Cowichan Valley 5 Crown: Running all 5 summits in the Cowichan Valley and closing the loop. The summits are: Mount Tzouhalem, Mount Prevost, Mount Sicker, Richards Mountain & Maple Mountain. This route was first addressed to me from my boyfriend who is a professional mountain biker and this is a famous route for those who are up for the challenge to complete on bike! the goal is to go up and over all of the summits in a single day. After being apart of their biking adventures I thought to myself, why not bring my running passion to play and conquer this beast on my own 2 feet!
Now let me run you through my route: starting from home in Maple bay I chose to first go up and over Mount Tzouhalem (1) and after that I would then find the quickest and more straight forward road section through town to bring me to Mount Prevost (2), from there I would go up on the Bings creek side of the mountain to the Memorial tower and down the mountain bike trail side to the Prevost mainline where then I would make my way up the Prevost mainline to summit Mount Sicker (3) turning off after about 4 km to Plantation road winding my way through a very thick and overgrown FSR road to find a secret bike trail at the end of this fsr road on the right that takes you down the bluff side of Sicker where then you will be greeted with some of the most gnarly bike jumps you'll ever come across and after that you'll hike your way out from the trail to the left for a few hundred metres and after that turn right where the road become a fork and you will cross a small bridge over a creek that in the summer is NOT flowing haha! you'll pop out on Rosevear road and from there you pop out on Somenos road and go left to the highway, cross the highway when safe to a small snail trail that pops you out on Westholme road from there you run until you see Richards trail road on your right, go right for about 1.5 km until you see a small marker in a tree near a road pull out on your left above a power line to start your climb for Mount Richards (4),make your way up that trail to the rock bluff I'd suggest using trail forks for this as the bluff can be tricky to navigate, from there you will summit after about 3.5 km and come to the top with a little pile of rocks stacked up to say you've made it! go left here down the road and it will spit you out onto an old logging road follow this down until the parking lot and cross Osborne Bay Road to the Maple Mountain parking lot where you will go up the main logging road turning right onto a trail with a big sign that says Xylem climb, follow that for 4 km until the trail branches off to Phloem, go straight through to a trail called story trail connector, take that through the beautiful totems along the ramp and when you finish that section you go left and pass through a trail that runs parallel to you called lower maple syrup keep going straight you should be on M600 where in about 1.3 km you will turn left up a very steep rocky section called orange trail follow this up for 1km until you come onto a trail called upper maple syrup turn right and go up the rock slab and follow this until you reach the Maple Mountain (5) summit where there is a large tower, go along this bluff until you see a red gate and go under that and follow the trail down the mainline until after about 70 ft you see on your right a trail sign that says pink trail or a podium, follow this down to the ocean where you will hit another junction called blue trail, follow blue to the end where it spits you out at your car or little dead end road with a podium! you can finish here, I live very close so I ended and started at home but this would be the start/finish point. Head down to the maple bay pub and celebrate your accomplishment!
