Ruckle Point
Ruckle Point Provincial Park is located on the south shore of Salt Spring Island. There are 7 km of shoreline and 15 km of forested trails for hikers. The walk-in campground is on a grassy-rocky bench overlooking the channel. This was our base camp for a week of paddling and hiking.
The entire south shoreline is rocky, but there are some small bays to explore between Beaver Point and Yeo Point. The trails wind through the dense raincoast forest over some rocky hills and along the shoreline overlooking small coves.
On the other side of the campground, a trail goes around to seaweed-strewn Grandma’s Bay and then back along a fenceline on the edge of a working farm next to the park.
Where there is no salal, kinnickinick, and ferns, wildflowers were blooming, mostly in open glades and along the edge of the bluffs. All of the trails are well-signed and generally moderate in difficulty, though the ones farther from the camping area are a bit rougher.
Parks BC offers this map for visitors.
This was a return visit for us to hike the trails again, but we combined trail sections in a different order over two days of hiking, then paddled the other days around Salt Spring. We find the Ganges area to be very busy, but the south end of the island is much quieter and less busy. There are a number of other hiking trails on the south end too – Mt. Tuam, Burgoyne Bay, Reginald Hill, Peter Arnell Park, and Mount Maxwell. We prefer to hike Salt Spring in the shoulder season and we will return again to do more of the trails when the whole island is a quieter place to visit.