Ganaraska Hiking Trail Association - Orillia Club

06/13/2026

New deet free tick spray approved. PureGard was developed in Canada and uses all natural ingredients. If the link doesn’t work go to puregard.ca.

https://share.google/5BCXcpVEO6fKWLVap

Health Canada has approved PureGard, a DEET-free tick repellent, for safe outdoor use amid rising Lyme disease cases in Ontario.

05/07/2026

Today’s hike took us to the Strachan tract where we hiked the Ganaraska to Bass Lake Sideroad. We came back via the mountain bike trails. The trilliums are just starting to bloom and there were other spring flowers. Thanks Gary for leading.

05/02/2026

Today we hiked the Ganaraska trail from the 8th to the 9th and did some trail maintenance along the way. We took a mountain bike trail back and thankfully it had been cleared after the recent logging in the area. Starting to see some spring flowers. Thanks John for leading.

04/15/2026

A beautiful evening walk with the Orillia Naturalists Club yesterday during a three hour break from the rain.

04/02/2026

“Easter bunny” hike along country roads today. We stopped at a monument dedicated to Sir Samuel Steele and at the one room school house where Bob Wilson attended a few years ago 😁
Many of us stopped at Quayle’s brewery after the hike for lunch.

Thanks Bob and Mary for organizing the hike.

Hoppy Easter!

03/26/2026

It was a mixed bag of conditions today - some sections still had a foot of snow while others were down to the dirt. We started at the Nordic centre at Horseshoe and stayed mainly on the snowshoe and fat bike trails. A rare occurrence today when the men outnumbered the women! We welcomed two new members and ensured they got the true experience by doing lots of hills.

03/24/2026

Orillia club hiked the Silver Creek Tract on icers, mostly wandering through the woods on top of the snow off trail. You can’t often do that so this was a special treat. Thanks Nynka for leading us down your nostalgia trail.

03/21/2026

It was a nice warm day to hike in Copeland Forest. We hiked a combination of Ganaraska and fat bike trails. There is still quite a bit of snow base in parts. Tony impressed us with his balance skills and speed at the head of the pack.

03/19/2026

Best snowshoe conditions we’ve had in several weeks. There was a light dusting of snow, no wind and we weren’t sinking up to our knees! We welcomed 2 new members Ruth and Todd.

03/14/2026

After all it IS spring - so two very different hikes within 2 days of each other. The first on Thursday was a rail trail trek in Oro Medonte, Shaws Maple Syrup to Woodland Drive and back. The trail was hard packed snow beaten down by snowmobiles and then subjected to a week of melt and rain, and the night before froze, the day was cold with high winds, BUT the sun peaked out and actually melted some of the frozen snow-ice. We were all glad to sit down at Shaws for our pancake lunch! The second was today, Saturday, just after several inches of snow fell, resulting in breaking trail the whole way on snowshoes, but what a gorgeous day. Thanks Carol for leading the Shaws event, and Isabelle for leading the Woods Tract and offering us hot chocolate afterwards!