Checking out the beach access at Eagles Drive Park

 
By Keith and Heather Nicol

With the great weather continuing in the Comox Valley (setting records on several days for warm temperatures) we decided to check out a beach access that we had not been to before. It was very warm on Saturday, April 17 so we decided to head down in the afternoon since we thought there might be a cool breeze off the ocean.  Eagles  Drive Park is located north of Courtenay and it located off of Left Road. Toward the end of Left Road take Eagles Drive (also on your left) and continue to a small parking lot that is sign posted- Eagles Drive Park. For those handy with a GPS the coordinates of the parking lot are: 49 47.970 N and 125 00.905 W and there is room for about 4 cars.

There is a short wooded trail of about a 250 meters which winds to the beach and there a recently built set of stairs (77 in all) part way along the trail. The photo above shows Heather at the top of the stairs with the beach and the water in the distance. Once at the shoreline it is the typical rocky shoreline of this area but it does have some tide pools which could be explored at low tide. We walked for about 500 meters along the shoreline to the north and walking along the high tide line was reasonably good on a surface of mixed small gravels. Further out as you can see in the photo below the boulders are larger and less suited to walking very far on. The views across the water to the snow capped mountains of the BC mainland are very scenic this time of year and we did run in to one group of beach walkers that had done a loop walking from Eagles Drive Park to Brian and Sarah McLoughlin Park then down to the shoreline and back along the water to Eagles Drive Park. They said they love this area since it is usually not very crowded which is good to know. If you want more info on this Comox Valley Regional District Park check out this web site- https://www.comoxvalleyrd.ca/parks-recreation/comox-valley-parks-trails/eagles-drive-park.