By Keith and Heather Nicol
Fall is at its peak right now and on Sunday,
October 17 we took advantage of some changeable weather to get in a photogenic
hike at Millard Creek. Millard Creek is located in the southern part of
Courtenay just off of Highway 19A. We parked at Millard Road where there is a
parking lot and several new benches have been built which look out to the Comox
Estuary. The coordinates of the parking lot are: 49 39.916 N, 124 58.284 W. The
trail starts near the parking lot and a real bonus of this trail is that it has
a small brochure with 10 interpretative signs which cover various topics
related to salmon, the old railway that traversed this area as well as
explaining aspects of the vegetation. Look the brochures in a plastic
waterproof holder at near the start of the trail. In the photo below Heather is looking at a sign which dicusses the salmon life cycle - stop #9 in the brochure.
There are numerous big leaf maple in the area and they have showered down lots of leaves along the trail but there are still lots of leaves left on the trees at this point in time. There is a small bridge which fords Millard Creek but we saw no signs of salmon swimming upstream. We saw many people on the trail including a number of families and this trail is also used by cyclists. We walked as far as 31st Street which would offer another starting point for the walk but it only has 4 parking places so can fill up quickly. The walk to this point is almost 1 km so the return trip can be done in 30 -45 minutes. The fall leaves are well worth checking out since with our windy rainy weather of late they won’t last. Thanks to the Millard-Piercy Watershed Stewards and the Rotary Club for putting together the brochure.
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