Hiking the trails at Piper's Lagoon in Nanaimo

 by Keith and Heather Nicol

   After checking out Neck Point Park (see blog -  https://keithnicol.blogspot.com/2026/03/exploring-neck-point-park-in-nanaimo.html) earlier in the day (Friday, March 27) we headed down the road a short distance to explore another ocean front park - Piper's Lagoon. This was also enroute to our daughter's drop off point at BC Ferries terminal at Departure Bay and it proved to be another perfect place to do a short walk. 

 Piper's Lagoon Park offers quite a different coastal experience than Neck Point Park and the first section follows a tombolo (a sort of spit) which connects the mainland to a rocky island. This part of the trail has benches and is an easy to walk gravel trail. But once you reach the rocky island the trail becomes much more rugged and anyone with mobility issues will likely want to turn around at this point. But for everyone else the walk around the island is a fun short hike with lots of ocean views to islands and back toward Nanaimo. Looking south you can see the BC Ferries coming in or doing out just a short distance away in Departure Bay and looking north you can actually see back to Neck Point Park. One of the highlights at this time of year were the abundant spring flowers - especially the Fawn Lilies (see picture below) They carpeted the edge of the trail just about the whole way around . The island has many Garry Oak and arbutus trees which are likely due to the dry rocky nature of this location. Over all the trail was about 2 km and took less than 40 minutes. It is is another hidden gem in Nanaimo that we are not sure how we missed for all these years.Check it out.

 

If you go- We used google maps to navigate to the Park- simply put in Piper's Lagoon Park and it will lead to a large parking lot. We also used AllTrails to confirm the trail and it might be useful to download but is certainly not necessary since the trail around the island is easy to follow.