THE NIAGARA BRUCE TRAIL CLUB

Who We Are

Participating and Joining

Volunteering

The Trail

The Escarpment

Hike Schedules

Newsletter

Club Executive 2007-08

Ontario Weather

Local Radar

Poetry of Niagara Falls

Who We Are

The Niagara Bruce Trail Club is one of nine clubs that form the The Bruce Trail Conservancy. The other clubs, from south to north are: Iroquoia, Toronto, Dufferin Hi-lands, Caledon Hills, Blue Mountains, Beaver Valley, Sydenham, and Peninsula.

The Bruce Trail Conservancy is an organization dedicated to the preservation of nature and conservation of the environment, particularly of the Niagara Escarpment. Its primary activity is hiking and the maintenance of the 800 km long Bruce Trail, a walking trail in Ontario, Canada, which runs (with 300 km of side trails) from Queenston on the Niagara River along the Niagara Escarpment to Tobermory, on northern tip of the Bruce Peninsula. The Niagara section of the Trail was opened in 1964 (see the Niagara section history).

*New video on Bruce Trail Conservancy.

Participating and Joining

Non-members are invited to join us for a hike or two to get to know club members and part of the Trail. If you enjoy the experience and would like to come back for more, we invite you to join us as a member. For $50.00 for twelve months you can support the maintenance of this wonderful 800 km trail, and go on any of over 200 club-sponsored hikes. For more information -- where to go, what to wear, how to join, trail etiquette -- go to our Invitation page.

Volunteering

Since 1963 volunteers have been the driving force behind the Bruce Trail. Volunteers are responsible for contacting land owners, marking the route, ongoing Trail maintenance, planning hikes in their communities, promoting the Trail, and performing a variety of other roles. Today over 800 volunteers act as the caretakers of the Trail.

This is your chance to help secure the Bruce Trail, share your experiences and develop lasting friendships. Volunteering with the BTC allows you to choose from a variety of opportunities with various levels of commitment. From the boardroom to the Trail, volunteers typically commit between 4 to 16 hours a month to their positions.

For more information on volunteering at the Niagara Bruce Trail Club email to this address. For more information about the BTA volunteer program go to www.brucetrail.org.

The hike schedules are posted on this website and published in the quarterly newsletter, the Niagara Grapevine.

The Trail

The Bruce Trail, 800 kilometers along the sometimes breathtaking and always interesting Niagara Escarpment, is visited by more than 400,000 people a year. Conceived in 1960 and opened in 1967, it is the oldest and longest hiking trail in Canada.

The trail traverses public lands, roads and road allowances, land purchased by the Bruce Trail Association, and private land whose owners generiously allow the trail on their property. It is maintained by volunteers from the nine local Bruce Trail Clubs.

One can find a map of the entire trail and links to featured hikes for various sections on the Bruce Trail Association's Explore the Trail/Trail Map page.

The Niagara Escarpment

In 1990 The United Nations proclaimed the Niagara Escarpment a UNESCO World Biosphere Reserve. In company with reserves like the Everglades, the Serengeti, and the Galapagos Islands, the Niagara Escarpment is recognized as one of the world's unique ecological environments. The ancient formation of the Niagara Escarpment shelters a rare bio-diversity of life-forms and eco-systems which have attracted visitors from around the world.

The Escarpment is home to more than 300 bird species, 53 species of mammals, 35 species of reptiles and amphibians, 90 species of fish, and 100 varieties of special interest flora, including 37 types of wild orchids. Eastern White Cedar trees over 700 years old are found growing from its cliff faceone.

Essentially, the Escarpment is a ridge of rock several hundred metres high in some locations, which forms the outer ring of the Michigan Basin; it was created through a long, complex geological process which includes its having been in the Silurian period, a sea. The Niagara section of this (rough) ring, capped with dolomite, stretches 725 kilometres (450 miles) from Queenston on the Niagara River to Tobermory at the tip of the Bruce Peninsula. Today, in Ontario, the Escarpment contains more than 100 sites of geological significance including some of the best exposures of rocks and fossils of the Silurian and Ordovician Periods (450 to 500 million years old, from the Palaeozoic Era) to be found anywhere in the world.       Brief history ">

For an 1857 painting of Niagara Falls by the American landscape painter Frederic Edwin Church, go here.

The Bruce Trail Conservancy has an Environment Committee which is always interested in hearing from BTC members and others about environmental issues related to the Bruce Trail and the Niagara Escarpment.

Niagara Bruce Trail Club mailing address: P.O. Box 22042 St. Catharines, Ontario Canada, L2T 4C1      

The Niagara Bruce Trail Club web pages are updated by Henri Ragetlie, hragetlie@cogeco.ca, in cooperation with the Editor of the Club newsletter, Doug Bolton email bolton@niagaradsl.com.

Last updated February 18, 2008