Wesley Traverse 17 km | Vancouver Island, BC, Canada

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17km long, spans from one end of Cameron lake to the other. The trail should be hiked starting at Horne mountain side going to the other side because there are some really dry scrambly parts going to up Wesley Mountain that wouldn't be terribly fun to descend. We started at 2pm, with the intent of only doing Wesley Mountain a 3 hour trip up and back to the parking but decided to do the whole traverse. There are 3 landmarks, Wesley Mountain (incredible lake views), Wesley Ridge(incredible ocean inlet views) and the Bench(also incredible lake views).

Everything between Wesley Mountain and Welsey Ridge(Radio Tower) is dense forest, uneventful and tough going. It is about a 4 hour trip between the 2 with virtually nowhere for a helicopter to rescue you if you break a leg. There are 2 routes, a bush trail that has pink ribbons that are really hard to follow and an old atv trail which is far more comfortable to follow and hike on. There is 1 pond in the middle with water as of May 25th which may dissapear in summer.

The big update I'd like to add from all other guides out there, after the big wind storm a few months ago there are 100s of fallen trees in the forest. We had to climb over and under at least 100 massive trees with some of them laying right on the trail making it hard to follow where you should be going. The atv trail is much easier to follow than the bush trail. The bush trail goes all over the place and is longer for sure so start early if you want to do that one and not 2pm like we did haha. We finished at 9pm, around 7 hours total, which includes 1 hour to eat, take photos and give the dogs water.

If you do hike this park a car on each side, the other option is to walk back on the railroad track at the bottom which I've heard takes an hour. Realstically I'd just recommend hiking up to the viewpoints from the closest side skipping the middle section.

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#hiking #vancouverisland #wesleytraverse