One of the best trail runs in the Victoria region is the Stewart Mountain run. There are a variety of trails to take you from the lakes to Stewart Mountain and a variety of routes to go up the mountain. For this run, we ran out on Trillium trail then along the north side of the lake and up the trail to McKenzie Creek. Most of the run is hard packed. McKenzie Creek trail is very rough and therefore a lot of fun to run on. This connects us up to the trail to Westoby near the north swamp. We leave the park here and ford a stream and follow a foresty trail that takes us back into the park. Here we ignore the "Private Property" sign (it doesn't say no trespassing) and follow a wide trail that leads direct to the top end of Westoby. This is actually a shortcut, the park trail would add close to a kilometre to the run going up the mountain from the east.
At the end of Westoby Rd we join Westoby trail a short distance then cut right onto an unmarked trail. This is very muddy. The ascent up Stewart begins abruptly and is unrelenting. On the bench we catch our breath then continue on the unmarked forest trails and then undefined trail over moss covered rocks to reach the summit. Our return is via the west trail to the power lines, then along the power lines east to an unmarked fork in the trails, going right we follow a beautiful forest trail downhill back to Westoby Trail. A short distance brings us to the T-junction with the park trail back to Thetis Lakes. We stay right at all junctions until we reach Bellamy trail, then follow that to the Gunner Shaw swamp. Tired, we take the easy way back via the south side of the lake. In all, this route was 14km (shortened by the detour through private property).
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