Arriving in Hinton in the late afternoon on Friday. We set out to find the trail head for folding mountain which we would be climbing on Sunday.
We Spotted the trailhead 600m down the road from the Folding Mountain Brewery. We revelled in all the wild flowers growing on the path from the brewery.
After finding the trailhead We decided to have dinner at the brewery and buy some victory beer for after Skyline. It occurred to me that this was the first restaurant I’ve been to since COVID started. I was happy to see hand sanitizer, more space between tables and masks on staff were protocols clearly in place. As we prepared to leave a family was seated behind us and low and behold it’s the Gonek/Komanski clan enjoying a weekend in the mountains as well. It was so nice to see them in person for the first time in months.
We finished dinner and decided to check out the Beaver Flats trails for a leisurely after dinner walk. This was a series of boardwalks above a marsh that connected to some other walking trails. We walked a 2.5km loop but did not do all the boardwalks nor all the trails. Some sections of boardwalk were closed. As trail runners we ignored the sign and went to see why it was closed. Turns out they close boardwalks when they are under water, go figure.
Definitely great trail to do with kids as long as your kids don’t want to jump in the marsh water. If you love nature/water pictures, it’s pretty hard to take a bad one there. On our short walk we saw a kingfisher, a beaver, leeches and a few fish. It was just what we needed to get us ready for the big weekend we had ahead of us, Skyline trail on Saturday and Folding mountain on Sunday. Stay tuned to see how those adventures played out.
