This trail was recommended to us by a guy we stopped to talk to at Winter River a couple of weeks ago. The trail is reached by a dirt track from the road, opposite Brookvale Skiing Centre but today the track was blocked from the road by a plowed ice bank and we sailed right on by the first time.
Realising the mistake we doubled back and I parked on the narrow shoulder before clambering over the bank to buckle up. The trail was groomed to an icy ribbon about eighteen inches wide and we followed it past dense stands of trees whose genus and 1960s planting dates were announced by well-weathered signs. Rather comically one sign declared “woodpecker feeding site”. We chuckled, wondering if anyone had told the woodpeckers this.
After an hour we were still pressing deeper into the woods and were ion the point of turning around when the trail at last swung to the right, then back on itself and the sun told me we were heading back south.
I lost the trail when grooming ran out and we headed down wide tracks between the trees, our legs plunging eighteen inches in to the snow, despite our shoes, in sections where the recent rains must have undermined the winter’s snow accumulation; a mere 3.58 kms but it took us an hour and forty-five minutes.
It was not the best walk but one which may prove to be more enjoyable in the summer and fall.
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