Tag: Hiking

The Historic Kinsol Trestle

Sunday seems to be our go-to day of the week to do some fun adventures. The kids are enrolled in a sports class on Saturday mornings and after a busy work week we like to relax on Saturdays.

This past Sunday we drove to Shawnigan Lake to visit the historic Kinsol Trestle. It is a wooden railway trestle located north of Shawnigan Lake which is about a 45 minute drive from our house. A description on the parks website is:

“The Kinsol Trestle is one of eight trestles along the Cowichan Valley Trail route and by far the largest and most spectacular. The Kinsol Trestle is one of the tallest free-standing and most spectacular timber rail trestle structures in the world. At 614 feet in length and standing 145 feet above the salmon bearing Koksilah River, the Kinsol is an incredible structure and was worth preserving.”

We had to walk along a trail for 1.5km to get to the trestle from the parking area and it was amazing! The views were really pretty with a river down below. There were hiking trails that led to the river and we could see some people swimming in the river. The kids had a tonne of energy and we ran races the whole way to the start of the trestle. We had packed a lunch and snacks and sat at one of the available picnic tables and enjoyed the beautiful day. This was a great spot to take kids.

 

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Goldstream Park

We like to adventure and spend a lot of time outdoors with the kids which is great because Victoria is home to some amazing parks. Goldstream is one of those parks. It is 477 hectares and home to small Garry oak meadows, arbutus, and Douglas fir trees – some more than 600 years old.

On a nice Sunday when we had no other plans we decided to get suited up and go hiking. We packed a lunch and drove to the park which is about 17km from town. It was a hot day so finding refuge in the old growth temperate rain forest was perfect! This park is a popular place for viewing the annual fall chum salmon spawning runs in Goldstream river. It is also popular because there are numerous trails for hiking including a rugged and steep one called Mt. Finlayson trail that goes to the top of Mt. Finlayson. We choose to hike to Niagara falls which was really more of a walk with some minor rock climbing which is a recent favorite past-time of Claire & Rhys’.

Niagara falls is 47.5m high and to reach it you have to walk through a dried up stream bed. In the winter months the stream bed is full of water and the waterfall has so much more water volume. It was still very pretty when we visited. We spent some time there climbing through a rock tunnel and skipping rocks into the water basin at the bottom of the falls. After we had our fill of the falls we walked along some paths towards the nature visitor centre. We found plenty of slugs and other critters along the way that we had to stop and watch things where we had a little picnic lunch amongst the grass reeds at the end of the Saanich Inlet.

It was a great day 🙂

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