Pull into the gravel shoulder on Second Line Road on a Saturday morning in late August and the difference from July is obvious before you've laced up. Fewer cars. No line at the trailhead sign. The kind of quiet that makes it easy to forget you're a ten-minute drive from Kanata Centrum. Locals who've spent a few summers on these trails know this particular week. It's the point where South March Highlands finally stops fighting back, and it's also the point where the forest's two very different personalities become worth telling apart.
Most people who've driven past the South March Highlands Conservation Forest sign on Klondike Road assume it's one trail system with one difficulty level. It isn't. Reviewers who've logged real time in the forest describe it plainly: easy trails near the front, harder terrain the deeper you go. That split, combined with a seasonal bug window that's only now closing, is the piece of local knowledge that separates a pleasant Sunday walk from an accidental three-hour scramble.
Four Ways In, Two Different Forests
The City of Ottawa lists the main entry point at the junction of Klondike Road and Second Line Road, with a second access route through the parking lot at the Richcraft Recreation Complex, connected by pathway. Two more entrances exist on the far side of the forest: one off Terry Fox Drive near the CN Renfrew Subdivision railway line, and another just off Huntmar Road. Each puts you somewhere different in a 450-hectare block that stretches from wetland flats to exposed Canadian Shield rock.
The trails closest to the Richcraft Complex and the Klondike entrance tend to be shorter and flatter. The Rockhopper Loop, a 3.6-kilometre route through the forest's beaver ponds and wetland, is a good example. It's the kind of loop you can do before work or with a dog that isn't looking for a workout. The highest-rated route in the system, a roughly 5-kilometre combination of the Klondike, North Dogsled and Beartree trails, sits in this same general character band. It's popular enough to have collected over 2,000 reviews on AllTrails, most of them from people who came for an easy morning and got one.
Head farther back, toward the Terry Fox and Huntmar access points, and the terrain changes. The PWT-Outback Loop runs close to 13 kilometres, the longest continuous route in the forest, and it earns its "moderate" rating with exposed rock face and a remoteness that one trail reviewer described as a genuine "getting lost in the forest" feeling, since it's travelled less often than the front-country loops. This is where the Cannonball and Ridgetop trails connect, where the terrain gets technical, and where a wrong turn actually costs you time rather than just a slightly longer walk back to the car.
None of this is posted on a sign at the trailhead. You learn it by riding or hiking the system enough times to notice that the loops named on the map behave like two separate parks stitched together by a shared boundary.
| Loop | Distance | Difficulty | What You'll Notice |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rockhopper Loop | 3.6 km | Easy | Beaver ponds, wetland views, footbridge crossings |
| Klondike / North Dogsled / Beartree | ~5 km | Easy to moderate | The system's most reviewed and highest-rated route |
| PWT-Outback Loop | ~12.9 km | Moderate | Longest route in the forest, exposed rock, far fewer people |
Why the Long Loops Wait Until Now
The second reason late August matters has nothing to do with terrain and everything to do with bugs. A hiker who's logged multiple visits this season described the early summer trails as rough going, blaming the amount of rain and warmth the region saw, and noted plainly that the mosquito pressure only became manageable once August arrived. That same hiker was holding off on the deeper loops specifically, planning to come back for "longer explorations" once late August and early September rolled around.
That's not a random preference. It lines up with how the forest is built. The front trails wind through the wetland and pond habitat that makes South March Highlands ecologically valuable in the first place, which is also exactly the kind of standing water that keeps mosquito season going longer than the calendar suggests it should. The back-country loops, farther from the ponds and higher on the exposed rock, don't carry the same bug load once the season turns, but they're also long enough that nobody wants to be trapped out there swatting bugs for two hours. Waiting until the front trails have cleared out is, in effect, waiting until the whole system is worth the drive.
The City of Ottawa's own conservation area page adds a second seasonal wrinkle worth knowing before you plan a spring trip instead: sections of the network close during spring thaw and for periodic maintenance, since the same wetland soil that makes the forest interesting also turns to mud fast enough to damage the trail bed. Between thaw closures in spring and bug pressure through midsummer, late August through the fall is genuinely the widest window residents get to use the entire 15.2-kilometre network without a caveat attached.
Volunteer-Built, Which Explains the Rest
The trails themselves are maintained by the Ottawa Mountain Bike Association, a volunteer group responsible for the small footbridges that carry the Rockhopper Loop across its wetland crossings and the boardwalk-style bridges that make the PWT Loop passable through its wetter sections. It's community trail work, not a municipal maintenance contract, which explains both the quality of the bridge construction that reviewers specifically call out and the uneven trail marking that trips up newcomers.
Signage exists at major intersections, but there are no blazes along the routes themselves, and at least one recent visitor noted it was genuinely hard to stay on course once inside the tree cover, particularly once fall foliage changes how the trail reads. If you're heading into the back half of the forest for the first time, the smart move is the one experienced users already make: photograph the posted trail map at the entrance or pull up the Trailforks map for South March Highlands before you're two kilometres past the last junction sign.
What Else Is True Here
The forest sits within Kanata North and is home to species that don't show up on a typical suburban walk, including Blanding's turtle, a species the province tracks as at risk, along with deer, beavers, porcupines, and enough resident herons and songbirds that early morning visits tend to be the most rewarding. Dogs are welcome throughout the system year round, but they need to be on a leash, which matters if your usual route through the wetland sections runs alongside water where turtles nest.
The forest also doesn't shut down when the leaves come off. Cross-country skiing and snowshoeing keep the front trails busy through winter, though the technical back loops become a different kind of challenge once the rock faces ice over.
None of this is a reason to move to Kanata or Stittsville. It's just what's true if you already live within a short drive of a 450-hectare forest most of Ottawa still treats as a rumor. The people who get the most out of it aren't the ones who show up once in July, get eaten alive on an easy loop, and never come back. They're the ones who've learned the forest has a rhythm, and that late August is the two or three weeks a year when both halves of it are finally worth exploring on the same day.
If you're already weighing what's next for your home in Kanata or Stittsville, whether that's finding more space near trails like these or figuring out what your property could bring on today's market, the Zak Green Team has spent years learning this part of Ottawa street by street and trail by trail. Reach out when you're ready to talk through what your next move actually looks like.
