Suspension Bridges Over Eagle Canyon

Our third adventure on Saturday, August 8 was to visit Eagle Canyon, a privately owned area near Ouimet Canyon, which boasts the longest pedestrian suspension bridge in North America.  We thought this would be fun, but we didn't anticipate the beauty of the place.

After a strenuous uphill hike, we started to get a clue of what was awaiting us as we reached the top of the canyon, and could see the opposing canyon wall and forest as backdrop to a lush woods of fir, moss, lichen and stone on our side:

Our first view of Eagle Canyon was nearly as impressive of our earlier views of Ouimet Canyon.  In this case, the canyon floor was filled with water of a running stream, rather than rubble from the decay of the canyon walls:

The first suspension bridge we encountered was a “mere” 300 feet across the canyon:

From it, our views of the canyon floor were stupendous:

Here are two views from the center of the first suspension bridge, both upstream –

- and downstream, toward a small lake on the property:

Our hike would take us back down to the lake.

After a further hike along the far canyon wall, we reached the longer suspension bridge, which stretches 600 feet across Eagle Canyon:

For some random reason, the owners had placed a big bucket atop one of the stone columns that is very slowly being exposed to its doom as the canyon wall has eroded around it.  The bucket is to catch coins that tourists attempt to throw into it.  Kathy gave the canyon coin toss a try:

A new attraction the owners have added is a zip line that starts 175 feet above the canyon floor, stretches for half a mile, and speeds its rider up to 45 mph down to a landing zone at the lake at the far end of the canyon.  Here, an intrepid pre-teen girl is giving the zip line a go --

– and here, another is stretching her legs out for landing on a dock at the bottom:

Having crossed the larger suspension bridge back to the initial side of the canyon, we started our climb down to the canyon floor, via this incredibly long staircase that, perhaps not coincidentally, is bordered by continuous rows of raspberry bushes on each side:

The raspberries are in season, accounting for black bear evidence on the stairs.  That didn't stop us from tasting as many of the berries as we could stuff in our mouths as we walked down to the bottom.

Once we reached the bottom, we had a beautiful stroll back to the visitor center with awesome views up at the canyon walls and a chance to look closely at the vegetation on the canyon floor – things we didn't have a chance to see at Ouimet Canyon.  Why, we even encountered this mighty Inuksuk fellow, stretching out his arms to tell us that we are welcome, and that the canyon is “SO big!”:

While entrance to Eagle Canyon was significantly more expensive (C$20 apiece, compared to C$2 apiece) than Ouimet Canyon, we felt that the price was worth the rich experience here!  Didn't need to spend another C$40 apiece to ride the zip line, however.