Mountain biking in Bear Creek Nature Park near Courtenay, BC

By Keith and Heather Nicol

   We are always on the look out for easy mountain bike trails through the woods and especially along the water if we can find them.  In the Courtenay area we have previously written about cycling along Puntledge River which has a nice trail which follows the Puntledge River from Comox Lake to Nymph Falls (https://keithnicol.blogspot.com/2018/06/mountain-biking-around-puntledge-river.html) .  The biggest river just to the north of us is the Oyster River and it has some nice trails that we just discovered at Bear Creek Nature Park.

At the trailhead

    This park is not well known but offers hikers, bikers, and horseback riders some fine trails which are in part along the Oyster River. We headed there to explore these trails on Saturday, June 15 and found the parking lot empty around 11:00 am (coordinates are 49 51.625 N and 125 09.760 W) .  The park is located near Black Creek on Macaulay Road and watch carefully for the pull in sign since we drove right past it on the first go around.  There is a gate which is easy to walk around and a welcome sign that introduces you to the park. The park isn’t huge at 62.5 hectares but has tons of short trails that are easy riding for the most part by anyone on a mountain bike. 

Cycling along the Oyster River was very scenic

  The main road is gravel as are many of the side roads but lots of the short connecting trails are grassy. The only trails that we found abit too rough for a hard tail bike were the Riverside trail, the River Bench Trail and the Fish Channel Trail. These trails are mostly fine but have some rooty steep sections that we walked. Most of the grassy trails have names like Coho, Steelhead etc and are typically 200-400 meters long. There is a great trail map that you can pick up at the start and numerous sign posts along the way so you can easily stay found.  We had lunch at a shady picnic table overlooking the Oyster river which was idyllic. GPS coordinates for this perfect spot are 49 52.281 N 125 10.210 W.  Overall we cycled about 8.5 km and it took us about 90 minutes with stops for pictures and lunch. We also checked out the Upper bench loop which adds another 1.2 km.  Thanks to the Oyster River Enhancement Society for their role in maintaining trails and you can get more information about the society at:  https://oysterriverenhancement.org/   There is much information about salmon enhancement and what happens related to improving salmon stocks at various places in the park. For more information on the park see: https://www.comoxvalleyrd.ca/parks-recreation/comox-valley-parks-trails/bear-creek-nature-park  . Overall we saw just one family walking on the trails and 2 people on horse back and given that this was a sunny Saturday my guess is that this park is not overrun by people.  The only downside is the steep climb up the hill on the way back to the parking lot.

There are lots of signs at trail intersections - note the grassy trail on the left