Mount Doug Park (PKOLS) walk

The Victoria Small Dog Walk and Play Group gears up for the latter part of the year with an easy-moderate loop through Mt Doug Park (PKOLS).

Meet by the public washrooms building at the Mt Doug Beach Parking Lot (see photo, directions and my map).

If you know Mt Doug Park, then you'll probably recognize the trails we'll be walking: Beach - Whittaker - Irvine - Norn - Glendenning - Maddock - Churchill - and Douglas.

We'll start with a short jaunt up Beach Trail, cross Cordova Bay Road, and take off South on Whittaker Trail. The trail meanders through the forest, roughly adjacent to Cordova Bay Road.

Very quickly, we'll veer off to Irvine Trail, which takes us a bit uphill and further into the forest. All the different trails we'll take are forest trails with rocks, roots, leaves, stumps, and various tree sheddings to navigate.

Irvine takes us to Norn Trail which cruises along gently until it dead-ends at the South end of Whittaker Trail. Now we've reached the leash-optional part of our walk. The Whittaker - Glendenning - Mattock triangle is 1.3 km and starts with a 300m uphill section which takes us to the highest point of our walk. From there, it's all down hill, and off-leash for the next 1 km. Woo hoo!

Our walk continues along Whittaker until we cross Cedar Hill Road and head over to Douglas Creek. We'll do a loop which includes Churchill and Douglas trails and includes one of the really great recent additions to Mt Doug Park - the Douglas Creek Bridge and Outdoor Classroom. In time, we'll find ourselves back where we started at Mt Doug Beach Parking Lot.

This is a 4.2k loop with a total elevation +/- of 110m. I've rated this trail easy/moderate because while the trail is mostly flat, there are a few uphill stretches, although nothing too arduous. Also, as mentioned previously, tree roots cross our path often and so you must be able to navigate those.

While dogs may be off-leash for a portion of our route, they must be kept under control at all times.

The route will be flagged, and hopefully no killjoys will yank my flags out of the ground.