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"