TorontoHiking Blogs

Tuesday October 18, 10 am - 9 pm at Yorkdale Shopping Centre. First 50 in will receive a gift bag. Join the gang for Craftsmanship demos with free food, drinks & music. Shop for outdoor clothing, technical outerwear & accessories in the brand new  Yorkdale store opening. See comment below for...

Province Pledges $450,000 to Fund Mississauga's Lakeview Waterfront Pier Revitalization Project Today, the Honourable Charles Sousa, Minister of Finance and MPP for Mississauga South, announced $450,000 in provincial funding for Lakeview's Western Pier, located on Mississauga’s southeastern shores. The funding will go towards environmental and structural studies which are prerequisites for...

Hike L19 The Humber Valley Heritage Trail has always been one of my favourite hikes. But then about three years ago, it was decided that a new parkway was needed in the Bolton Area and the Emil Kolb Parkway was born. It sliced right across the HVHT just before waypoint (002)...

As August drew to a close, we received two comments from our readers. One talked about Hike L37F Elora Gorge Loop noting that once you get to (009)-The Hole in the Wall- there is no way to exit from the park due to major constructionn which blocks all pedestrian access. The...

The COMMUNITY section of the website was an experiment that has ended and the section has been removed from the site. This portion of the website had a very large overhead and I felt it was slowing down the loading of the site while providing little to the site. Most of...

The website will be unavailable for a period of time this evening beginning at midnight in order to undergo the move to an upgraded server. Hopefully this will add increased performance to the site and make access faster. The easiest way to increase site performance is to increase the amount of...

The slideshow galleriy in both Jasper National Park and Algonquin Park Adirondacks members blogs were asking for a password to gain access. Both galleries have been redone and are working properly now. Sorry for any inconvenience.

In the Adventure section of the website, there are 30 slideshow/photo albums that had yet to be updated to a responsive format. This weekend I was able to update all of these along with the "Birds of Ontario" album to a new responsive photo album/slideshow. The albums can be viewed individually...

I know that the website has been very slow this past week. Part of that has been the huge load on the server as a result of a large number of people visiting the site. Another part of that is due to the new features included on the site. In addition,...

Today is the day we launch version 9 of TorontoHiking.com and I’ll tell you it’s a big sigh of relief to reach that stage. That doesn’t mean that the work is all completed. Some things can’t be done until the site is live. An example of that are the logins by...

The RSS feeds included in version 8 of TorontoHiking have been removed in the new version 9. There were four categories of newsfeeds.   Weather and Traffic consisted of links to weather information in a dozen places along the Bruce Trail There were no working traffic newsfeeds. Ecology had no current...

Nicola Ross has written a new guide to hiking in Caledon. The new guide, Caledon Hikes: Loops & Lattes, includes detailed instructions about 37 different loop routes all in Caledon. The book is 192 pages long, is full of colour photos, great maps and info and where to have lunch or...

Work is progressing on making this website responsive -meaning it will display properly on phones and tablets without having to pinch and zoom. So far we have accomplished the following: 1) The 60 trail guides have all been redone in responsive mode.2) The long 8-item icon row in the hikes page...

 Updated: 27 Feb 2015 The Problem With more and more hiking enthusiasts visiting this site on mobile devices, particularly tablets, it is becoming apparent that this website is not particularly mobile friendly. One of the main problems causing this is that the site template that gives the site its look is...

  The socks are thick thermal socks with a fleece-lined fuzzy inside and a soft smooth outside. The manufacturer claims that "they are over 7x warmer than regular cotton socks and 3x warmer than ordinary thermal socks. They are better than heated, electric or battery operated socks because you can just...

​We all know that the spring we want is long overdue. But spring is typically volatile with a variety of weather and this year promises to be no different even if a bit late in arriving. Temperature and rainfall will be variable through April which will mean a later spring than usual.  For Ontario, expect below normal temperatures across the n...

Okay I haven't completely lost my senses and I'm looking forward to Spring as much as you are. But there are some benefits for hikers from the long cold winter.  If we get a good cold winter that lasts for many months, that can help cut back pests and diseases, and that's good for hikers and other outdoor enthusiasts.  You can celebrate t...

​Predictions are that Ontario will see a more typical winter than last year with some warm spells but also with several Arctic outbreaks especially in January and early February. We can already see this in the first week of January.  The storm track from the Ohio Valley promises to be more active this winter. This means above normal precipitat...

As February draws to a close, it's time to change our winter theme to a spring look. This has been a record mild winter with a record small snowfall in Southern Ontario.  What are the implications for hiking this spring? Hiking: The trails should be open earlier for spring hiking. Trails could be drier than normal with reduced spring runoff an...

On Friday August 26, I hiked the Bert Lowe Side Trail in hike L18 Thorold South Old Welland Canals with my friend, John, to check out the new version of the Bert Lowe ST.  At one point this side trail crosses under Highway 406. Entering the square tunnel at the south end, we noticed an inch or two of slimy water in the end of the tunnel d...