bouldering on victoria island/gulf islands, b.c.?

[mtmikey]

my girlfriend and i are thinking of vacationing on victoria island or perhaps salt spring island, british columbia in late-august 2001. i was wondering, and this may be a long shot, if there is any bouldering or scrambling in those parts? i'd love to get up to the bugs or higher up, but i've promised my gf a "non-climbing" vacation.

thanks for any info anyone can provide. i hear tell of a new area on victoria being developed by a couple of vancouver climbers?

best,

mkg

[specialed]

whats a "non-climbing" vacation. I've never takin one of those.

All I know is Horne Lake, Vancouver Island's premier limestone sport crag is closed for logging.

[Paul_C]

Howdy;

As a Vancouver local I think I can probably shed some light on this.

In Victoria; Go to Flemming Beach, across Johnstone St, bridge away from DT, L on Lampson St (towards water), R on Munro and park. Lots of bouldering, on Fishermans wall, the Overhang and a great little area 5 min down the dog walkers trail. You will need to get a registration ($10 per week for casual use, or face a $100 to $2000 fine, and also be seriously uncool as this is very public territory and if we want to keep climbing there then we need to keep on the good side of the local government). You can get your reg at the Esquimalt Rec Center, 517 Fraser St)

Not much other bouldering areas but you can pick up a small guide (green cover) at a couple of the mountain stores, and probably at Crag X the local climbing gym (very good), most of the stores are in the downtown areas. There are a bunch of other climbing areas but they don't have much in the way of bouldering. Like sp said, Horne Lake is closed, bummer.

As for SSI, there is some climbing there, and if you are interested then I can let you know more info, but it is a very sentitive area due to the logging activity, and so climbing needs to be kept very low key to ensure that people don't over-react and try to stop all climbing on SSI. I don't know of any bouldering there, just routes, a mix of Trad and sport. I will check to see if there is any bouldering there, and post back but I don't think so. There are some great hikes that if you are interested in I could let you know about, but I need to go do some work so let me know and I will post back with anything more that I find out about bouldering on SSI.

PS I know what you mean about non-climbing vacations, I just took one with my GF to Yos. Talk about tempting....

Thanks

Paul C

[Paul_C]

Here is some more info on Victoria bouldering.

http://www.mountaineers.net/BaseCamp/McKinley/victoriaclimbing/

Thanks

Paul

[Dru]

At Beaver Point Provincial Park, and many other areas along the coast of Saltspring (and many of the other Gulf Islands like Maynbe and Saturna), there is wicked bouldering (especially splashdown traversing) on pocketed sandstone. No guidebook or route names just follow your nose.

Also check out back issues of Climbers Access Society newsletter online at www.bivouac.com/casbc for the last few years of island beta including on the semi sectret new crag near Victoria.