Hiking Trails on the Saanich Peninsula

The peninsula’s trails tend to be short and moderate. Nothing here will take you all day, and nothing requires technical gear. What you get instead is forest, views, and a surprising amount of quiet for an area this close to a city of 400,000 people.

John Dean Provincial Park

John Dean sits on the summit of Mount Newton, the highest point on the peninsula at 305 metres. The park covers about 174 hectares of Douglas fir, Garry oak meadow, and mixed forest.

Several trails loop through the park. The most popular approach starts from the main parking lot on Dean Park Road and follows the Summit Trail to the top, where a clearing opens onto views of the Saanich Inlet, Haro Strait, and on clear mornings, the snowfields of Mount Baker. The round trip takes about forty-five minutes at a comfortable pace.

For a longer outing, combine the Woodward Trail with the Cy Hampson Trail for a loop that drops down through older forest and past some impressive bigleaf maples. The understory here is thick with sword fern and salal, and the light filters through the canopy in that particular way that makes coastal BC forests feel like somewhere out of time.

The trails can be muddy from October through March. Waterproof boots or trail shoes are worth bringing if there’s been rain in the past week.

Lone Tree Hill Regional Park

Lone Tree Hill rises above the Saanich Inlet between Brentwood Bay and Prospect Lake. The park is relatively new as a public space, opened by the CRD in 2019, and the trails are well-marked and maintained.

The main loop to the summit takes about thirty minutes and gains roughly 100 metres of elevation. The top is open rock with Garry oaks and a view west across the inlet to the Malahat ridge. In spring, the rocky clearings fill with camas lilies and other wildflowers.

The trailhead is on Millstream Road, with parking for about fifteen cars. It doesn’t fill up as often as John Dean.

Tod Inlet Trail

Tod Inlet sits at the head of a narrow arm of the Saanich Inlet, adjacent to Butchart Gardens. The trail follows the old quarry road down to the water through second-growth forest and past the remnants of the cement works that operated here from 1904 to the 1920s.

The trail is about 1.5 kilometres each way, mostly downhill on the way in and uphill on the return. At the inlet, a rough beach provides access to the water. The inlet itself is a marine protected area, and the shoreline is popular with kayakers.

If you continue past the inlet along the shoreline trail, you can connect to the Gowlland Tod Provincial Park trail system, which extends south toward the Malahat summit. That’s a longer and more strenuous outing.

The main trailhead is on Wallace Drive, with a parking lot shared with Butchart Gardens overflow. An alternative entrance comes in from the Durrance Lake side.

Horth Hill Regional Park

Horth Hill covers a forested hilltop in North Saanich, with short trails winding through Douglas fir and arbutus. The park is small and the trails are gentle, making it a good option for families or anyone looking for a short walk in the woods.

From the higher points you get glimpses of the airport and the Saanich Peninsula laid out below. The arbutus trees, with their peeling red bark and twisting trunks, are the visual highlight.

The trailhead is off Tatlow Road, with space for a few cars at the road shoulder.

Lochside Trail

The Lochside isn’t a hiking trail in the traditional sense. It’s a paved multi-use path running from Victoria to Sidney, built on a former rail corridor. But it passes through farmland, alongside the airport, and through residential North Saanich in a way that gives you a feel for the peninsula’s landscape.

The section from Saanichton to Sidney (about 8 kilometres) is flat, easy, and pleasant on a morning when the mist is still sitting in the farm fields. If you’re walking rather than cycling, set aside about two hours for that stretch.

Practical notes

Most peninsula trails are accessible year-round, though some get muddy and slippery in winter. Traction devices aren’t necessary, but decent footwear matters from November through February.

There are no bears on the southern island, but deer are everywhere and occasionally cougars pass through. The odds of encountering a cougar are very low, but the standard advice applies: don’t run, make yourself large, and keep children close.

Trail maps are posted at most trailheads. The CRD (Capital Regional District) maintains excellent online maps for the regional parks, and BC Parks covers John Dean and Gowlland Tod.