgrave Forest & Wildlife Area, which will be featured in a future "Usual Haunts" photo.

This photo was taken about 30 seconds from our front door. I'm standing on the trail.



Here's the turn-off trail that leads back to our property. If I had turned the camera 180 degrees, you would see the dead trees from the 70-acre forest fire that our other neighbours started on Labour Day 2007. It just keeps getting worse as trees continue to die - very sad.



Today's hike buddy was ThunderDog, aka Tobler in real life. She joined our family on 'Bent's birthday a few months after we got married. We'll be celebrating her 14th birthday in August. In her day, she was an avid mountain biker, skier and runner - and sometimes she still tries to gallop. She still loves canoeing - portaging, not so much, although it used to be her favourite part of a canoe trip. Mostly she is happy to amble through the forest, investigate interesting smells and pause occasionally to enjoy the breeze on her face.