Mt. Prevost

~ submitted by Mary Hof

March 23, 2019

Leading a hike is the easy part. Answering all the emails for weeks before, keeping track of the cancelations and additions, figuring out car-pooling, waivers forms, etc… are the hard things lol.

Fifteen hikers came out to the Mt Prevost Hike on March 23. We had 8 members and quite a few potential members. For me it is always a delight to lead, I enjoy meeting new people, and share our mountains with new people.

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Mount Tzouhalem

~ submitted by Mary Hof

January 13, 2019

16 hikers, 2 were members of the Ramblers and 2 were interested in us. The rest were Cowichan hikers, and with the beautiful weather and the route I choose, many wanted to join in. The hike was only 10k but had many view spots and was a wonderful day to be out. Thanks to all who joined.

Mt Tzouhalem Traverse

~submitted by Mary Hof

December 30, 2018

Six of us met at Providence Farm for a short car shuttle for our hike across the Tzouhalem ridge. Started with winter jackets but soon we were just down to shirts.  The views were beautiful, not many trees down, and the company great. Three were members and three were from my hiking club from Cowichan.  A wonderful day to be out.

Heather Mountain Hustle

–submitted by Matthew Lettington; originally published on explorington.com

When the weather turned to crap on October 28th, we abandoned our plan to summit Steven Peak in the Tlupana Range and turned our eyes to something much closer to home: Heather Mountain.

You may be surprised to read that I haven’t done this common south island hike, but the long logging road approach never really appealed to me, when there are so many other objectives on our list that don’t require 15 kilometres of walking on hard, unaesthetic logging road. However, earlier that week, I caught wind that the gate might be open and sent Phil a message about the possibility. Rather than walk through the downpour of rain on an unknown route on an unfamiliar mountain, we decided to make an easy day of it.

hiking to Heather Mountain on Vancouver Island
an idyllic mountain scene

We got lucky! Indeed, we did find the gate unlocked. Even better, we found that a kind soul had brushed out the upper sections of the old logging road, creating what I’ll refer to as an ATV track to the end of the road.

Total Distance: 4.8km
Starting Elevation: 1053 Em
Maximum Elevation: 1346 m
Total Elevation Gain: 392 m
Total Time: 2h 12 m


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Maple Mountain

~submitted by Karen Armitage

May 5, 2018

Five hikers converged at 9:00 am at the Crofton trailhead, and were quickly underway along the blue trail. We worked our way along the well-marked trail, enjoying the ferns, arbutus and oak trees along the way. Camas lily were blooming on the rocky headlands. Throughout the day, we encountered several other hikers, with and without dogs. We passed the first pink trail junction and continued to the second, gradually gaining some elevation. Once we started up the pink trail, we climbed more steadily, motivated by the thought of enjoying lunch at the top.

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Mt. Prevost

~ submitted by Mary Hof

April 21, 2018

The hike to Mt Prevost April 21 was great. I combined this hike with the Outdoor Club of Victoria, when I saw that so many were signing up, (but I didn’t want to say no to anyone). I asked Ray Billings to help out and it worked out great.

We had 19 people and we split the group.

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