Mount Prevost, Duncan, BC

Mount Prevost is just north of Duncan, BC.  We have some friends that live just south of Duncan and it being a lovely spring day they invited us to haul our asses up island and go for a hike.

Sounds good to me!

Wait a minute... It's supposed to be a lovely spring day!

The car definately isn't getting up that road.

And just after the 'parking lot' that we couldn't reach there are two huge stumps in the middle of the path.  I can only guess they are up there to prevent the ATV fanatics from ripping up the area.  Of course they fail.  There is a rough beaten ATV trail just on the other side of these stumps that cuts down through to the parking lot.

There is a cairn at the top of the mountain commemorating the local soldiers that died in the first world war.  It was built in 1929 and what a lot of work it must have been to haul all the materials up there.  At later dates plaques for WWII and the Korean War were also added.

The Cairn can be seen from the foot of the mountain as a thin, white, vertical line.

It looks like there used to be a door on the cairn, but some yahoos have ripped it off and probably used it for firewood.  As a whole the cairn really could use some TLC.  Hopefully some enterprising locals will realize this and mounta  restoration effort.

 

Someone's also commemorated the life of G. Bowie who lived from 1945 until 2002.  Respectfully this isn't scraped into the side of the cairn, but is incised into a rock sitting opposite.

April 6th and the snow is quite deep in some places... I stepped into a drift that gave me a very chilled shin.  Not that perfect day to decide to hike in shorts.  Still... it wasn't cold enough so that I was ready to put on the cycling pants I'd brought with me in case of foul weather.

I suppose we should have expected to have other people sharing the trail with us on a blue sky day.  It seems like there were dozens of cars parked along the road on the last passable stretch.  A group of 2 other cars was parking just after us and they must have run up the trail behind us because they arrived only about 3 minutes after we did.

Of course the view is what people climb up here for and boy is it worth the trek!

A small lake at the foot of the mountain.

Cow bay with it's associated mud flats.

Looking toward Salt Spring Island and Mount Maxwell's distinctive drop off.

Is this a hydro right of way?  It's gotta be.

Despite some rather heavy atmospheric clutter we could see Vancouver from the top of the mountain.
I've traced distance with Google Earth and it appears Vancouver is about 67km from the top of Mount Prevost.

April 4th and we have sun!

Spring seems to be trying to take hold here in Victoria.  I went riding last week and had to take off my log pants due to it being warmer than I'd thought when I started out.  Thankfully I wear my riding shorts underneath or I would have turned a few heads even if only from horror!

Today looks like another fine day in the offing as there is sun and it's still very early.  Hopefully later I can hop on the bike and get a ride in, on this, my extra day off during Easter week.

 

The sun's really bright and it's only 7.30 am.  Last night we had some frost!

 

For some reason this particular racoon has chosen the large pear tree next door as an overnight spot.  Quite often we see it clamoring around up there.  This annoys all the birds in the neighborhood who squawk and flap about so I suppose they've been pestered by egg thieves in the past.  You can tell by the nonchalant visage that my being about 100 feet away presents no problems or concerns.

All the cats are absolutely insistant that they need feeding as soon as one of the humans is awake.  It doesn't matter if it's 3am, if a human gets out of bed it must be breakfast time.  Having 4 cats milling about under one's feet when one isn't fully awake is annoying and dangerous so out they all go until coffee and toast have been had.  Here Kira sits where she can see in the back window and protest her untimely evicition from warm house to frosty out of doors.