The Dec 20th night hike will make the fourth time we have ventured off to Duncan's cove, well ahead the rest of the full moon hikes. Thirteen of us left Tim's @ Bayer Lake Business Park at approximately 6:45pm. We broke up into four cars, Bruce Duffy drove Viking, Ben Levy & his girlfriend Kathy. I drove Ross Mitchell, Bruce Murphy & his daughter Sophie. Norman drove Christie -Ann, while Maureen MacLaughlin drove two of her friends. Duffy's and my car arrived at the trailhead and met up with Ian , (a friend of Bruce Murphy) along with Ian's dog .

Now we totalled 14 to stroll along the rock cliffs of Duncan's Cove. With our packs on we waited outside for the others to show up. After waithing 20 minutes in the cold, Duffy, head guide, made the decision to start off and let the others catch up. Just as we were leaving our cars, Norm & Christie-Ann pull up, Norm advised us that he got lost. That's pretty peculiar, for he never got lost when he drove male hikers to the Cove's trail head. Norm advised that he would stay behind until Maureen and her group would arrive. So the nine of us proceeded on.

Ian's dog kept us in line by running from the first place hiker to the sweep person, over & over again, along the trail, This time the Cove greeted us with a very cool wind blowing directly off the Atlantic.. The moon struggled through a persistend haze to light our way. This hindered our pace, as the icy spray from the Atlantic had froze solid to the rocks along the trail. More than once you could hear ahead & behind you, someone's hiking boot taking a slide out from under them. Even Bruce Duffy, trying out his new pressure point hiking sticks fell on his butt, so the rest of us just stepped over top of him , as if nothing happened.

The hiking was slow with difficult footing, time & time again you could hear the crunching of tall blades of dead icy grass, as a hiker had to scamper off an icy rock to safety.

Finally we reached a gultch , out of the wind along side a quiet slow flowing brook. We nestled down alongside of Viking's fire, and enjoyed roasting hot dogs, drinking hot chocolate, tea & eating cookies, as we waited for the other group to catch up, for Norm had the Marshmallows. However they had made camp some distance behind us. Were quite sure Norm had a lot to do with talking four girls into that idea.

We must have stayed for forty minutes or more, before putting out the fire, using the brook close by as our water bombing source. We picked up our gear and placed it into our packs, and headed off back to the trailhead. We broke up into two groups, the first group seemed to be more comforable going accross the icy rocks, an were completely out of site within minutes

I followed along behind Ross, step for step, Ross replied back that , that was not a good idea, indicating that he has stumpled a few times on these night hikes, can you believe that? Soon we came accross the scent of smoke that drifted lazying accross our way. We assumed it was the remains of the other groups campsite. Knowing now that everyone was ahead of us, we picked up the pace a bit. We caught up to everyone on the dirt road that led to our cars. We were back in our cars & on our way hime at 10PM,

Another great time spent with good friends to remember later. Four times now, Duncan's Cove has greated us with great weather. That can't last forever.

Merry Christmas Everyone.

Wayne.