Hiking in BC

I think that the last time I lived in Vancouver I never saw the beautiful green outdoor playground that the city had to offer. I was limited by the 5km radius that my scooter took me and never crossed a bridge unless I had a ride. This time, it's much different.

Gulf Islands

For example, I didn't realize that right beside Vancouver are 200 islands!!! Some are reachable by BC Ferries, others can be reached by canoes and kayaks. We've checked out Bowen Island and Salt Spring Island in the past month. The video above shows a lot of scenes that I *think* is from the Ruckle Park hike in Salt Springs but I bet other islands have the same views and rocks.


Bowen Island
is only a $9.20 roundtrip ride from Horseshoe Bay. And it's only 20 min away! We easiy found a hiking trail when we landed and walked along the Killarney Creek trail to Killarney Lake. Then up to the Mt Gardner trail. We didn't actually get to the top of Mt Gardner because we wanted to catch a ferry back but we did go to the first view point which was an awesome view of the islands.

Salt Spring Island
was a bit further away and only had 1 ferry there in the morning and 1 in the afternoon. In hindsight, taking a car or bikes to this island would make sense, it's much bigger than Bowen Island.

Instead, we took the bus from the ferry terminal to downtown Ganges. There was a farmers market here and restaurants and boats. Then from here there's a bus that takes us 10km from Ruckle Park. Yes you guessed it, we had to walk 10km to get to our camping destination with all of our gear. There were plenty of farms and stands on the side and hitchiking is encouraged but no - we walked. When we got to the entrance of Ruckle Park around 7pm the sign said CAMPSITES FULL. Doh. Well there wasn't any way we'd want to walk back 10km so we continued onwards into the camp grounds. We found a flat patch of grass between campsites and parked our stuff there.

It was by the water, close to the washroom and...free! We hiked along the waterfront looking for a good sunset spot.


The next day we went along the coast of Ruckle Park on a hike to all their view points and beaches. Seriously, I didn't expect this kind of scenery in Canada. We even ran into patches of mussels and oysters on the rocks. The hike was about 10km as it led back into the trees and down to the road. And then, yup, another 10km to get to Gillford to catch a ferry home! So far, this is the most beautiful, quaint hike I've done here. We must have only bumped into 4 people the entire time.