Blog - bike travels & such

Cycle Touring Vancouver Island

This section is my chance to ramble on, to have an ongoing conversation with readers. I'll post updates & photos as I do more rides, get gear worth noting, or come across interesting stuff about cycle touring or bikepacking on Vancouver Island & the Sunshine Coast (and beyond).

See the 'search tags', listed in alpha order down the right side below. Check this list out if you want to find out if there is a post about a location - click on a tag of interest, and any relevant blog post(s) will show along the left.

Climbing season again!

I have a number of local higher elevation rides (~1,000m+) planned this summer now that the snows are mostly all gone, so I need some seasoning. I figured I'd start near home by heading up to Mt Washington (our local ski hill) via a little known back route to the north. I'd found one route up last year (see Courtenay NW), but figured there had to be more. I took Duncan Bay Main NW, past Wolf Lake, where I stopped for a lakeside coffee (above pic). Then past Regan Lake to the

South from Courtenay on the backroads

There's a major inland hinterlands south of Courtenay, stretching down to Horne Lake, between the well travelled east coast, and the north/south oriented Beaufort Range, getting high up into the mid Island. There's no communities, campgrounds or popular lakes to attract people. Not surprisingly, the logging industry has been active, and the backroads network is mostly oriented to haul logs down to the coast. A number of rivers and creeks - Trent, Tsable, Wilfred & Rosewall to