The Toquenatch

from Plummer Creek Road to Southview Road (Homestead)

The Toquenatch Valley just feels a little magical...but that may be simply because it's so easy that you can just enjoy the walk.  Southview Road is an important point: this is a major road passable by just about any vehicle and could be considered an easy access point for supplies and evacuation.  

The Toquenatch Trail mostly follows and old logging rail-grade, flat and fairly straight for the most part.  The forest is quite mature now (a good and bad thing really: with maturity comes logging) and it hangs over the trail for the entire length, creating an idyllic but shady stroll through the woods.  If you are looking to make time up, this is one place you can really move along since there are essentially no ups or downs.  Towards the end of trek, the path leads along the edge of a young stand of deciduous trees and then turns into a proper trail winding along the Toquenatch Creek.  Treat the creek with respect: it's a salmon spawning creek.

About 3/4 of the way along the trail going south there is a branch heading west and up, out of the valley.  If you have the time and don't mind a little sweat, this trail is a connector to the small Atrevida loop. The loop is home to some old giant timber, trees that have stood since Vancouver was a British explorer and Europeans were just a myth to the locals.  Worth seeing if you like seeing living history.

Definitely not a "long and winding road" Pretty straight actually

A fall walk-through, leaves coating everything. 

Moss coating everything as the frequent rains give us the rain forest.

In the cool and sleeping fall, the deciduous trees sleep, barren and skeletal but just waiting for the next spring.

 

Bridges over the creeks and tunnels under the fallen logs.  A winding trail where it leaves the old rail grade.

same log, other direction. I had to duck and I am NOT tall.

It just looked cool.  There is a certain wonder in the natural shapes of the forest world. A couple of cousins below....just because I am constantly amazed by the variety of fungi out here on the coast. Putting the "fun" into fungi. Interesting survival hint: the caloric value of mushrooms will never outweigh the probability of being poisoned by those same "shrooms".  

And then there are the giants of the forest. Above is "The Toquenatch" (closing in on Homestead.) and below are "The Brothers" up on the Atrevida loop. It's almost impossible to impart to people how big these trees really are. And old. Really old.  Cutting an Old Growth tree down means killing something that has stood since long before my ancestors decided to leave their coal mines of Wales and see the clean sun without the black pall of ash covering everything. (then, of course, being very stubborn and grumpy Welshmen, they chased the coal seams up by Nanaimo.  All those sink-holes that have turned up in Nanaimo over the years: say "diolch" to my forefathers)

Still up on Atrevida.  Big. Oh so big.

Finally we reach the falls on the Toquenatch.  There is a bridge here that leads across the creek and up onto an access directly off of Southview Road.  It's a temptation to cross the bridge, but that would be going the wrong way. Stay west of the creek and continue south.  Again: salmon live and spawn here, so respect the creek.

A boardwalk towards the end of the trail, near Homestead.

The trail eventually ends at Southview Road, just suddenly burping out onto the gravel.  The through hiker will then turn east and meander down the road for about 100 yards, crossing the bridge (over the Toquenatch) and reaching a T-intersection.  "Homestead" is the small clearing just down the secondary road another 100 yards. There is an outhouse there (of dubious quality I'm told; being a man, I'm not too particular) and people have been known to park there.  I hate looking up into the trees there: lots of "widow-makers" (aka: deadfall, the emphasis on dead) are hanging in the branches of the trees that ring the little clearing.  It's more of a parking spot really, but I guess you could camp there if you really had to.

The next section, the Marathon to Gibraltar Bluffs, starts right at the T-intersection, rising out of the southeast corner of the T.

Some more dangerous wild-life. They have no lethal weapons, no fangs or claws, but they get really angry from time to time and they let you have it. Carry peanuts to bribe them.

Benthyg dros amser byr yw popeth a geir yn y byd hwn: Everything you have in this world is just borrowed for a short time.