More up?!

On Thanksgiving weekend Alej & I took at little road trip to New Brunswick to go hiking in Mount Carleton Provincial Park. I choose that destination based on the pictures on the Tourism NB website. Basically my criteria were 1) hiking trails and 2) lots of pretty. I have to say, Mt.Carleton had an abundance of both.It also had lakes which enticed us to borrow a canoe and strap it to the roof of her vehicle. Little did we know it is very, very windy there.

On Friday we climbed Mount Sagamook. It's not the highest in the park, but someone had told us it was the best hike. It was a nice walk. The trails are well maintained and, for the most part, well marked. It started off in the woods and went up, up, up and occasionally  you turn around and see this:

Then you go up some more, and come to the climbing portion of the mountain climbing. The trail goes up piles of rocks once you get nearer the top. And when you turn around then, you see this:

 

Then you get to the lookout and this is the view:

But that's not even the summit, because there's more up before you reach the absolute peak of Sagamook:

And it is cold, and it is windy, and people have tied socks to the trees (wtf?) and it's so awesome. It was a better hike than Mt. Carlton, which we did the next day. Mt. Carlton is, I believe, the highest point in the maritimes. The view was impressive, and it had more rocky climbing to do than Sagamook. At the top there's an old forest-fire lookout, which provides a nice place to get out of the freezing wind and have a snack. We didn't see a single person on the Sagamook trail, but the Carleton trail was crawling with people - probably because it was a Saturday.

It was an awesome weekend. I'd recommend the park to anyone. We stayed in the park in a little cabin, and we had access to a gas stove for cooking and bathrooms with hot water. It was quite the set up. We didn't really get to canoe. We had 10 nice minutes on one of the lakes before the wind picked up and we had to fight rolling waves and white caps back to the launch.

All my pictures (and some Alej took) are up here.