In the Koksilah River Valley sits one of the highest wooden trestle bridges in the world. At 44m (144 ft) high and 188m (617 ft) long, Kinsol Trestle was started in 1911 and finally completed in 1920 as part of the Galloping Goose line.
Named for the nearby Kinsol Station which served the King Solomon Mines for a short period of time in the 1920s. This rail line carried both passengers and goods (mainly timber) until 1979 when the line closed.
Just after I moved to the Valley, the new phone book came out with a picture of the Kinsol Trestle on the cover. I instantly knew I needed to see it for myself.
It took me more than a year to finally get there.
This was 2007, when the Kinsol Restoration Project was still in its infancy, and finding the trestle without a map turned out to be harder than I expected. I stopped at the Tourism BC office in Duncan and picked up a pamphlet — although “pamphlet” might be stretching it a little. It was basically a printout with directions to the north and south parking lots.
Coming from the north made the most sense. It was closer to home and, according to my little map, meant a shorter walk from the parking lot.
Armed with my directions and camera, I headed off to find the trestle.
Riverside Road was easy enough to find. The directions warned me that the last few kilometres were along a narrow gravel road, but I still wasn't quite prepared for just how rough that road was.
Eventually, I reached what I assumed was the parking lot and spotted a tiny sign pointing toward the trestle.
300 metres.
I was almost there...
As I rounded a bend in the trail, I saw it — or at least I saw the top of it.
Then I saw the sign.
KEEP OFF.
I don't know if I had really expected to be able to walk across the trestle. I'm not even sure I would have been brave enough if I could. Still, I'll admit I was a little disappointed.
That feeling disappeared pretty quickly once I got closer.
The thing was massive.
I wanted a better idea of just how big it was, so I decided to follow the trail through the woods down toward the base of the trestle.
There were makeshift “steps” built into the hillside, but it was still a steep, winding trail. Even as I was heading down, I knew one thing for certain...
Coming back up was going to be a lot less fun.
At the bottom, I followed the path along the river until I reached the trestle.
Then I looked up.
Very few times in my life have I felt quite that tiny.
There I was, alone in the quiet woods beside this absolute behemoth of a wooden structure, and I was completely in awe of it.
I took pictures of the trestle and the river before eventually making my way back up the hill.
And yes...I was right.
Going down was much easier.
As I walked back to my car, I already knew I would be coming back to this little oasis hidden in the woods.
I just had no idea how often.
My Little Escape
Over the next several months, I returned again and again — sometimes alone and sometimes dragging other people along so they could see this incredible place for themselves.
I was also slowly improving my photography skills, going from a complete novice to what I liked to think of as a slightly more educated novice.
Kinsol became my practice ground.
I figured out that afternoons were better for photographing the trestle itself, while mornings were perfect for catching dew or frost on the plants. I learned when certain flowers appeared, where to find them and how to keep photographing the same place without coming home with exactly the same picture every time.
By the middle of 2008, I was visiting almost every week.
At that point, the trestle still wasn't really headline news. The restoration project was moving ahead, but most of the people I encountered were the occasional tourist or cyclist.
Most of the time, it was wonderfully quiet.
That fall, trees were removed around the trestle so the bridge could be studied and the necessary repairs assessed.
At the same time, logging was taking place along the gravel portion of Riverside Road. Heavy trucks and autumn rain were not a particularly good combination. The road became progressively worse as deep ruts and potholes appeared.
Eventually, I gave up making the drive.
I occasionally visited from the south side instead, but it was farther from home and involved a much longer walk.
So I waited for spring.
Coming Back
After tax season in 2009, I ventured out again.
Someone had obviously graded the road since my last visit. It still wasn't exactly good, but compared with the previous fall, it felt luxurious.
I hadn't realized how much I'd missed the place.
Soon I was returning regularly, but photography wasn't always the reason anymore.
Sometimes I just went there to sit.
As spring turned into summer, I started seeing more people. There were surveyors and architects with clipboards, pickup trucks connected to the restoration project and more Valley residents who had begun hearing the local buzz about the trestle.
My once-empty parking lot wasn't quite so empty anymore.
I started planning my visits for earlier in the day or deliberately going when it rained, figuring only the die-hard visitors would bother coming out.
Although I developed a theory during those years: no matter what the weather was doing everywhere else in the Valley, if the sun was going to shine anywhere, somehow it would shine at the trestle.
Very few people seemed to know my secret.
Autumn eventually returned, followed by winter, and Riverside Road once again became almost impassable in my little car.
That didn't completely stop me.
I still ventured out a few times hoping to capture the trestle covered in snow.
Practically My Second Home
By spring 2010, I wasn't just visiting Kinsol regularly.
I was going almost every day.
If I went only one place that day, chances were pretty good it was the trestle.
I started bringing my laptop and would sit in my car or set up a lawn chair in the parking lot to edit photos.
My biggest distractions were the occasional bug or dirt biker passing by.
I even planned an entire three-week coast-to-coast trip sitting there with birds chirping in the background.
It was beautiful.
When I returned from that trip, I went right back to my usual routine, this time spending my visits editing hundreds of travel photos.
Then one day, everything changed.
I drove into the parking lot and found a new sign and a big blue fence blocking the trail.
The restoration project was officially in full swing.
Within days, a new trail had been cut through the bush to a designated viewing area.
I was actually pretty impressed with how quickly it appeared — especially because I'd once tried cutting through that same bush myself from the river to the parking lot.
That had not gone particularly well.
A little advice from experience: stick to the marked trails.
Trying to forge my own route through the forest was stupid, and I was lucky my biggest problem was fighting through the undergrowth. Bears and cougars had both been seen in the area.
Lesson learned.
Watching Kinsol Change
Over the next couple of months, I visited often enough that I started joking that I had my own parking spot.
For some reason, the workers always seemed to leave one particular space open.
So naturally, I claimed it.
I didn't always bother walking toward the trestle. Sometimes I was perfectly happy hanging around the parking lot playing unofficial tour guide.
Even with a trail sign, visitors still had trouble figuring out where to go.
I answered questions about how tall the trestle was, how long it was, what was happening with the restoration and when people might finally be able to walk across it.
I was surprised by how many locals hadn't even known the trestle existed until signs appeared along the Trans-Canada Highway and stories began showing up in the newspapers.
My little secret in the woods was becoming considerably less secret.
There was another downside to all the construction.
The road became horrible.
Tourists weren't really the problem. It was the dump trucks and flatbeds barreling along a narrow, twisting, potholed gravel road that made some trips downright unpleasant.
Once the autumn rain arrived, the potholes became so bad that even the trucks were swerving around them.
After enough close calls rounding a corner and suddenly finding myself staring directly at the grille of a dump truck, I'd had enough.
I knew it was the only road into an active construction site, but Kinsol was also being heavily promoted as a tourist attraction during the restoration.
Eventually, I decided the trestle could survive without me for the winter.
Finally...The Trestle Opens
The restoration was originally supposed to be completed by the end of March 2011.
March came and went.
The big blue fence stayed exactly where it was.
I can't say I was particularly surprised. Restoring something the size of the Kinsol Trestle was a massive undertaking.
The road was still desperately in need of grading, so my visits dropped to once every couple of weeks.
There was another change too.
More and more people were coming.
It really wasn't my little hidden oasis anymore.
On July 28, 2011, the restored Kinsol Trestle officially opened to the public.
People came from across Vancouver Island, the mainland and even the United States. The turnout was so large that shuttle buses carried visitors from Shawnigan Lake Village to the south parking area.
I didn't go to the grand opening.
Crowds have never exactly been the reason I went to Kinsol.
Instead, I waited a couple of months for the initial excitement to settle down before going to see it for myself.
I followed the familiar trail and rounded that last bend.
There it was.
Except this time, there was no KEEP OFF sign.
Most of the blue fencing was gone.
For the first time in all the years I'd been coming here, I could actually walk across the Kinsol Trestle.
It was still an active construction site, and workers were hanging from harnesses along the side of the bridge, but the walkway itself was open.
I walked halfway across and stopped.
Then I looked down.
Somewhere far below was the place where I'd stood four years earlier, staring up at this giant wooden structure and wondering what it would be like to stand on top of it.
Now I finally knew.
And after years of waiting, imagining and wondering what that moment would feel like, the first thought that popped into my head was...
I thought it would be taller.
Seriously.
I had to give my head a shake.
In my defence, standing underneath the trestle creates an incredible sense of scale. Add years of looking at my own photographs and imagining what the view from above must be like, and somewhere along the way I'd built it into something impossibly high in my mind.
So when I finally looked down, reality had absolutely no chance of competing with my imagination.
That tiny moment of disappointment didn't last long.
Very soon I was doing what I'd always done at Kinsol — wandering around with my camera and photographing everything.
A Different Kind of Kinsol
Over the following year, I started visiting more often again.
Sometimes I came to take pictures.
Sometimes I still came because I needed a little quiet.
That quiet was becoming harder to find, but it hadn't disappeared completely.
And there was something rather fitting about where I ended up writing this whole story.
Sitting in my car.
In the north parking lot.
At the Kinsol Trestle.
The same place I'd stumbled across years earlier with a printout of directions, a camera and absolutely no idea how important this little patch of forest was going to become to me.
Fast Forward to 2026...
Fourteen years later, I still visit this lovely place occasionally — and I still always come in from the north parking lot. But it isn't really my quiet little port in the storm of everyday life anymore.
And honestly, that's not entirely the trestle's fault. My life changed too.
In 2013, I moved to a new home that became its own little sanctuary. For the next couple of years, I still headed out to Kinsol to take pictures, ride my bike or sit with my laptop, just not nearly as often as before.
Then I started a new job with a commute of more than an hour each way. After spending that much time in my car every day, a 50-kilometre round trip to the trestle suddenly didn't sound quite so relaxing — especially when I could drive all the way out there only to discover there wasn't a parking spot to be found.
And then The Amazing Race Canada showed up.
I had no idea that was what was happening at the time. I'd gone out there looking for one of those much-needed breaks from reality, only to find the parking lot so packed that I could barely turn my car around to leave.
That was pretty much the day I decided my sanctuary at home was enough.
A few months later, I happened to watch the episode and finally realized what I'd stumbled into that day. Part of me was disappointed that I hadn't stayed to see everything happening, but another part of me realized something else...
My little hidden spot wasn't hidden anymore.
Kinsol had become a destination.
It wasn't going to be the quiet place where I could reliably sit with my laptop, wander around taking photos or disappear for a few hours when I needed to escape everyday life.
And that's okay.
I still bring friends and family here whenever they haven't seen it before, crowds or not, because the Kinsol Trestle really is something you need to stand beside to appreciate.
The changes since I first stumbled across it almost 20 years ago are incredible. There are proper trails leading down toward the river and the base of the trestle, places to stand underneath and really appreciate just how massive the structure is, and several viewpoints that are perfect for photos.
It's a far cry from my early visits, when getting down there involved scrambling down a steep hillside and carefully picking my way around the old trestle just so I could get those strange abstract photographs looking up through the weathered timbers of an abandoned railway bridge.
Sometimes I miss that version of Kinsol.
The rough gravel road. The empty parking lot. The quiet. That feeling that I'd somehow stumbled across this enormous wooden structure in the middle of the forest and hardly anyone else knew it was there.
But I'm also glad I got to know it that way.
I got to watch the Kinsol Trestle change from an aging railway bridge hidden in the woods into one of those Vancouver Island places people actually make a point of coming to see.
And almost 20 years after that first visit, I still love rounding that last bend in the trail and seeing it appear through the trees.