The Coal Creek Disc Golf Course in Cumberland, Comox Valley is well worth visiting

By Keith and Heather Nicol

    To say that we are newbies to disc golf is a understatement.  We bought a couple of discs from The Blue Toque (https://bluetoquesports.com/) on Sunday, tried the Lake Trail course in Courtenay on Monday and the Coal Creek course in Cumberland on Tuesday, Sept 29.  The Cumberland course is located near the Chinatown walking trail and there is ample parking at either the parking lot below Comox Lake Road or in front of Jumbo’s log cabin. The Cumberland course is nicely laid out with good signage and although it is likely the hardest course in the Comox Valley even new comers like us really enjoyed it.  There is a nice variety of open shots where you can really let fly to tight woods where accuracy is paramount.  At the start we ran into a group of 4 that were obviously knew the course well and we asked them if there were any problems finding the “holes”.  They told us that the only one to watch for was #16 where you need to walk down the hill to the tee off pad. 

 

                                                  The back nine has traditional baskets to aim at   

 The first nine the targets are tonals (basically a pole in the ground) that you try to hit to finish the hole and the back nine has the traditional baskets that most courses use.  The distances range from 138 feet to a whooping 387 feet on hole 17. The upside of that one is that you are now back into the open area at the finish so trees are not much of an issue. The 17 th hole is the place to uncork that long shot if you have it. Needless to say we don’t have the long shot down yet and I struggled to get a 5 on that one.  But we got lots of pars on the other holes which makes this a much easier sport than real golf where after 2 days you are not likely to be getting many pars. We will definitely be back to this course since it is especially nice this time of year with the leaves changing colour. 

 

                                       Heather getting ready to try to thread the needle down the alley of trees    

 With Covid 19 not showing any signs of slowing down, any activities that get us outside and having fun are worth investigating.  Like regular golf which has shown a real resurgence during the pandemic , disc golf is undergoing the same surge of interest.  Our next course we plan to try is the one in Comox. For information on these courses see: www.cvdiscgolf.com

 

                                Each hole has a map to where the hole is located at the tee off pad

Trying out the Lake Trail Disc Golf course in the Comox Valley

By Keith and Heather Nicol

We had been hearing about the disc golf courses in the Comox Valley  recently so we decided that with Covid 19 sticking around we needed to find some new activities to enjoy outside. A quick look at the Comox Valley Disc Golf web site indicated 4 courses in the area so we bought a couple of discs each at The Blue Toque (https://bluetoquesports.com/). We started our intro to disc golf with the course near Lake Trail school. This is evidently a new course completed last year and by reading some of the on line comments we figured out that the biggest issue was with lack of signage so we made sure we asked some people at the start what the course layout was like which was a good idea. We would never have found hole number 4 for instance without this guidance.  Be prepared to ask some questions at the start if you see people heading out or ideally go with someone who has played the course to show you the way. The key thing to note is that the tee area is marked by a angled stump with the hole number on it. 

  

                                                         Heather tossing her yellow disc into the "hole"

     However once on the course we really enjoyed it  since it has some elevation changes and some holes cross Arden Creek which is a nice scenic attraction.  Since we are new to the sport we thought that another advantages of this course was its relatively short layout and reasonably open understory which means finding an errant disc is pretty easy.   The course currently has 12 holes and we are not sure if another 6 holes are planned to make it a full 18. One option for people who find some of the steep creek banks abit difficult to traverse is that they could complete holes 1 through 6 and then do 10, 11 and 12 which follow nicely from hole 6. This avoids dropping down and coming back up some slopes which could be slippery in wetter conditions.  This course is right next to the old Trail Bicycles store next to Lake Trail school. There is parking for several cars at the start.  We will definitely be back since we now know the course layout. 

 

                                                                          Walking across Arden Creek          

                                                                            Keith "teeing" off on hole 6.

Hiking to scenic Croteau Lake in Strathcona Provincial Park

By Keith and Heather Nicol

     A couple of weeks ago we did the popular Lake Helen Mackenzie to Battleship Lake hiking loop in Strathcona Park with our daughter and her boyfriend. This is a scenic 10 km hike that we highly recommend ( for more info see our blog post: http://keithnicol.blogspot.com/2020/08/hiking-lake-helen-mackenzie-battleship.html).  On Saturday Sept. 12 a ski buddy Steve and his wife Marj wanted to show us a shorter route to Battleship Lake and then on to Croteau Lake. With smoky skies in Courtenay and air quality alerts due to forest fires to the south of us we were having second thoughts about doing 10 plus km hike to Croteau Lake. But then we looked at the Mt Washington web cams and saw that it was sunny and bright at those higher elevations and decided that the air quality was likely much better up there.  It often pays to check these web cams before heading up to Mt Washington since often the weather is quite different between the Comox Valley and the higher elevations of Mt Washington and adjacent Strathcona Park. 

Steve walking next to Battleship Lake

 And sure enough as we drove up toward Mt Washington and gained elevation the skies continued to clear and the air quality continued to improve. We parked the car along the access road to Raven Lodge and located the “short cut” trail to the Paradise Meadows boardwalk which leads to the Battleship and Croteau Lake trail. We will provide the exact GPS location of this trailhead once we get the exact coordinates. It appears that this short cut saves about 1 km of walking on boardwalk and so will save about 20 minutes of hiking time (1 way) walking to Battleship Lake or other destinations like Croteau Lake.  This meant that we arrived at Croteau Lake in 1 hour and 40 minutes to cover the 5.1 km distance. 

A camper at Croteau Lake

 Enroute the trail passes by Battleship Lake other scenic lakes like Kooso and Lady Lake before climbing to Croteau lake. The trail is in good shape with some roots and rocks to contend with in places. Croteau Lake is home to a large camp site and we ate lunch on one of the unoccupied tent platforms. The lake faces Mt Albert Edward which means that campers have a picturesque backdrop for their overnight experience. We could have continued on to Kwai Lake but we opted to return via the same route we hiked in on. Croteau Lake makes a fine 10.2 km outing and is suited to a wide range of hikers since the trail is in good shape. For more information see:  http://bcparks.ca/explore/parkpgs/strath/ 

Croteau Lake with the peak of Albert Edward in the distance

A late season swim at Nymph Falls

By Keith and Heather Nicol

Heather swimming in one of the potholes

Nymph Falls Nature Park is a gem of spot for walking, biking and especially swimming in the  summer. It is located just out of Courtenay on the Forbidden Plateau Road and a short 500 meter trail takes you from the parking lot to scenic Nymph Falls. Here there are exposed flattish rocks which are popular places to layout a towel and lots of pools carved out of the rock to swim in. We usually get there a couple of times a summer but this year we hadn’t been for a dip so when the temperatures on Friday, September 11 were close to 25 C we decided to head there for a swim. Many other people had the same idea and when we got there we got the last parking spot in the large parking area. The water was certainly refreshing and we brought a swim mask and snorkel to see if there were any fish in the water. We saw some very small fish but nothing like the large numbers of big salmon we had seen earlier at Puntledge Park.  If we get another warm day you might want to check this place out for a dip since it is so scenic. 

Heather enjoying the sun on the rocks at Nymph Falls

Lots to see while sea kayaking at Point Holmes

by Keith and Heather Nicol

    Sea kayaks are great vessels for observing wildlife from seals to whales and they are also ideal for observing shorebirds, ducks and other birds. One of our favourite places to paddle is at Point Holmes since it offers ready access to scenic paddling and a variety of shorelines from sandy beaches to rocky headlands. With the sunny, warm weather of late we have been sea kayaking on a few occasions and our most recent outing to Pt Holmes was on September 8 and we weren’t disappointed. We almost always head around Cape Lazo toward Kye Bay since this is where you tend to get the best bird and marine mammal sitings.

Heather paddles past a seal sitting on a rock at water level

 On this day we were pleased to see so much variety from many seals on rocks that for some reason let us get quite close. Often seals will haul out on the many offshore boulders in this area but we have never seen 8 seals piled onto one rock like we saw on this outing. We also saw a rock with many cormorants on it which are birds we haven’t see here that much lately. There were a few harlequin ducks in the rocky area around Cape Lazo and of course loads of gulls.

2 seals watch us paddle by

We went a tide of around 3.5 meters and this meant that many rocks were exposed which gave places for birds and seals to perch on. Another bonus of paddling at Point Holmes is the fact that the boat launch has a web cam that lets you see what the tide and wave conditions are along the shore. It can be viewed at: http://www.pointholmesrecreation.ca/rampcam/. It is always interesting to see the variety of birds and other wildlife in this area and we look forward to our next kayak trip to Point Holmes.

Heather checks out a rock covered in cormorants