Ausable River Cut Conservation Area
Ausable Bayfield Conseration Authority
9984 Northville Crescent
Lambton Shores, ON N0M 2N0
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The Ausable River Cut Conservation Area, formerly known as the Thedford Conservation Area, is located on Highway 21 just southwest of the Pinery Provincial Park. There are overlapping, looped trails that can be done and are marked very well.
The entire main trail is only 2 kilometres long but there are cut across that allow hikers to only walk portions of the trail. At the beginning you will find an old but clean privy style bathroom.
All trails should be treated with respect and everything you hike in should also be hiked out (this includes dog waste). Bring your camera and leave nature where it is while capturing the memories and beauty of the trail only in photographs.
Most deciduous trees were still bare since we hiked this trail in early April. You can see that it is a mixed forest with coniferous and deciduous trees throughout the conservation area.
I find the bark of some trees so fascinating and enjoy photographing the textures. In order to identify it, I should have taken pictures of the entire tree, the branches and the needles. This was a type of coniferous tree.
Throughout the park we found large swatches of ground covered in Common Periwinkle. Periwinkle, also known as Myrtle, is a non-native, invasive species that will take over a large area if it is left to its own devices. This plant was brought from Europe and has glossy evergreen foliage with blue-violet flowers. Some people are still planting this in their gardens but you might consider some native species that make great groundcovers: Wild Strawberry, Wild Ginger, Bearberry, Mayapple, Bunchberry, Foamflower or Running Euonymus.
Even with two separate books on mushrooms I still find it very difficult to identify some, actually most, mushrooms, or in this case fungi. When attempting to identify them it is important to get all of the information required, which is what I often forget to do while trying to capture an interesting and artistic image. I needed to see the underside of the fungi, I can see that it is growing off the side of deadfall and I have a lot of detail about what it looks like from the top. Knowing the size is also important and isn’t often obvious in a picture. Carry a ruler or something of well known size (perhaps a quarter) can be placed next to the subject to know how large or small it was. I do know that this is a type of Bracket Fungi.
This mushroom is a beautiful colour and a gorgeous specimen. It’s top is round and flat and the stem is attached to a fallen tree trunk. Unfortunately I did not check the underside of the cap to see if it had gills, tubes, teeth, or veins.
It was a beautiful day for a hike and we enjoyed the variety the trail offered. The western and centre parts of the trail were hilly and covered in a mixed forest. The trail was covered in fallen leaves which made a magical rustling sound most of us love to hear.
As we came to the eastern edge of the trail we could see the Ausable River Cut and the dunes of the Pinery and Scout camp. 
Along the river their were mostly shrubs, grasses and coniferous trees. We saw a few ducks and geese on the river but it was a pretty quiet day for wildlife.
If you are staying at the Pinery for some time and need more trails to hike, there are a lot of trails to experience in the Lambton Shores area.
Pinery Provincial Park Trail Map
