We decided to take advantage of another bright sunny day to climb up to the viewpoint over Nanoose Bay on Notch Hill. Afterwards we went over to the very small Beachcomber Regional Park to have lunch by the ocean.
The trail loops to a lower lookout and then the summit and is only about 3 km but there were no flat spots.
There were good trail maps at all the junctions. I drew our clockwise path in red on a picture of one of the maps.
It was a steep, steady climb up about 500 vertical feet. It is called Notch Hill because there are really two summits with a valley in between so after we got to the first viewpoint we had to go down and back up to get to the second. After yesterday, there was a lot of huffing and puffing.
You walk up an access road to these water tanks.
The hill is covered in the twisted Gary Oaks and Arbutus trees.
It may look like the camera was tilted for this picture but no.
It was hot in the sun so the jackets quickly came off.
The viewpoints are open meadows with fairly unobstructed views down to Nanoose Bay.
It was a bit hazy but we still could easily see the snow covered mountains in the distance.
Jennie needed some shade.
There were some lines of floats in the bay for what I assume is shellfish farming.
It is so much easier taking a photosphere when you are not spinning around on top of a slippery narrow rock, trying not to fall into a roaring creek.
Notch Hill Lookout Photosphere
Down into the notch.
And back up with lots of twisty trees to look at.
As we did start back up, we noticed some little treasures at the bottom of some trees.
Wow, a short flat spot.
Not for long.
Now it was a ghost.
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Another great view from what we thought was the summit.
Almost but not quite.
Now an owl.
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This was the summit.
An owl on the tree to the right, above.
A nice, just a bit too tall, bench for a rest.
This tree had more treasures.
Moving on to another owl. They were so great that I just have to post them all.
From the south of of the summit meadow we got a look out the end of Nanoose Bay.
Starting down.
The last of the treasures, that we found.
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Heading back to the car.
We had been going to have lunch at the top but we had a late breakfast and just weren’t hungry.
I had read a bit about Beachcomber Regional Park. It is really tiny but with that name I hoped for something interesting. It turned out that there was not that much to beachcomb but it was still a nice place for lunch.
The park is just this bit of beach.
And this small patch of forest with the rocks in front. It was hemmed in by what looked like very expensive home all around.
Lunch first.
And then some exploring.
To be fair it was not even close to low tide.
We were also quite tired from our climb so we only stayed a short while and then headed home.
Great hike and cool owls!!!!
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