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This past June & July, myself & two friends from Drummondville, Quebec spent ten days hiking the new section of the IAT/SIA in Nova Scotia. Samuel Morrissette , Jean-Francois Leclerc and I had just put up 100 trail markers along the last 100 miles of the IAT in Quebec. We had heard there was a new section of IAT on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. I contacted Richard "No Pack" Anderson, president of the Maine chapter & founder of the IAT/SIA, richardban@suscom-maine.net. He put me in touch with Ellen Wilcox, smellie@eastlink.ca, who laid out the Nova Scotia section and was the 1st and only person to hike it before us. She can provide you with the maps and all the info to do the Trail. Since the trail is so new it is not continuously marked YET. We left our car in North Sidney at the Arm of Gold Campground. The owner gave us a ride into town and showed us where the trail went through town. We were charged a very reasonable, two dollars per day for parking our car.
If you have hiked any of the AT you are spoiled with all the trail blazes. It makes it more of a challenge as you have to pay very close attention to the map & use some common sense. The map is fairly good but I can't say it is exact to the kilometer. We got confused a few times, usually after we left a town that had a liquor store. The trail is approx. 160 miles. The hiking itself is very easy, a lot of almost flat trail. We hiked it north to south. Starting in North Sydney it is mostly old logging roads with some road walk mixed in for the first five days. The last half of it hooks up with the Trans Canada Trail on an old rail bed to Port Hastings. Along this section there is no question of where the trail is, Stevie Wonder could even do it. There are several resupply towns so you don't have to carry a abundance of food. The
scenery is breathtaking, as you can see in the pictures. There are no designated shelters or campsites. As long as you are discrete you can camp in a provincial park when you come across one. We camped right on the trail a few nights. Two nights we asked if we could camp in someone's yard and they were very accommodating. All the people we met were very friendly & interested in what we were doing. This was a great experience.
Ray Hicks, Naples, Florida --2008 thru-hiker of IAT/SIA-Cap Gaspe to Katahdin
Please feel free to view some of my photos at:
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