McKenzie Byte to Durrance Lake hike

Hi folks,

This first hike of the Victoria Small Dog Hiking Group is a bit of a test to see what level of hiking our group should do. I'll greatly appreciate your feedback as to whether the distance, difficulty, and duration were right for you.

Our walk starts at the Mount Work Regional Park - Ross Durrance Road Parking Lot. If you know your hiking trails, you'll know this as the parking lot next to the McKenzie Bight Trailhead. See driving directions at the end of this event description, and in the How To Find Us section of the event page.

We'll head out on the "Regional Trail", which is a wide slightly uphill fire road. The footing is mostly gravel and hard-packed forest-like trail. We're in the woods here, but the road/trail is wide enough to let the sun shine down. This part of the route goes for about 1.1 km.

After that, there's a dodgy bit of trail that takes us down to Willis Pt Rd. It's downhill, and if memory serves, the footing is a bit loose, but it's only about 200m, so not a big deal.

After we've crossed Willis Pt Rd, the real fun begins. The "Testament Trail" is an unsanctioned singletrack T1 hiking trail (using the SAC Hiking Scale) that snakes its way through the bush to the East end of Durrance Lake. It's about 1.1 km long and it's easy to get lost because sometimes the trail is hard to make out. There's lots of different footing in here and you may have to step over fallen tree limbs so be prepared.

Next, we hit the South side of Durrance Lake. The trail here is knarly. Lots of roots and rocks, twists and turns, ups and downs, it's great! I love it, and so does Tidbit! This carries on for about 1 km and brings us out on Durrance Close, the short road leading from Willis Pt Rd to the Durrance Lake parking lot.

Now we get a bit of a break. A nice flat section along the North side of Durrance Lake. This is an old Ranger road that is wide and easy. It's where folks come to fish and swim in Durrance Lake. It moseys along for about 800m.

That will bring us back to the Testament Trail, and yes, we're going to use it to head back. When we get back to Willis Pt Rd, there's a short uphill section that we need to navigate to get us up to...

...the Northwest Passage Trail. This very cool singletrack TI trail is on the side of a hill and runs parallel to the fire road we took on the way out. I wish it was longer, but it's only about 900m. It hooks up with the fire road, and then we head downhill the remaining 300m to get back to the parking lot.

All in all, it's a 6.6 km hike which I estimate will take us about 1.5 hours to complete. Your dogs can be off-leash for most of this walk.

I will follow up this post with correspondence to everyone regarding what you should bring for this walk, and some notable differences between the Victoria Small Dog Hiking Group and the Victoria Small Dog Walk and Play Group.

How to find us:
Take W. Saanich Road to Wallace Road. Go 500m on Wallace Road to Willis Point Road. Go 3.9 km on Willis Point Road to Ross Durrance Road. Turn left and go 270m on Ross Durrance Road to parking lot.