You Are Here: Welton Falls Trail South

Welton Falls Trail in the Cardigan Backcountry had been closed due to a change in land ownership, however a group of trail maintainers in the area have reconstructed the trail on new land and broken it effectively into a Welton Falls Trail North and South, connected by a merge with the Elwell Trail. I decided to explore the new South Trail today. We're still in a heat wave and the bugs are still insufferable. Both of these factors unfortunately made the overall experience less than ideal, but I still got it done and was grateful to be outdoors. Identifying the trail is the biggest hurdle at the moment. There are no signs on the street, so without prior knowledge you'd never even know the trail is there. The trailhead is on private land at 420 Welton Falls Road. Parking is on their right of way/driveway. There is room for a couple of cars without blocking the road. Continue down the right of way staying straight when their driveway goes left. Cross a little bridge and there is a sign for Welton Falls Trail South and an arrow pointing diagonally left. I had a pre-downloaded track just in case, and I was happy about that at this point, otherwise I likely wouldn't have found the trail. The road heads around to the right. The description I had said cross a clearing on the left here. There was an area with no trees, a trailer and a pigpen with several large and loud pigs. The grass here was also very tall, waist high for me at least, and there did not appear to be any sign of a path across. Per the track I had though, this was the trail, so I sort of just went for it. Luckily, at the point at which I started to cross, once in the grass, a very, very faint path could be identified, so I followed that and about halfway across I looked up and saw a yellow blaze on a tree on the far side. Confident I was heading in the right direction now, I continued.. let me say, crossing that "clearing" was a real pain. The ground was uneven but you couldn't see through the grass to be sure on what you were stepping.. I couldn't tell if the ground was wet or muddy, which it was a couple times.. it was also thorny and had long strands that kept tripping me up like they were grabbing at my ankles! At the trees, an old road opened up, and the trail followed this for the first 0.7 miles. It was much nicer being on a wide road, though this is where the bugs kicked in, so the bug net came out. At 0.7 miles, cross a road and continue on trail into the woods. The trail was really well marked, and was easy to follow. It climbed, rather steeply at times through a variety of terrain. Sometimes it was rocky and rooty, sometimes lovely pine needle path and there was even one very short bouldery section. The trail crossed several old roads/maybe snowmobile trails, so keep an eye on the blazes. If you stop seeing the yellow markings, back up and figure where you went wrong. This happened to me once. I got caught up following a road section and didn't catch that the trail veered off into the woods. So keep an eye on those blazes, and you'll be fine. It felt steeper than the 700ft of gain or so sounds. And I found in some places, the steepness was sideways, rather than front/back which my ankles didn't really like at all. I imagine as the trail becomes more traveled this sort of thing may wear in some and be a little less severe like that. At about 1.2 miles, the trail briefly merges with Gove Road, which was nice and open and surprisingly had a lovely view across to Cardigan and Firescrew. Back into the woods, the trail continues to climb before popping out again on another old road/snowmobile trail, which I was not expecting and stays on this until the intersection with Elwell Trail. This section was also rather uneven and I lost count of the times I rolled my ankles! What seemed to take a long time to climb up to my turnaround point, although only 1.8 miles was much quicker/easier to descend and I was down in no time.

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