This 2-day bicycle loop route travels from Nelson to the historic town of Kaslo, then to New Denver on a 114 km journey. The route uses an optional trail east of New Denver – featuring a cable car crossing. After spending the night in New Denver, return south to Nelson on the Slocan Valley Rail Trail – a 107 km journey.
This loop is a 2-3 day, 196 km journey, though about 26 km of this includes distances traveled on 3 separate ferry rides – in total, the journey involves about 180 km of trails and roads. However, this route can be drastically shortened with a number of shortcuts if necessary.
To shorter the journey further by 32 km, one can cut across the Saanich peninsula from the Lochside Trail to the Brentwood Bay ferry, resulting in a 148 km journey – though this cuts the enjoyable trip into Victoria.
Another shortcut can be found north of the Kinsol Trestle on the Cowichan Valley Trail – at Deerholme, an old segment of rail line turns east towards Duncan. Parts of this rail trail can be followed but needs to be properly developed over future years. Connecting to Duncan’s Friendship Trail, the route once again connects to the Cowichan Valley Trail north of Duncan. However, this shortcut removes a significant portion of very beautiful rail trail from the route, and misses the community of Lake Cowichan.
The route through Salt Spring Island is almost all on roads, but this route has been determined to be the quietest route across the island.
Ferries to/from the mainland can be found at Sidney’s Swartz Bay, or alternatively, Salt Spring’s Long Harbour.
This loop is a great day ride, accessible from multiple staging areas experiencing Regional and District Parks, dikes, and other land features connected by regional greenways. Visit bird sanctuaries, marshlands and tidal flats, with a number of key historical features along the way. The village of Ladner makes a great rest stop, especially on Market Days.  Completing the loop of 68 km counts for two sub-loops, 33a and 33b.  This cut-off is the division between c33a to the west and c33b to the east.  All these loops are best done counterclockwise, especially the c33b loop that takes in River Road and puts the cyclists nearer to the river bank.
Here is a Youtube rendering of the route:Â https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80AeY_dMr10
Note that the orange track is the complete cycle route described here.
Alert regarding getting over the tracks at Delta Port
Recently, BC Rail is becoming more vigilant at enforcing the signage indicating ‘end of trail’ and to not to enter this area to get across the railroad tracks. The detour requires going down and up two very steep embankments over water in a ditch to get to a road on the other side.. The 4.5 km detour adds roughly 3.3 kms to the whole route.  We are working to overcome this obstacle with the Port authorities. In the meantime, we are hopeful that bridging will be allowed over the ditch for the detour by the Spring of 2019. Please remember that all Trails BC routing is suggested only as routes that we have successfully used in the past but we take no responsibility for the choices you make.  Do let us know about any changes and difficulties you encounter while using our suggested routings.
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