About 45 minutes west of Toronto near Campbellville, the Hilton Falls Conservation Area is an enchanting area of dense woods, lush greenery, and some 16km of excellent hiking trails. Part of the Niagara Escarpment, the park also has a natural 10m waterfall as one of the main attractions. Last weekend I hiked a short loop through the forest. As is typical with most trails in Ontario, the terrain is fairly even so not terribly challenging, but its always good to get outdoors! The network of side trails is also links to the main Bruce Trail that runs from Niagara to the Bruce Peninsula.

The short hike through the conservation area.

The Hilton Falls are part of Sixteen Mile Creek and just one of many waterfalls in the Niagara Escarpment region. In fact, Hamilton claims to be the waterfall capital of the world with more than 100 large and small waterfalls – one of my goals this summer is to visit many of these falls and photograph them. The mother of them all, of course, is Niagara Falls at the border shared with the United States.

Throughout the woods you can still see the effects of the massive ice storm this past winter – there were broken branches and downed trees everywhere. And this is after most of it has been cleaned up by the conservation authorities.