Those who enjoy hiking or want to give it a try will have lots of opportunities to enjoy the Grand Valley Trail this year.
In honour of the 75th anniversary of the Grand River Conservation Authority, the Grand Valley Trails Association has planned three different series of hikes that will keep people on the trails from April to December.
Full details of all the hikes are available at www.gvta.on.ca<http://www.gvta.on.ca/>.
Best of the Grand hikes
The Best of the Grand hikes will be two or three hours long and explore different spots along the Grand Valley Trail.
– April 18 in the Elora-Fergus area. Hikers should meet before 10am in the parking lot of the Elora community centre at 60 David Street. This is a 15km loop, but hikers will be able to drop out in Fergus.
– June 20 at Snyder’s Flats, near Bloomingdale;
– Sept. 19 on the SC Johnson Trail, between Brantford and Paris; and
– Oct. 3 along the Grand Valley Trail and Trans Canada Trail at Caledonia.
Family hikes
Family hikes will be loops that start and end at the same point and are no more than two hours. Those are for children accompanied by adults and will be at a leisurely pace on well-defined trails with gentle inclines, suitable for new hikers and families. They are:
– June 6 at Ruthven Park National Historic Site, near Cayuga; and
– Sept. 12 at Rockwood Conservation Area, Rockwood;
End-to-end 275 km hike
Serious hikers will be able to do a series of hikes that will lead to completing the entire 275km Grand Valley Trail. Those take place one weekend a month on a consecutive Saturday and Sunday until Dec. 13.
The next hikes will be:
– May 9, starting at Ruthven National Historic Site, Cayuga and heading north for a 17.5km hike;
– May 10 at Lions Park in Caledonia, and heading north for a 15.8km hike;
For more information, please visit call and leave a message at 519-576-6156.
The Grand Valley Trail Association has 400 members from across the watershed. Since 1972, it has been working with landowners to create the 275km Grand Valley Trail. It runs along the Grand River from its mouth at Lake Erie up through Brantford, Waterloo, and Fergus all the way to Alton, near Orangeville.
The association is holding the hikes as part of the 75th anniversary celebrations of the GRCA because the two organizations work closely together, said Georgia Mulholland, the association president.
"There is a lot of interaction between our two organizations and we’d like to foster that relationship," she said. "It’s also a new opportunity to introduce people to the Grand Valley Trail."
Mulholland led an end-to-end hike last year on Thursdays and 20 people participated.
All of the hikes will be led by trained hike leaders.
The association welcomes new members who can participate in a broad range of events and assist with trail maintenance and organizing events.
A trail guidebook is in its sixth edition and is available from local book stores as well as from the GRCA website in the Store section
