2024 07 12 - Pigeon River - South Gillis ON

Pigeon Falls / High Falls from the Canadian side.

We are staying in Grand Marais for a few days and some of the family that had never been to Canada wanted to go. So we went with, even though the forecast including heat warnings. Yup, heat warnings in Canada. Makes me wonder if heat warnings are based on the average local temp or on set numbers anywhere in the world.

My wife and I used to cross the border for work but haven't now for almost 10 years and in that time we both have new passports. At the border we are asked the usual questions and then asked how often we travel ... and then told we need to SIGN our passports. Opps.

The group went up in three cars and we did not try to stay together. We left last and I drive the slowest so when the others were not at the welcome center we assumed they had left and gone to the trail head which was the other place we had talked about meeting.

When we got there, the others were not there and there was no restrooms so my wife needed to go back to the welcome center before we started hiking. That delay let the others get ahead of us. None of us had our cell phones on because of the high cost of using our cell phones in Canada.

By the time we got back to the trail head, the other group was coming back. Bugs. They had all sprayed down before walking but were still getting eaten alive by bugs.

So we head back to the welcome center to talk to the staff on other options. One was to walk to a small lake on a board walk. So we did that first. A little over a half a mile on all boardwalk. No steps. Park and pay at the welcome center.

This picture is from the trail to the falls, looking east to the international bridge.

While we were on the hike to the lake, we were looking at the hike to the falls. People were trying to figure out the metric conversion. Someone had the distance at three miles. Some of us were not up for that. So we stopped back at the welcome center and were told that it was about a mile and a half.

That we were willing to try. There hadn't been any bugs on the walk to the lake so we were hopeful.

This trail is as wide as a four wheeler in some places and single file in other places. There are a couple of wooden bridges which make for easy walking. But most of the trail is dirt or rock. There are places where you are walking on the rock, single file, no railing and straight down. There are also steps just before the falls.

One place there were tracks in the mud that were either from a large dog ... or a small bear. And we had mentioned this.

Then when we got to the stairs, my wife made it most of the way up and decided she was done. She just stopped right there. She said she was OK, so I kept going. She was not.

When we were leaving the falls, here comes my wife. At first she said she had caught her second wind but later admitted that while she sat there she had thought about the, maybe, bear tracks and that may have helped her catch that second wind. She knew she was alone and there was no one with her to out run.

When you get to the falls, there is a railing but no plat form, it is just the bare rock. For someone who is not used to hiking, seeing the falls from the US side is much easier.

There were two paths from the welcome center that we could have taken but we took the same path both ways. So we are not sure if both paths have stairs or not. The other path would be less likely to have had the side cliff path style as it is more inland from the river.

Over all I would guess that the path was over 2/3's flat, about a couple of dozen steps, stair steps. Of the flat area it is about half single file with the rest being wider.

No real issues with bugs today coming in from the welcome center. But we will try another time to come in from the other trail head to see if there is less elevation change.

Of the parks I looked at online, the Canadian ones included things like trail width and surface type.

Some in the group did have their 'health meter's' on and confirmed that it was a mile and a half trail. But combined that was 2.2 miles and a whole lot more than us old folks have been doing lately.

After the walk we ate in the park. Others had food and shared. My wife was zapped and ready to go home but once she ate we all headed to Thunder Bay.