Winter Hikes In Algonquin

During our stay in Algonquin Park over New Year’s, we love having the opportunity to go out exploring.  This year we decided on visiting the falls near Mew Lake on the Highland Backpacking trail and the falls on the Track and Tower trail.  Notice a theme here?  We went searching for waterfalls. 

Hike Number One!

Our first hike took us to the elusive Mew Falls. I say elusive because the number of times we have been camping in Algonquin, and have hiked and biked around this park, we have not taken the trail to these falls.  I would ask where they are, and was told “Just near the Mew campground”.  Ya… we took the wrong path. Every. Single. Time.

This year, I made it my mission to actually find these falls.  With a little help from Paula and Jack, we had our own little guided tour to the falls. We knew this trail had been traveled lots in the past few days, so we left out snowshoes at the yurt. 

Such a beautiful trail

In what seemed like no time at all, we arrived at the bridge that crossed over the falls. Who knew!? Well apparently a lot of people knew, we were just late to the party LOL.

Mew Falls!

As always, Hayden loves to throw rocks, sticks, snow, you name it, into bodies of water.  This time it was sticks and he was watching them go under the bridge and down the falls.

Throwing sticks and watching them float down the falls

We didn’t spend much time at the falls, but I had a lovely chat with Paula along the way.  We had so much in common in how we got interested in the outdoors, goes way back to being in Girl Guides, and that they are planning a trip to Newfoundland. Since that’s where we grew up, we will surely be having conversations later about where to go.

Happy Hikers
Happy Hikers x2
Silly Hikers?

Paula and Jack were heading the long way home, aka around the loop, but we decided to head back to the campground. Hayden doesn’t last very long in the cold, but he does a good job.

On the way back to our site

Hike Number Two

The next day we wanted to go back to the falls on the Track and Tower hike.  On our trip this fall (Searching for fall colors) we had done the entire trail, but seeing falls in the winter is quite the experience, so off we went.  Again, with so many people out hiking, our snowshoes were left behind once more (I’m sorry snowshoes, we will use you soon).  The trail was packed hard and it was actually easy hiking.

Track and Tower

Along the trail, you get beautiful views of a frozen lake.  This lake is traveled by many canoes in the summer.  There were lots of animals tracks going across the ice and through the trails as well.

Beautiful lake all frozen

There comes a point on this trail where if you actually stop walking and listen, you can hear the falls.  Much harder to do in winter with the snow crunching under your feet.

Falls at the top by the dam

This hike was much colder than yesterday, so a little boys toes were getting cold at this point.  Thankfully we arrived at the falls when we did.  I didn’t want to stick around too much, as I knew that once I stopped walking I was going to get cold.  We took our usual selfie pictures, and got some nice ones of the waterfalls as well.  Dan decided to stay for a few minutes longer to get some of his own pictures (all fancy like and slow mo) while Hayden and I headed back to the vehicle. 

Falls Selfie
Crew selfie
Snow on the trees
Falls in their glory

If you have not yet hiked Algonquin in the winter, I highly recommend it.  Even though there were a couple of cars in the parking lot, we didn’t see anyone along the trail until the very end when we were just about back at the start.  Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed the pictures and that this encourages you to get outside as well.

3 Replies to “Winter Hikes In Algonquin”

  1. It’ll be our first time at Mew Lake, and I’ve been searching the internet high and low for specific directions to the falls too! I was wondering if you could provide some details about how to get there? Thank you!

    1. When you head out to the garbage dumping area, follow the trail, it will split, take the right, then…. when you come to the next juncture take a left, you should see signs for Provoking Lake. Follow that. 🙂

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