Seaton Hiking Trail

My  friend Justin and I went for a short hike on Friday. As usual I had the day off and was perusing Facebook when he PM'd me. So I drove over to his place and we hopped into his convertible and headed to the Seaton Hiking Trail in Pickering.

The Seaton Hiking Trail runs 13 kilometres from Rossland Road in the south to Highway 7 in the north. Justin discovered it while driving out there one day.

It was 1:20 in the afternoon when we got there. Instead of starting at one end of the trail or the other, we started at Whitevale Park a bit north of the middle. There's a small parking lot there off Whitevale Road, east of the Scarborough-Pickering Townline.

From the parking lot we crossed the bridge over the West Duffins Creek and headed north. The trail is quite well marked making it hard to get lost. There were a number of side trails you could take. But, as long as you made your way back to the main trail, you'd be fine.

In total we were out for two hours. We didn't actually go that far turning around at Highway 407, about 2.5 kilometres from our starting point. Of course we brought our cameras, so that slowed our pace somewhat.

Even though the trees were bare of leaves it still was good to get out for one last walk before the weather turned blustery. That day we were blessed with blue skies and unseasonably warm temperatures of 15C+. So nice.

Mud Hike

Emily organized a short hike for us on Good Friday. It was just me, her and her friend, Avinash. We went to Seaton Trail in Pickering. I believe it was the first time there for all of us.

It was a grey day. The temperatures actually weren't that bad topping off at over 10C. It had rained a bit the day before, so I was thinking the trails might not be so good. Unfortunately I was right.

I expected mud, but besides that, many of the trails were covered with water and ice. A bad combination anyway you look at it. So we were either weaving our way through piles of muck or treading lightly over slippery patches of ice for a good part of our hike.

There were many times that all of us nearly fell. Avinash was the only one to go down. He fell fairly heavily on a slick patch of ice on uneven ground. It was mostly his pride that was wounded though. And his butt got wet.

It wasn't all bad. There were dry patches here and there. We got about 6 kilometres in in a 2-hour stretch. It took us a long time because we were taking pictures and we had to be extremely careful hiking in certain parts.

As well as the trail they have a large fenced in off-leash dog park there. A lot of people brought their dogs out to play. But not all of them stopped to stoop and scoop on the path between the parking lot and the off-leash area. So you had to be careful not to step on any poo bombs along the way.

After the hike I walked another 6.5 kilometres from my place downtown to meet Lawrence for dinner. We went to Sushi & Bento on Dundas at University for all-you-can-eat sushi. I think I earned it after all that walking, don't you?