Grinding the Grindstone - Hike 11

Hike 11 started at the 62.6km mark of the Iroquois Section of the Bruce Trail. I parked at the edge of Valley Road at the trail entrance.

The trail climbs through the Royal Botanical Gardens property up and along the escarpment until it descends to Old Guelph Road at Highway 6.

Check the interesting cloud formation over Hamilton!

A concrete tunnel takes you under Highway 6. As the trail continues on the east side of the highway there are ruins of an old homestead that are very interesting!

The trail continues along the escarpment through Clappison Woods.

The trail then descends and meets a railway track. The railway was originally built by the Southern Ontario Pacific Railway in 1910 connecting Hamilton to Guelph via Waterdown. It took 2 years to build at a cost of $1 million. It stopped carrying passengers in 1950 and is still used today for freight.

The trail continues to descend down the escarpment, crossing Snake Road at the 67.6km mark.

It continues to descend steeply down and around a large swamp and eventually meets up with Grindstone Creek. A large wooden bridge allows the trail to cross a rushing Grindstone Creek.

After crossing the creek, the trail turns north and follows Grindstone Creek upstream, climbing up the creek valley. The following are some nice shots of Grindstone Creek.

Further up the creek valley, the valley becomes steep sided and the trail climbs steeply up beside the creek. There are huge boulders and rushing rapids at this point.

The following pictures are near the top of the creek valley as it nears the Great Falls.

Great Falls, or sometimes called Grindstone Falls or Smokey Hollow Falls, is 10 meters high. The first mill was built at the lip of the falls in 1805, followed over the years by many other mills. There were so many mills at one point, with so much smoke, the area was named Smokey Hollows. The mills continued to operate for nearly 100 years.

In total, Grindstone Creek drops about 135m in elevation down the escarpment through a valley about 4km long.

The trail continues through Waterdown crossing Mill Street. On the east side of Mill Street there is an area where there are Bitternut Hickory trees. Check the amount of nuts in the tree!

I finished up at the 71.8km mark of the trail. My wife met me and drove me back to my car.

Another wonderful day of hiking!

Completed: 151.8km