Stoney Hill Regional Park

Tuesday, January 30th, dawned sunny and beautiful. A perfect day for a walk in the park. We had made an attempt a week ago to hike Stoney Hill Regional Park but had to turn away because our local Search and Rescue Technicians were doing an exercise in the park and had taken up whatever was left of the parking area. So today was the day for it and when we arrived at the trailhead there was only one car parked up.

The trail has many little rivers running on it.

Stoney Hill Regional Park is located in the Municipality of North Cowichan near Sansum Narrows across from Salt Spring Island. The park has spectacular views of Salt Spring Island and the surrounding area with a scenic approximately 3.2 km return loop trail from the parking lot. A public road leads from Genoa Bay Road to a parking lot and trailhead. The trail is best hiked in the summer months because with all the wet weather we have had there were a lot of muddy and swamped areas. Some barely passable, but we made it the entire way albeit with some difficulty. I got home with two soaked shoes and socks and Shelagh did not fare much better. The hike took us one hour and forty minutes and on a scale of one to ten I give it a difficulty rating of seven. Shelagh suffered quite a bit with her bad knees and only fell down once. She was a real trooper.

Keeping back a bit here, there are no railings.

The draw of the park is the awesome views of Sansum Narrows and Salt Spring Island. With the sun shining the sights were amazing. We are so lucky to have places like this just a few minutes drive from home. Hopefully, over the summer months, there will be significant improvements made to the trail. We highly recommend this park, but make sure you wear good hiking shoes and a walking stick or two would help. Also, if you want to look at something pretty, stop walking first because you will get tripped up! I hope you will enjoy the pictures, I made many stops to take them...

Beautiful arbutus trees.

This little guy was very patient with me.