Walker Hook

The northeast shore of Salt Spring Island is a relatively strait, steep, rocky edge along Trincomali Channel. Sediment sources are limited and wave action is highly oblique, so beaches are few and consist largely of narrow lenses of sand and gravel held by ledges of bedrock (Fernwood 2009) or associated with small stream deltas.

AERIAL VIEW (Google Maps)

But Walker Hook is a small rocky islet that lies just offshore and a tombolo has formed between it and the main island. The result is swash-aligned barrier facing into the southern waves with a protected embayment on its north side.

The island is public. The tombolo is not. So I paddled around from the public road end on the bay and landed discretely at each end of the beach to stretch my legs and take some pictures.

The beach is relatively sandy. Annuals were growing in the berm. Algae had washed up on the upper intertidal. And some sort of burrowing critters had left the mid-beach looking like it had goose bumps.

Like south-facing beaches anywhere on the Salish Sea, this one collects logs, but here someone has come along and stacked them like shingles. The backshore is high, suggesting it was filled in the past, and the imbricated logs act as a bulkhead.