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Outdoor Nova Scotia: Features; an Indepth Look at 'The Great Outdoors' in Nova Scotia!
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Postcards
From The Ridge: New Trail Brings Hiking to Antigonish! by Kevin MacDonell, Cape Breton Bureau
"From a naturalist's point of view, the Antigonish harbor and the estuary have been the highlights, but there really hasn't been any hiking trails around Antigonish, designed as hiking trails," says Peter Jackson, who designed and built the trail. For the most part working alone, digging the paths and bringing bridges into the woods on his back, Jackson completed the system in two summers. It opened last fall to rave reviews - it is "a must-see," according to Michael Haynes, author of "Hiking Trails in Nova Scotia." "There's a pent-up demand for hiking here," Jackson says. "We've got a lot of new hikers. We built a parking lot for 20 cars, this year we're going to have to expand it to 60, as a result of demand." The trail offers panoramic views of the harbor, ten species of softwood and hardwood in old climax forest stands, and abundant wildlife - bears, coyotes, foxes, deer, beavers, eagles, hawks and owls. It's six "stacked" loops, beginning near the harbor and ending high in the hills of the Fairmont Ridge, offer varying degrees of difficulty. The shortest loop is about three kilometers long (return), the longest more than 11 kilometers. Early in June, Jackson led a party of about 20 naturalists from around the province (in town for the annual meeting of the Federation of Nova Scotia Naturalists) through the trail system - and Outdoor Nova Scotia went along.
The Highfield Loop crosses a large, sloped clearing which was once pasture and is now a young tree plantation. A flat clearing at the top of this loop offers a panoramic view of the harbor, Georges Bay, and Cape Breton Island on the horizon. Side-loops bring you to a sunken lake and stands of old hemlock, pine and spruce. Getting progressively steeper, the Lookoff Loop runs up the face of the Ridge. The history of land use is in evidence here - from the massive forest clearances for agriculture by Scottish settlers in the early 1800s, to regrowth, to being cut over again in the 1960s, and finally to today's young, mixed forest. The final three loops - Skyline, Ravines, and Back -
are in backcountry. The hiker has a choice of routes and terrain to tackle, but in general
the trail goes over the Ridge and enters a deep ravine.
With so many loops and off-shoots, finding one's way might be a problem. Jackson didn't want hikers to have to carry a map, so he designed an ingenious orientating method. Each of the system's 17 intersections is posted with a letter of the alphabet, under which is a map of the whole system. Each trail that leads away from the intersection is posted with the letter of the intersection that it leads to, plus its distance in meters. Jackson has designed and built other trails, but his profession is industrial forestry. "Trees are my thing," he says. "I've been in the woods 40 years - more than that, probably. I've seen a lot of nice country in that time. Many times I thought it would be a great thing if other people could see it." He now lives a few miles from the Fairmont trail head. "I retired to this country because I like this land," he says. Of all the places he'd seen during his 26 years with the Stora paper company, Jackson says the harbor, coastline and the hills - and their proximity to each other - attracted him most. Jackson's work was done in co-operation with the Antigonish Hiking and Biking Trails Association, a non-profit organization which develops and promotes trails for residents and visitors. A member of the association made the land available for the trail, with the condition that the property be respected by its users. So far, so good, says Jackson. One of Jackson's aims was to keep the land as
pristine, natural, and quiet as he found it.
There is no mountain-biking or snowmobiling allowed. The trails themselves respect the landscape, zig-zagging around individual trees rather than plowing through them. Jackson says he can count on two hands the number of live trees he cut down. Completing the trail will, however, involve some compromises. Some large trees will be sacrificed this year in order to create scenic viewpoints. Untouched nature is nice, but most people want views, and Jackson says he is not opposed to giving the public what they want. In fact, pleasing the public might be good for the environment. "Having people in the forest is good for the forest," he says. To get to the Fairmont Ridge Trail, exit the
Trans-Canada Highway at Antigonish and follow the green "H" signs towards the
hospital on Route #337. Keep travelling on #337 towards Cape George for about 12 minutes.
The trail head and parking lot will be on your left.
Designed &
maintained by Outdoor Nova Scotia, Liverpool, N.S. BOT 1KO |
The first loop, the Bridges and Ponds loop, starts in a hayfield and
criss-crosses a small brook in the woods, then skirts by three forest ponds. Our party
stopped at a bluff overlooking one pond to see bank beavers at work close by, being
supervised by a lone eagle in a tree on the opposite shore. The trail winds around deep
sinkholes, a feature of the local "karst" topography, or land that is underlain
with gypsum. The light-colored mineral reappears at various places along the trail in
outcrops and white bluffs.
Here the trees have escaped
recent cutting, so there are stands of mature red spruce (once common in the province, but
found now only in scattered, inaccessible sites), as well as old stands of spruce and
hemlock. The total vertical climb from the parking lot to the Back Loop is about 370
meters.
There are, for example, no garbage cans along the trail - he feels they cause
littering instead of prevent it, and hikers ought to learn to pack all garbage out. 
