The day before, Colin and I took Jan and Matt on a 10km walk in Crippen Park, including visiting the fish ladder and doing a loop around Killarney Lake-- which was now thawing and sported a "thin ice" sign.
The rain managed to hold off for us that day. That good fortune would not repeat on this day. ;)
We decided to check out the Quarry Park and Fairy Fen.
"Fairy Fen is described by biologists as one of the most undisturbed, biologically diverse, and ecologically rare fens in southern British Columbia (a fen is a wetland fed by ground or surface water and is neutral or alkaline in its chemistry, supporting a high diversity of plant and animal species). Fairy Fen protects unique plants, such as Labrador Tea, bog St. John’s-wort, bog cranberry, and a wide variety of sedges and mosses." (source)
According to a report made for the Island Trust, the Fairy Fen nature reserve contains 9 types of ecosystems, 69 plant species, and 42 animal species. "Most of the Reserve is covered in a mature second-growth coniferous forest of Western hemlock, Douglas-fir and western redcedar, with smaller areas of mixed forest including red alder and bigleaf maple."
I looked at the bowentrails.ca and planned for about an hour's hike. Bowentrails estimated 90 mins, and gave an elevation change of 150 m. We ended up doing ALMOST exactly the route shown on this map, even though I didn't find this map until after the hike. It ended up taking us closer to 2 hours to complete. According to a report made for the Island Trust, the Fairy Fen nature reserve contains 9 types of ecosystems, 69 plant species, and 42 animal species. "Most of the Reserve is covered in a mature second-growth coniferous forest of Western hemlock, Douglas-fir and western redcedar, with smaller areas of mixed forest including red alder and bigleaf maple."
Before we left, I took a screen shot of the big bowentrails.ca Quarry Park PDF map on my phone, and boy oh boy I was so glad I did!!
Google maps was of no use, as it didn't show any trails at all in the area -- none, not one, ZERO -- and the few maps posted on the trail signage only offered a limited (and in some cases, barely legible!) view of the park. (Just curious, but why draw a green trail on a green map? Seriously!)
We parked at the parking lot between Quarry Park and Headwaters Park. A large wooden sign marked the entrance off of Cowan Point Dr. It was just past a cross walk.
We could see park signage at the other end of the parking lot. It contained the map I was complaining about above.
Right past the signage with the map, there was a fork in the trail. There were no trail names anywhere, which would have been useful. We decided to take the right-hand trail, because it looked more "official." It turned out to be the "blue trail" shown on the bowenmaps PDF.
It zigzagged downhill on a wide level gravel path. One decent-sized tree was down on the path, but it was easy to walk around it.
At the bottom of the incline, we walked through a hallway of Alder.
We reached a junction, where the trail split around a pond. The path that led off to the right looked familiar (see below), but the one on the left had a bench and looked much more established, so we took the left-hand trail.
Standing there at the junction, while Colin and Jan continued on to my left, I stared at the right-hand path, trying to figure out why it looked so familiar. I thought I might have been there long ago with Betty. But I remembered THAT park being MUCH smaller...? But it was long ago, so maybe it WAS smaller then??
According to the brochure published by the Bowen Island Parks & Rec, the park had opened in 2005. I had started teaching workshops on Bowen (and thus visiting the island) in 2006. So indeed, the park could have been incomplete when I first visited it.
At the time of starting writing this blog post, I had a URL saved for the brochure, but by the time I went to publish, it was defunct. Luckily I took a screenshot of it at the time! It also included a great map of Quarry Park...
... which I just located in color HERE! :D
Quarry Park itself was only 20 acres, and the route we were taking actually took us outside of the park boundaries and through a "road right-of-way" easement on private land, into the adjacent 395-acre crown land, and the 44-acre nature reserve of Fairy Fen.
Unfortunately, both of the above maps ended at the Crown Land boundary, so if one wants to walk to Fairy Fen, one needs to refer to the bowentrails.ca maps.
Based on the bowentrails.ca Quarry Park PDF map, it appears we left the blue trail at that thought-provoking junction, and continued on the red trail to the next junction. This section was the small deviation that we took from the other bowentrails PDF map route. Apparently, that route took the right-hand trail around the pond instead.
We reached the Winter Waterfall, marked in the brochure map. A tree had fallen onto the stepping stones. Colin cleared it and we walked across the waterfall's feeder stream.
The waterfall itself fell off to the right of the trail, towards the pond.
We passed a large stone circle with monoliths in the centre. For some reason, this is the best photograph of it that I took. You can barely make it out, beside the bright colors of Colin and Jan. :/
Immediately past that, there was another set of posts, designed to stop cyclists and other vehicles from passing into the "pedestrian only" portion of the trail. On the other side of that, a trail split off to the left, and hairpined back the way we had come. If we had taken that trail, we would have ended up back at the parking lot. So we continued onward.
Here is the smaller end of the pond, to the left of the bridge.
Looking back at the pond, on the right.
On the other side of the bridge was a junction, where our trail met up again with the trail that had gone around the pond on the other side (the "blue trail" on the map). That's the trail with the "pedestrians only" gate, on the far right.
The other two trails at that junction formed a loop that circled Bob's Knob. Just then, a very wet cyclist passed by. We exchanged friendly waves, then took the right-hand trail, immediately to the left of the trail with the gate, and headed up the hill.
After about 250 m, we hit pavement again. We had arrived at the turnoff for the Bob's Knob viewpoint.
An extremely colorful gate blocked the route from vehicles. A Park's trail sign pointed the way. However, we didn't go up there on this day. If you want a sneak peak, here it is!
The pavement was actually Royal View Pl, which exited back onto Cowan Point Rd. However, the trail was almost directly across the pavement (the grassy trail to the left of the road), marked with a trail post and arrow.
The views along that short little trail were quite cool. Mountains rose up to the right in the mists. I couldn't capture it very well, but it was stunning.
The trail ran alongside the road a while, then ended in a cul-de-sac: the end of Thompson Rd.
At the cul-de-sac sat a very obvious green sign, reading "Trail to Fairy Fen Nature Reserve."
I read online that "Fairy Fen Nature Reserve was formerly Crown Land, transferred by the province to the Islands Trust Fund to protect its remarkable biodiversity." It was then managed by the Bowen Island Conservancy, as noted on the sign.
The history of the land is quite interesting:
"Fairy Fen has never been owned privately... [although] characteristic spring-board cuts, evidence of historical logging in the late 1800s and early 1900s. In the late 1980s, Fairy Fen was identified as a preferred site for the creation of a water reservoir to serve a proposed residential and golf course development on Bowen Island. The proposed dams would have flooded the fen, destroying the unique ecosystem forever. After the development project was withdrawn in the early 1990s, conservationists on the island rallied together to protect the fen. A wetland inventory of the island in 2002 recommended the fen be permanently protected because it was one of the most undisturbed, biologically diverse fens in B.C."
Two trails led away from the big green sign.
We took the one to the right, closest to the sign. We were really unsure where the other trail led, or whether it was a private driveway or some other kind of service road.
Soon we rejoined the other trail, and we laughed that it didn't matter which one we took from the sign. However, then they diverged again, and we still don't know where the other one led.
The trail we were on was lovely, as it meandered through the forest.
I saw a small trail leading down to what looked like a pond! There was a sign in the shadows by the water's edge. I ran down to look while the others waited. It said, "no trespassing." With a shrug, I rejoined the others on the main trail.
There was a lot of variety of greenery, incl Holly, hemlock, cedar, fir, salal, and of course ferns. This stump started our journey into the marvellous world of fungi, which was abundant on this hike. The shelf fungus on it looked like a hat! (BTW, please don't eat any of the mushrooms!!)
This tree looked like its "legs" were up in the air, as it laid on its back.
We reached a set of signs. One said "Fairy Fen" and pointed to the right. The other said "Quarry Park" and pointed to the left.
After that turn, there was practically no more underbrush. It was quite a remarkable difference from the earlier trail. We were also heading downhill quite a lot.
I saw another cool fungus that looked like a pastry.
Another set of signs pointed us left to "Fairy Fen," and straight ahead to "Cape Roger Curtis." Well, THAT was interesting!! The bowentrails.ca PDF map didn't show that one could get to the Cape from here! There must be more trails in there that I could explore later! Woohoo!!
Reading about Fairy Fen on the Bowen Island Conservancy website, it confirmed that "Fairy Fen will be a critical link in Bowen Island’s “Cove to Cape Greenway”." Looking at the bowentrails.ca interactive main map, I could indeed see the extended trail leading to the Cape. It joined the Cape Dr "circle" on its right (east) side.
We walked a little farther, and saw another small sign on a tree.
There were a few trees downed in this area, but those on the path were easily surmountable.
Apparently, “It has taken nearly twelve thousand years to create the peat layer that now stands three meters over the lake that once stood here at Fairy Fen." Hmmm... This tiny pond really didn't seem like a peaty bog. (note to reader: It wasn't. It would take my next trip in to find the actual fen proper.)
The trail was supposed to continue, and lead through Fairy Fen lands to "Crownlandia" aka the Crown land of the other part of the larger park system, but we couldn't figure out where that trail would be. On the bowentrails.ca map, the trails crossing through Fairy Fen to Crownlandia were marked in blue, meaning "deer trails," so they could have been near invisible to the uninitiated.
We wondered whether this fallen tree was blocking the path onward, but when I tried to look past it, I saw nothing promising.
So we ate our granola bars, and began the big climb back up. I noticed that the trail had several spots where it looked like it had flooded out at times (sorry, no photo of this).
Another cool shelf fungus. This one looked like a muppet's mouth to me.
These were pretty too.
After a while, I noticed several colorful posts with numbers on them: 9, 7, 6... Some were right on our trail and others were off in the woods, with no obvious trail leading to or away from them. I had no idea what these were. Perhaps they marked the various deer trails? But then, why did the deer trails get better markings than many of the other trails? A mystery!
The last of them had a sign on a nearby tree, pointing to Thompson Rd, off to the left. But we wanted to go to the right, to complete the loop around Bob's Knob.
We followed the arrow towards Quarry Park.
After the sign for quarry park, the trail got rougher and rougher...
At one point, a very large tree had fallen across the path and blocked it. We climbed over it, getting a little wet and dirty in the process.
I worried that if the trail got any more uneven, Jan might have trouble navigating it, even with her walking poles!
Then we ducked through a veil of hemlock, and boom, we were in a different forest!!
A different stone circle appeared before us. I loved how it formed a giant taiji ("ying-yang") symbol with the path.
The pond appeared ahead of us, down below. We could hear a lot of splashing. I could barely make out a big dog swimming in the pond!!
By the big rock, we turned right to head back to the bridge.
From a distance, it looked like the bridge was encapsulated by an umbrella of alders.
Jan and Colin stopped on the bridge. When I caught up, I could see they were watching the dog having lots of fun in the water, while his owner looked on. We exchanged friendly "hellos."
We headed back towards the parking lot.
At the "pedestrians only" gate, instead of passing through it to go back the way we had originally come, we took the other trail, to the right before the gate.
That trail was covered in rivulets. Our footsteps sunk into the earth with each step.
A large tree lay at the side of the trail, obviously a recent fall.
At the top of the hill, we merged with another trail, and we were soon back at the parking lot.
So Jan and I stood in the rain, directing Colin onto patches of bare ground.
Finally safe in the warm dry interior of the vehicle, we stopped at Alderwood Farm on way home. We bought some bacon and Jan bought some local artisanal ketchup.
Afterwards, Jan and I had a little snack and worked on the puzzle Colin and I had bought over Christmas.
The coloured posts with numbers on them are Disc Golf markers, though who put them in the park remains a mystery.
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