Maximizing The Weekend on Southern Vancouver Island

Ride along with Jason Lucas and friends as they explore the riding on the southern end of Vancouver Island, BC. Enjoy the video and photos and scroll to the end (or click here) for a chance to win a $1,000 pre-paid Visa gift card courtesy of your Pacific Toyota Dealers as well as bike park passes and accommodation for you and a friend at Sun Peaks, Silverstar and Big White!

Fall has officially hit here on the West Coast. The days are getting shorter, there’s more and more liquid falling from the sky, and it won’t be long until a lot of us spend our weekends in the snow rather than the dirt. I bet I’m not alone in feeling the pressure to spend these last few weekends of primetime mountain biking wisely. 

It can be overwhelming deciding how to maximize a weekend, especially here in BC where the riding options seem endless. Do I stay home and ride what I know? Do I venture further and take a risk going somewhere I’m not familiar with? Will I have interesting water cooler stories to tell on Monday? Well, for this particular weekend some good friends and I chose to venture out and headed over to the southern part of Vancouver Island, a zone that is only a ferry ride away, but somewhere that none of us had ridden.

Why southern Vancouver Island? Well, after a call with NSMB’s Pete Roggeman and a subsequent call with local expert Patrick Nolan, it was clear that the area had all the ingredients for a weekend of fun. Awesome trails, warm swimming holes, scenic camp spots, and more. Sign us up.

Our first stop was the Harbourview trail network just outside of Sooke. On the map it may look small, but the trails pack a punch. Everything from wide open, loose, exposed rocky terrain, to fast and flowy singletrack. Best of all is the close proximity to a well-known swimming spot, the Sooke Potholes. If you need to cool down after some hot laps, this is the place.

The next day we set our sights on the town of Langford and more specifically the Jordie Lunn Bike Park which has just about everything you need for a day of fun on bikes packed into a small area.

Just like that, it was Sunday evening and we had to catch a boat back to the mainland. It was awesome exploring a sliver of what the southern part of Vancouver Island has to offer and I can’t wait to return. Until then, I’d consider this weekend successfully maximized.

Well, that's got us stoked to start planning next year's road trip season! Your Toyota Pacific Dealers want to help you get out there by providing one lucky winner with a $1,000 pre-paid Visa gift card.

But that's not all - thanks to MTB BC, the prize pack for this promotion also includes two (2) bike park passes to each of three of the world's best bike parks: Sun Peaks, Silverstar and Big White plus two nights of accommodation at each resort! All you have to do is click here to enter, and we'll pick a winner on October 26th.

*Unfortunately, the prize is only available to residents of BC and the Yukon, but we'll have more subscriber giveaways very soon.

Please enjoy the outdoors responsibly and adhere to all local bylaws including fire bans and other important public alerts.