Guide · Hiking
Bruce Trail day hikes around the Beaver Valley.
The Bruce Trail runs the length of the valley the house looks down on: lookouts, waterfalls and crevice caves, several of them a short walk from a car park. Here is where to go, and what to know before you set out.
By The Collingview · Published
Where to walk
Six places to start, and one flat one.
Trail lengths and times are given only where the body that manages the land publishes them. Where it does not, we have left them out, not borrowed a number from an app.
- Old Baldy, above Kimberley
- A Grey Sauble Conservation area with a lookout 152 metres above the Beaver Valley and the village of Kimberley, about fifteen minutes on foot from the car park, with access to the Bruce Trail. Paid parking. Grey Sauble Conservation
- Epping–John Muir Lookout
- On Grey Road 7 just north of Kimberley: an easy walk from the car park to a view east across the valley to Nottawasaga Bay, with a plaque to John Muir, a picnic shelter and Bruce Trail access. Dogs are not permitted on the Bruce Trail near Epping, at the landowner’s request. Grey Sauble Conservation
- Eugenia Falls
- In the village of Eugenia, where the falls drop 30 metres into the Cuckoo Valley. The site of an 1852 “fool’s gold” rush, and in 1905 of Ontario’s second hydroelectric plant. The base and the top of the falls are strictly off limits. Paid parking. Grey Sauble Conservation
- Hoggs Falls, near Flesherton
- On the Bruce Trail off Lower Valley Road, rebuilt by the Beaver Valley club and its partners with three footbridges over the Boyne River, a long boardwalk and new shorter loops. Visit Grey describes it as an easy ten to fifteen minutes. Picnic area and washrooms. Bruce Trail Conservancy
- Metcalfe Rock, Kolapore Uplands
- Off the 10th Line near Ravenna, on the Metcalfe Rock Side Trail, and a well-known climbing cliff. If the car park is full, do not park on the road and walk in. Parts of this map close for short hunting seasons at the landowner’s request, so check the notices first. Visit Grey
- Bayview Escarpment, toward Owen Sound
- An Ontario Parks nature reserve on the Meaford side of the escarpment, with crevice caves, exposed bedrock and views over Georgian Bay, reached on the Sydenham section of the trail. No visitor facilities. Ontario Parks
- The Georgian Trail, for a flat day
- Not the Bruce Trail: a converted rail line of roughly 33 to 34 km between Meaford, Thornbury and Collingwood, hard-packed and level, with around thirty access points. Used for walking, and for cross-country skiing and snowshoeing in winter. Visit Grey
Before you set out
Most of it crosses somebody’s land.
The Bruce Trail crosses land belonging to more than 700 private and public landowners, who allow people to walk it and nothing more. That is why the rules are the way they are: stay on the marked route, use the stiles, leave no litter and light no fires, and keep dogs on a leash where they are allowed at all.
Follow the blazes, white for the main trail and blue for side trails. The Conservancy’s own test is simple: more than about twenty metres without a blaze and you have probably wandered off it.
Sections close, sometimes at short notice, for flooding, storm damage, hunting on private land or a reroute. The Beaver Valley trail notices are worth two minutes on the morning you go. The Bruce Trail app carries offline maps and parking information, and is kept more current than the printed Reference.
At Grey Sauble Conservation’s properties, hiking is dawn to dusk and parking is paid by card only. A day pass works only at the site that issued it, so a group doing Old Baldy in the morning and Eugenia Falls in the afternoon pays twice, per car.
With a group
One lookout, one waterfall, and back for dinner.
A group with mixed legs does best with two short walks and a long lunch between them, not one long route. Old Baldy in the morning, a picnic at the Epping lookout’s shelter or at Hoggs Falls, and Eugenia Falls in the afternoon. Everybody sees the things worth seeing, and nobody is carried back.
If some of the group want a proper walk, pick a stretch of main trail between two car parks and leave a car at each end; the Bruce Trail app marks the parking. Download the map before you leave the house, so it works whatever the signal.
The Beaver Valley is at its most popular in the fall colour season, which is also when the car parks fill first. Go early, or midweek.
Sources: Bruce Trail Conservancy sections, trail user code and dogs on the trail; Beaver Valley Bruce Trail Club; Grey Sauble Conservation parking; Ontario Parks; Visit Grey. Checked September 2026. Fees, closures and access change, so check before you go.
A base above the valley.
The house looks straight down the Beaver Valley, and the lookouts and falls in this guide are a short drive from the door. Send us your dates and your group.