Shean Trail: Kenloch Church to Black River

For an introduction to the Shean segment of the rail-trail, see my post: Shean Trail: Inverness to Kenloch Church. It was written in much better humor than this will be, and reading both may provide a better spectrum of experiences to be had on the TCT (the Trans-Canada Trail).

As mentioned in that last post, I use the TCT in Inverness County primarily for biking. Just shy of a 100 kilometers and built on a stripped rail-bed, the trail is long and flat, and might be considered quite boring on foot. Once you know it well, you can do it in segments, and choose your favorites (i.e. start in Mabou, and do the couple of kilometers that are near the Mabou Rivers, and so on). Even so, if you are by yourself and haven't a second vehicle parked at your end-point, you then have to turn around and walk the same, flat hike back--very different from mountainous hiking, where at least you'd have the different viewpoints and experiences of walking either down or up from where you turned around. While on a bike, I still have to return by the same route (or switch to the highway, though I'm not much of a road-biker), but at least I'm covering more ground in the time I have.

In any case, I had the bike with me today to cover the stretch from Kenloch Church to Black River, which I hadn't done in a couple of years. I was in rather pissy cheer to begin with, and this route just cemented that for me. We had received a bit of rain over the last few days, but no floods or wash-outs, so I didn't anticipate this to be a problem before leaving. Once I began, however, I found that this segment of the trail had recently been re-graveled in many spots. The top was soft, and made for a much more arduous bike-ride than I anticipated. Coupled with the maddening presence of every mosquito and black fly imaginable, it was a rough day that I thought couldn't be made any worse until I hit a "good" patch of trail, started speeding up, and then flew into a hole at the wrong angle at the end of this bridge under repair.

But HA! Things can always become worse. After biking to a few geocaches that were hidden in areas of extreme mosquito concentration and of no considerable sightseeing worth, and after putting in some considerable effort on soft ground, I met a couple of dump trucks on the trail. The trail is just wide enough for these vehicles, and grooming or maintenance can take place at anytime. Shortly after meeting them, I turned around, expecting my ride to be the same (not good, but not worse). And...of course, the trucks were out dumping more fresh dirt. Even keeping my tires upon their own flattened tracks, it still felt like biking on a sandy beach--brutal.

There was only one pleasant factor to today's segment--the lovely breeze that followed me along Lake Ainslie at the beginning and end to my ride. While it didn't exactly blow my frustrations away, it did dry my sweat and blow the mosquitoes off my neck.

Geocaches in Area:
"Hurricane Series":
N 46° 11.093 W 061° 16.326 GC2ET2V
N 46° 09.423 W 061° 16.678  GC2ET2Q
N 46° 08.544 W 061° 17.763 GC2ET2K
N 46° 07.993 W 061° 18.939 GC2ET2F
(Statuses: All good 2013-06-24)