by Keith and Heather Nicol
Seal Bay Nature Park
has many walking, biking and horse trails and one section that we decided to
explore on Monday, Sept 11 runs along the ocean. We had not walked on any of
the trails on the north side of the park so decided to access these trails from
Seacliff Road. There is a small parking lot at the end of Seacliff Road (49
46.039 N, 124 58.385 W) and there is a map of the trails mounted at the park
entrance. We walked for 240 meters before turning left, following the
steep trail for 220 meters down to the beach. This section of the trail is well
surfaced with packed dirt and small gravel but once you reach the shore it is
typical beach walking. The views of the
mountains across Georgia Strait are impressive and the beach setting offers
many places to sit and relax. We saw people who had brought their lunch down to
eat on the shore and others that we simply out to enjoy the cooler weather of
fall.
At the high tide
line the beach material is fairly good for walking and includes sand, gravels
and the odd section of cobbles which are harder to walk on. The surface is soft
like much beach walking so although distances along the shore are not long the
sand can be tiring to walk in. For those interested in a shorter section of
shoreline we suggest turning up at the Don Apps trail which is 600 meters down
the shore. This route up is easier than the steep route down since it
switchbacks frequently making the grade easier. The Don Apps trail winds through the tall douglas fir forest which has a lovely sword fern
understory. From here follow the trail to the right to the car park at Seacliff
Road. This makes
a round trip of about 2.2 km which might be fine for families with small
children or others that want a shorter hike.
We decided to
continue walking along the beach for another 550 meters where we noted another
trail access from Seabank Road. To get back to our car though we opted to
simply head back along the beach to the Don Apps trail and up to the car park. This
route was 3.3 km and took us about 1 hour of walking with 15 minutes for a
short rest. We hiked this route at a
tide of 3 meters and note that a couple of trees that block the shoreline might
create problems for getting around them if tides were very high. We want to get
back and check out some of the other Seal Bay Nature Park trails through the fall.
Heather walking along the high tide line with the mountains of the BC mainland behind |
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