Well, the day didn’t go as planned as the weather was uncooperative. Five hikers met up, but we were trying to second-guess the rain that had already started. Two decided not to go, but the other three had hopes that the rain would only be temporary. As it turned out, it rained during the whole trip sometimes heavy, sometimes light. On the bright side, it was quite mild and even though we got very wet, we stayed warm due to the long uphill climb to Nugedzi Lake. The rain did add a whole different feel to the trip as your view was confined to a much shorter distance, and you were very aware of your close surroundings. The moss and vegetation seemed considerably greener. As we neared the lake the temperature dropped a bit, and the fog settled in. This changed the whole feeling of your surroundings again and was actually quite eerie but beautiful as you can see in the pictures that were taken.

At this point, we decided not to go out to the viewpoint as you wouldn’t have been able to see anything anyway. Instead, we headed back down the trail toward the Cedar Grove Canyon. There we took a connector trail back to the trail going up to Mt. Seymour, which is quite steep in some areas. This is a newer flagged trail that goes through some magnificent large trees and open mossy landscape. Back on the Seymour Trail, it was downhill all the way to the vehicles. (7 km, 320m ascent and 3 hours)

Les

Thanks to Les and Norris for the photos

(click on photos to view larger)