Snowshoeing Black Mountain

March 19, 2025March 13, 2025 / Maria / 1 Comment

I was hoping to explore several new trails this winter, but life and avalanche conditions got in the way of most of my plans. In a last ditch effort to enjoy the snow before it disappeared completely, I decided to snowshoe up to Black Mountain on Cypress. For such an easily accessible trail, I’m surprised I haven’t ventured up there before!

Seymour and Hollyburn appear to be the most popular trails for snowshoeing near Vancouver, but there are a handful of trails near Cypress Resort that seem to get overlooked by the masses. Don’t get me wrong, they’re still busy, but the crowds seem tiny in comparison to the highway of hikers going to Dog Mountain on any given winter day.

When visiting Cypress, your first stop needs to be the Black Mountain Lodge. This is the lodge located towards the back of the main parking lot, not the ski lodge. This lodge serves a variety of functions, but one of them is a self-registration point for hikers. Whenever you’re going into the Cypress backcountry, you need to stop here and pick up a free hiking pass to attach to your bag. In addition, it’s a really nice facility, with a heated picnic room and flush toilets.

The two most popular trails from Cypress are Bowen Island Lookout, which is a great beginner trail, and Black Mountain, which is more advanced, mostly because it’s longer and steeper. If you’re really adventurous, I think some people continue past Bowen Island Lookout up to St. Mark’s, but I don’t recommend this without adequate experience and avalanche safety training because it is adjacent to challenging and complex avalanche terrain.

The Black Mountain trail follows the edge of the ski runs from Eagle Chair up to the top of the mountain. People do come up here on touring skis to ski down through the resort, but it’s fairly steep on the uphill, so be prepared for a slog. The snow was melting quite a lot when I snowshoed up there in early March, but it was a beautiful sunny day to be outside. It’s not an overly long trail – we tracked 6km round trip on my GPS, including a small loop at the top.

The trail is staked up to the top and it should be noted that the winter summit is different that the summer summit. If you continue around the loop at the top of the mountain, you’ll reach the winter summit. I was keen to also explore up to the summer summit, which branches off the main trail, but the snow was a bit slushy and we only had microspikes (not snowshoes). We started post-holing almost immediately and quickly abandoned the plan.

We stopped at the summit for a snack before finishing the loop. If you want to ski down, there is a side trail to the resort, but we didn’t check it out. You can also continue further to Eagle Bluffs, which is primarily in simple avalanche terrain, except for the summit. I haven’t done the Eagle Bluffs trail, so I’m not sure if that trail is also staked. We could see that it was not as frequently traveled as the Black Mountain trail and we would have been post-holing on that trail too without snowshoes.

Instead we just continued back downhill to the base after enjoying a nice day in the sun! It is a dog friendly trail, which was nice, so Sadie and Jasper joined us for the adventure. Overall, I don’t think I liked the trail as much as Bowen Island Lookout, Brockton Point, or Hollyburn, but it was definitely an easier trail than Hollyburn and comparable to Brockton Point in terms of difficulty. I would definitely pick Black Mountain over Dog Mountain though, as I find Dog Mountain too crowded.

In conclusion, it’s not as adventurous a trip as some of the plans I had to cancel, but it was really nice to get outside and hike somewhere new! We celebrated with a stop to The Shed on the way down the mountain to enjoy some delicious flatbread pizza and gorgeous views of the city!

ECT Series: Cape Spear Path

March 5, 2025February 27, 2025 / Maria / Leave a comment

Cape Spear Path is such a classic on the East Coast Trail that I’m surprised I haven’t already written about it. The trail runs from Cape Spear to Maddox Cove and is approximately 11.5km long. I first hiked the trail in full in 2013, but doing an out-and-back trip from Cape Spear to North Head is one of my favourite day trips when I’m home for a visit. It’s ~9km to North Head and back, but it’s really easy and flat hiking, so I recommend it to visitors a lot.

When I was home in Summer of 2024, I decided to do a re-do of the thru hike with my parents and Brandon. The first time I did it, I hiked from Maddox Cove to Cape Spear, but this time we did it in reverse. I don’t think you can really go wrong, but the Cape Spear side of the trail is definitely easier, so knocking out the Maddox Cove section first has its benefits. The trail from Maddox Cove is mostly in the trees and winds up and down the coast, so it’s a little more tiring. Eventually you pop out of the woods and the rest of the trail is exposed along the coast and incredibly scenic.

Overall, there’s barely any elevation gain in either direction, just a small climb up over the bluff at Herring Cove as the trail continues to North Head. North Head is pretty much the halfway point (distance wise, but maybe not time-wise), so it’s a great place to stop for lunch. My favourite thing is to walk out to the viewpoint and watch for whales. You don’t need to be constrained for whale watching though, it’s rare that I hike this trail and don’t see whales in the summer! On this occasion, we were shocked to see flying tuna jumping out of the water! I’ve never seen tuna in Newfoundland, but on this trip (in early September), I saw tuna jumping on two different occasions (and received a report from my uncle in Twillingate that he saw one too), so it was a very eventful trip!

My other favourite part of Cape Spear Path is the blueberries. Like I said, the trail is completely exposed from North Head to Cape Spear. There’s only low shrubs along the trail, most of which are blueberries! They get a bit picked over close to the lighthouse, but there’s lots of good berry picking close to North Head, so we stopped a few times for snacks along the way. The only downside is that it can get pretty windy along the cliffside.

So I definitely recommend this trail to locals and tourists alike. It’s a pretty good trail for beginners and if you just hike to North Head and back, it’s a really easy and scenic day. Plus, most tourists plan to visit Cape Spear (the most easterly point in North America) at some point during their visit, so it’s a fun way to tie in some hiking and make a day of it.

While I do think hiking from Maddox Cove to Cape Spear is a bit easier, the benefit of hiking the other direction is that you can finish your hike with a stop into Petty Harbour to get ice cream at Tinkers! Petty Harbour is a cute little outport community and is home to the most outrageously large ice cream concoctions. You can easily drop a bit of cash here, but it’s worth it for the photo op and the delicious snack! Enjoy your ice cream on the patio after a rewarding hike!

Rockcut Trail: Codjacks Cove

February 27, 2025February 27, 2025 / Maria / Leave a comment

In addition to my series on the East Coast Trail, I’ve also been writing about the Rockcut Trail, both located in Newfoundland. For those new to my blog, I grew up in Newfoundland and spent the first 23 years of my life there. I’ve explored most of the 300km long East Coast Trail by section hiking (I just have 3 left) from St. John’s, where my parents live. My Nan lives in Twillingate, which is a beautiful island on the central north part of the (big) island. It’s accessible by causeway and is popular among tourists for whale watching and iceberg hunting. They recently re-branded all the trails on Twillingate Island as the Rockcut Trail and have been improving them, so I’ve been trying to hike them all. See my other posts on Little Harbour and Top of Twillingate.

In Summer 2024, I visited with my sister, Emily, and my friend Brandon, who came all the way from BC to explore Newfoundland! Our biggest priority was to go fishing (which we were able to do twice) and visit with Nan, but we managed to find a bit of time to hike Codjacks Cove. This trail is located on the northeast side of the South Island and leaves out of Durrell. Drive down Horwood Lane to find a small parking lot. The road continues on from there, so if you take the left branch (the right branch goes to the dump), you can drive a bit further, but it was a nice day, so we just walked it.

Once you hit the coast, there’s a wooden staircase that heads down to Codjacks Cove and you can hang out on the beach. There is a single tent pad at the back of the beach that is newly installed if you feel like camping out! The trail is an out-and-back, so we skipped the beach on the way in and continued along the trail. The trail goes through the woods and along the rocky coastline of Gunning Head, with beautiful ocean views wherever you look! The trail supposedly continues all the way on the Little Harbour, as they’ve been working to connect all the trails into one longer thru-hike, but we just hiked for ~3km before turning around and heading back, since we only had one car.

We had a beautiful day for it, though it was windy of course! We stopped into the beach on the way back and I went for a little skinny dip by myself because Emily and Brandon were too chicken to participate! Well, Brandon was too chicken, Emily just didn’t want to. Like every trail on the island, it’s very beautiful. They’re all pretty similar, so you really can’t choose wrong. You can read more about the other sections of the Rockcut Trail on their website. I only have one section of trail left to explore in Purcell’s Harbour, but it’s been many years since I’ve done some of the other sections, so I plan to re-do them before writing about them. Twillingate is really special to my entire family and I feel lucky to call a little slice of this island home.