Saturdays is the day we set aside for hiking as long as nothing else arises and gets in the way.  The day was open, the weather was perfect and we wanted a fairly short hike with a great view and not too many people around.  We’d heard about the Tunnel Bluffs hike from several people, that it had a great view, and decided that was our choice.

We weren’t disappointed! 

Daylight starts to wane about 4 pm or so these days and we figured 4-5 hours for the hike so we were on trail by 10:45 or so.  The trail is extremely well marked and quite easy to follow so getting lost is not an issue on this one.  The hardest part is finding a place to turn your car around so you can park in the lot on the West side of the Sea-to-Sky highway, and then running across the road to get to the trail head!!  The first part of the hike takes you up to a great teaser view point in about 10 minutes.

After that the hike is a dedicated grunt for another hour or so but you are distracted from the effort by many old growth Douglas Firs and Cedars.  We quite enjoy big trees and this is one of the best groves on a trail that I’ve seen in quite a while for the little bit of effort it takes to see them!

Eventually the trail emerges onto an old overgrown road which has become a lovely, easy to navigate trail.  You follow that for about an hour or so, with a well marked turn-off that you have to follow or you’ll end up on the trail to Hat Mt, a much more ambitious hike, and one I’d like to tackle in the future!

Eventually the trail sign points you to “the lookout.  The bluff you emerge onto is called Taster’s Bluff.  Here we had our lunch and relaxed for a bit before making our way back down the steep trail to the car.  As you can see, the views up and down Howe Sound and of the Sunshine Coast mountains are superb!  Well worth the effort to get there!

Back to the car by 3:00 so 4.5 hours including a nice 25 minute lunch break at top.  We were joined by a couple of amorous ravens who resorted to grooming each other since we didn’t feed them anything!

A couple more pics from the bluff.

A lovely hike and one we’ll return to repeat, for sure!

Stats for those who love those sort of things 🙂