Gatineau Park

Any book about Ottawa's outdoors must prominently feature Gatineau Park. This huge block of public protected space, shaped like a spear-head thrusting into the urban core of the National Capital area, has been the city's playground for many decades.

In fact, one of the problems I had with choosing trails to include in HTO was how to limit myself to only 10 listings in Gatineau Park. It contains so many possibilities, more kilometres of trails within its boundaries, both managed and informal, than exist near most North American cities. Gatineau park is so popular, and so well-known to Ottawa residents, that whatever selection I made was certain, I believed, to fail to include many people's favourite route and cause dissatisfaction.

In some respects the knowledge that most people would almost certainly be upset no matter what I decided made choosing easier. After all, if it was unlikely that anyone else would be pleased, I only needed to worry about satisfying myself!

Accordingly, I selected serveral shorter, but popular trails for novices and visitors. The Lauriault Trail seemed an obvious choice, as did Lac Pink and King Mountain.

Another short route that I included, Luskville Falls, I rated as a difficulty level of "3" because of the steep climb. Other, longer, intermediate walks are Herridge Hut, starting from P16 near Wakefield, and the Skyline Trail, beginning from the Chelsea picnic area.

Two routes I selected earned an advanced difficulty rating of "4": the challenging Sentier des Loup and less well-known Trail 56. And garnering the top difficulty rating of "5" are the long and climbing Lusk Caves trail, starting from Lac Philippe, and the physically and navigationally challenging route to Western Hut from the shores of Lac Meech.

I attempted to select routes that went to lakes and waterfalls, viewing areas and woodlands, and I tried to enter the park from a wide variety of directions. As I said earlier, there are any number of choices that could have been made. I hope that I included your favourite trail. If not, hopefully there is one that you do not know and are interested to try. Maybe you will discover an area of the park that you have overlooked.

Degree of Difficulty

All the trails profiled in Hiking Trails of Ottawa are assigned a numerical rating from 1-5 that indicates my evaluation of their degree of difficulty. A trail with a rating of "1" indicates it as being suitable for all fitness and experience levels. A route with a "5" is recommended only for experienced and very fit outdoor people.

These ratings are given based upon considerations of length, elevation change, condition of treadway, and signage. The base rating is founded on distance. Any trail up to 5-km is considered to be level "1", unless other characteristics, such as a steep climb, might increase its rating. Similarly, a trail from 5-10-km will be rated "2", a route 10-15-km long will be rated "3", 15-20-km rated "4", and anything longer than 20-km will automatically receive a "5" ranking.

If the terrain over which the trail passes is rocky or difficult, or there is significant elevation change, the rating will be increased by one or even two levels. On the other hand, on level, paved or crushed stone covered routes such as rail-trails or National Capital Pathways, the rating may be decreased by one level.

Level 4 and 5 hikes include an indication of what qualifies them for a higher rating. And any route, regardless of distance, where anything more than basic navigation skills are required, will automatically receive a "4" rating.

Novices, or those wanting a family walk, should choose level "1" and "2" ranked hikes initially, and work up to higher rated routes as they gain experience.

How Were the Profiled Trails Chosen?

There are hundreds of managed trails within a 100-km-by-air distance of downtown Ottawa. If only 50 can be adequately profiled, how do you decide what to include, and what to leave out?

The first way to select is to choose to include entries from every part of the region. After all, it would be simple to profile 50 trails just within Gatineau Park and the National Capital Greenbelt and Pathway System. There has been tremendous work done to develop a vast netowrk of walking/cycling paths. However, I found that there were many other trails, usually less well-known, found outside of NCC lands. Hikers in the Ottawa area should know about these as well.

Accordingly, I divided the area into five regions: Quebec - Gatineau Park, Quebec - Outside of Gatineau Park, Ontario - City and Greenbelt, Ontario - Outside Greenbelt, and the Frontenac Axis. In each of these regions, I would chose 10 listings, ensuring that there wold be some representation nearly everywhere, yet the areas with the greatest degree of trail development, such as Gatineau Park, would have a number of selections.

In order to better explain to the reader what type of experience they will have on any particular trail, is to provide a "Degree of Difficulty" rating. Each trail is provided a rating between "1", suitable for almost anybody, to "5", recommended for experienced and/or fit hikers only.

So, in each of the five regions, I decided to ensure that there would be at least one profiled listing in each of the five "Degrees of Difficulty". Ideally, there would be two for each of the five levels, but that was not often possible, particularly in some of the regions.

And next, but by no means finally, I was concerned with what type of experience would be enjoyed by the hiker. I did not want every trail to be the same. Ideally, I would choose some routes to include climbs while selecting others that stayed mostly level. Winding forest footpaths are what I enjoy most, but I recognize that beginner hikers and groups of friends might like the wide corridors of rail trails. If possible, I prefered to select a loop route, but often the profiled trail can only be an "out-and-back" walk. And, of course, if a trail took you to a lake, a waterfall, a look-off, or a good picnic site, it ranked high on the list of what I wanted to include.

So essentially, the trails profiled in Hiking Trails of Ottawa were selected first for geographic location, also for "Degree of Difficulty", and most importantly for the variety of experiences they could provide.

And if you think that was easy, don't forget that in oreder to evaluate what trails would be included, I would need to walk every one of them, and many others that did not "make the cut".

Next Post: Explaining "Degree of Difficulty"