Webster Falls
Aug. 27th, 2025 09:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerCanada travelog #10
Dundas, ON · Mon, 25 Aug 2025. 1pm.
Our first hiking stop today, after various snacking stops such as getting a box of Timbits, is Webster Falls. It's in the bucolic small town of Dundas outside of Hamilton.
We'd picked out a route that travels up from below to the bottom of the falls, but it turns out it's closed. Not only is it closed, the entry is full of all kids of "GTFO". Like, there's locked gate across the trail, there's no-parking signs all around the gate, "Maximum enforcement area" signs below the no-parking signs, and poison ivy all over the gate. Yes, seriously, it's like the town hired an evil druid NPC to cast a spell on the gate. So we went around to the top of the falls, where there's an official entrance.
Ah, here's the other half of why the entrance below is closed off and cursed. Here there's room for a gatehouse to collect money. Build a gravel parking lot, put a couple of electronic gate arms on it, then plop down a tool shed and put a teenager with a credit card reader in it (no cash accepted). $22.50 for the two of us to enter. For a trail that's not even 1/2 mile long. Oh, but it's good at all the parks around Hamilton for today, the teenager assured us.
We decided to get our $22.50 worth we'd hike to all the viewpoints for Webster Falls. They're not very far. The trail still works out to soemething like $25/km per person. And for that we only get partial views of the falls (see photo above) at some of these vista points.
For a partial falls view, it's pretty nice. I'll bet the full falls is amazing. Will we get to see that next? We walked around the other side, and...
...Nope!
Oh, this vista definitely reveals more of the falls. It just doesn't reveal all of the falls.
One more to go and... also nope. The third viewpoint shows less of the falls than the first two. It's a straight-on view of the falls.... but there's, like, 20 feet of forest between the edge of canyon and the fenced off trail. It's such a disappointment I didn't even bother to take a picture.
Ah, but I mentioned a fence. It's fenced off. You know what you can do with fences? You can go around them. Or over them. Or even under them.
Today I decided that going around this fence was easiest. Not that they made it easy. I had to do some balancing and hold onto the fencepost to get around the end of it. But I got around the fence. And once around the fence I could backtrack, on the opposite side of the fence, to where an old and steep but clearly visible path led down to a perch at the rim of the canyon. Would that perch offer a better view of the falls?
BOOM! Much better view. Hawk even kept watch for me in case a park ranger came along to bust me for going around the fence. Though I think the only "ranger" in the park was the bored teenager at the gate playing on his phone in between bilking visitors for $22.50 apiece.
There was only one problem. It was starting to rain.
Goddammit. In the time it took me to get down to this perfect picture-taking spot the sun had gone away, the clouds had come in, and it was starting to sprinkle.
I waited 10 minutes or so to see if the sky would clear, or at least if the dark clouds would shift away. Neither seemed to be happening. Thus since we had plans to visit multiple other falls today I packed it in on Webster Falls. I picked my way back up the steep path, followed the fence to its end near the edge of the canyon and swung around the last fence post, and walked the short distance back to the car.
Up next: Getting our $22.50 worth of parking with a two-fer at Tew Falls!
Dundas, ON · Mon, 25 Aug 2025. 1pm.
Our first hiking stop today, after various snacking stops such as getting a box of Timbits, is Webster Falls. It's in the bucolic small town of Dundas outside of Hamilton.
We'd picked out a route that travels up from below to the bottom of the falls, but it turns out it's closed. Not only is it closed, the entry is full of all kids of "GTFO". Like, there's locked gate across the trail, there's no-parking signs all around the gate, "Maximum enforcement area" signs below the no-parking signs, and poison ivy all over the gate. Yes, seriously, it's like the town hired an evil druid NPC to cast a spell on the gate. So we went around to the top of the falls, where there's an official entrance.
Ah, here's the other half of why the entrance below is closed off and cursed. Here there's room for a gatehouse to collect money. Build a gravel parking lot, put a couple of electronic gate arms on it, then plop down a tool shed and put a teenager with a credit card reader in it (no cash accepted). $22.50 for the two of us to enter. For a trail that's not even 1/2 mile long. Oh, but it's good at all the parks around Hamilton for today, the teenager assured us.
We decided to get our $22.50 worth we'd hike to all the viewpoints for Webster Falls. They're not very far. The trail still works out to soemething like $25/km per person. And for that we only get partial views of the falls (see photo above) at some of these vista points.
For a partial falls view, it's pretty nice. I'll bet the full falls is amazing. Will we get to see that next? We walked around the other side, and...
...Nope!
Oh, this vista definitely reveals more of the falls. It just doesn't reveal all of the falls.
One more to go and... also nope. The third viewpoint shows less of the falls than the first two. It's a straight-on view of the falls.... but there's, like, 20 feet of forest between the edge of canyon and the fenced off trail. It's such a disappointment I didn't even bother to take a picture.
Ah, but I mentioned a fence. It's fenced off. You know what you can do with fences? You can go around them. Or over them. Or even under them.
Today I decided that going around this fence was easiest. Not that they made it easy. I had to do some balancing and hold onto the fencepost to get around the end of it. But I got around the fence. And once around the fence I could backtrack, on the opposite side of the fence, to where an old and steep but clearly visible path led down to a perch at the rim of the canyon. Would that perch offer a better view of the falls?
BOOM! Much better view. Hawk even kept watch for me in case a park ranger came along to bust me for going around the fence. Though I think the only "ranger" in the park was the bored teenager at the gate playing on his phone in between bilking visitors for $22.50 apiece.
There was only one problem. It was starting to rain.
Goddammit. In the time it took me to get down to this perfect picture-taking spot the sun had gone away, the clouds had come in, and it was starting to sprinkle.
I waited 10 minutes or so to see if the sky would clear, or at least if the dark clouds would shift away. Neither seemed to be happening. Thus since we had plans to visit multiple other falls today I packed it in on Webster Falls. I picked my way back up the steep path, followed the fence to its end near the edge of the canyon and swung around the last fence post, and walked the short distance back to the car.
Up next: Getting our $22.50 worth of parking with a two-fer at Tew Falls!
