Francis King Park - Centennial and High Ridge Trails - October 15, 2013

Directions 

Car poolers will leave the centre at 9:15 and will be at the car park around 9:25.

We will follow the Centennial Trail to the NE and follow it around a half circle to cross Munn Road after about 1.35 k.  We will have gone by the Shooting Star Trail on the left and the Grand Fir trail, which crosses the Centennial Trail before hitting Munn Road.  Crossing Munn Road, the Centennial Trail jogs first right and then first left and then left at the trail, to head W on Centennial Trail. About 1.1 K after Minn Road, we should join High Ridge Trail.  We pass one trail on the left after about 400 M, and after about 400 M we turn right to stay on the Centennial but bear left at the next intersection immediately after. We turn right on High Ridge Trail, stay on the trail (straight on) at the first intersection and bear left at the next intersection to complete the loop back to High Ridge. We turn right back on High Ridge and carry on to rejoin Centennial Trail. We go straight on (bear right) to follow Centennial back across Munn Road heading  NE to get back to the car park. We will have crossed two trails bearing right at the first and left at the second. Total for this complete route is about 4.6.  We should have time to browse the information centre (if open) and stroll the Elsie King Trail if we want.

Track

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Francis King regional Park

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Description of October 11, 2011 hike

Our plan was simple - follow the Centennial Trail counter-clockwise from the nature centre to the High Ridge Trail, follow the High Ridge trail loop back to the Centennial and then back to the nature centre. Despite our best efforts, we ended up off the Centennial Trail somewhere after crossing Munn Road. It was an interesting diversion with us clambering across and under fallen trees and across the dry creek, and we ended up back on the Centennial trail having had a close and interesting view of the golf course and park boundary. After our diversion, we followed the planned route.

It was a cloudy morning, but we were not too affected by rain.  Pedometers indicated that we did between 6.5 and 8 K compared to the 4.6K taken from the map. Overall this was a really nice hike with some elevation change.  It would couple well with a lunch break back at the nature centre and exploration of the wheelchair accessible Elise King Trail.

Francis/King Regional Park is named after Thomas Samuel Francis and Freeman King. In 1960, Thomas Francis donated the bulk of the land that comprises the park and in 1967, a section on the west side of Munn Road was added and named in honour of Freeman King (Liz Crocker, 1999)

Liz Crocker's report has some history of Three Regional Parks and is quite interesting.

Next time we do this hike it will be in the reverse direction!