Fall Colours & the King Trail in Gatineau Park

Fall is hands down my favourite season. It always evokes impressions of cool weather, comfy scarves and sweaters, steaming beverages, warm baking, generally moving life indoors and getting together around a hot meal or a fire. It’s a melancholy time of year, with the slow decline to the cold deadness of winter punctuated by the almost incongruously bright colours of the trees. Biology aside, it’s like the trees are saying “if we’re going down, we’re going down in (figurative) flames.”

Over the weekend, Kyla and I got together to catch up and work on the blog in Ottawa. Naturally, we had to go on at least one hike during the course of my visit. We opted to go to the much loved Gatineau Park and hike the King Trail given the spectacular fall colours at this time of year. Let me tell you, it was a good decision.

Vibrant.

The King Trail is one of the shorter, higher altitude hikes available at Gatineau Park. It sits at just over 300 m in altitude. Intermediate difficulty, short, perfect, if you have a few free hours and a craving for a great lookout point over the Ottawa Valley. Gatineau Park is quite busy at this time of year with people from all over coming to take in the gorgeous change of season. Choosing one of less easy trails helped us avoid the crowded tracks.

Plus, we were happy to have our good friend and regular travel buddy, Stéphane, join us on this hike!

Stéphane and Kyla pausing to take in the view.

The trail is a loop through 2 km of gorgeous forest and offers several viewpoints. We chose to do the loop counterclockwise, and I would recommend it to anyone as you save the best views for last!

We also found that people tend to stick around the first lookout (and least spectacular of them all, in my opinion). That means you can move on quickly to the better lookouts and claim them as your snack and photo spot before anyone else!

What a view!

I don’t know why we’re so drawn to “spectacular” natural sights, or high vantage points. In fact, what defines things like northern lights or waterfalls or changing leaves as spectacular? Is it their ability to move us, to evoke some sort of sense of adventure, to humble, to strike awe? We could surely theorize about this for ages; all I know is that humans are silly and adorable for feeling this way. Especially with fall colours, you’d think I’d tire of staring at trees this time each year? And yet, I find myself feeling so peacefully content walking through a bright orange forest and listening to the faint continuous clatter of dried leaves hitting the ground.

We spent a couple hours lazily picking our way between the knotted tree roots and rocks that cover the trail, pausing once in a while to take in the view, take a picture, or have a snack. It was the ideal place to chat with old friends and make the most of the perfect weather.

The panoramic view of the bright fall colours coupled with the brisk hike has us dancing and looking forward to the next adventure.

The King Trail in Gatineau Park is certainly one of the top spots in the Ottawa region to hike in the fall. Where do you like to hike to see the changing colours?

Gen