Past Peden Lake in the sooke hills

First look at Peden Lake

Hiked up from Sooke Potholes today from the last parking lot across the galloping goose trail and the sooke lake pipeline. From there we went up the Mary Vine creek trail to Peden Lake.

The trail leads up the Mary Vine creek valley through mixed woods, mostly douglas fir. We came across a bumble bee nest that had just been ransacked by a bear.  No other sign of the bear though. lots of Wilson's, townsend's, orange-crowned warblers singing in the trees, as well as a Macgillvary's. Swainson's thrushes were singing on the way up the incline but once we reached the Lake area, Hermit thrushes started to sing. At the lake there was a Red-breasted Sapsucker making its rukus call.

view from the cabin 

There is a small cabin on the lake that says it is a research cabin but not much researching seemed to be going on. There was a family of Hooded Mergansers on the small part of the lake at the far end.

Family of Hooded Mergansers

We hiked past the lake and continued on an old logging road that went directly along a valley bottom for about 2.5 kilometers before we came to another small lake.

small unamed  lake 

We ran out of time to continue further, but after looking on the maps when I got home we could have gone down the outlet creek from here to the Sooke River and walked back the Galloping goose trail to the car making it a circuit route instead of retracing our tracks.