Juan De Fuca Provincial Park covers a long stretch of the south coast of Vancouver Island from China Beach to Botanical Beach, where the popular 47km Juan de Fuca Marine Trail lies. The trail sustained severe storm damage in 2024 and is closed for 2025 except for a few day-use access to the popular beaches. China Beach Campground is the only vehicle-accdssible front country campground in this park.
China Beach Campground
We came to China Beach after our stay at the nearby French Beach Provincial Park. The campsites were spacious but densely covered by tall trees, so it got dark hours before sunset.
A new addition to the campground was a newly-built shower building with 4 family-sized stalls with hot showers and flush toilets. The showers are payble by credit cards at a rate of $3 per 5 minutes.
From the campground, there’s a 1.2km trail down to Second Beach. I took a morning jog while the kids were sleeping and visited the small beach.
I noticed that the trail before descending to Second Beach had a gentle slope and no major obstacles, so I brought the gang out for some easy ‘mountain biking’. They loved it and looped it countless of times.
There were also several small walk-in tent sites around the periphery of the campground. Some of these sites were much more exposed, probably because the forest was recently cleared to make way for them.
The major attraction at China Beach and Juan de Fuca Park in general are the spectacular beaches. We made a list of beaches to check out:
- Sandcut Beach, 400m easy trail to the beach, another 500m walk on the beach to 2 waterfalls directly onto the beach
- China Beach, 700m easy trail to the beach
- Mystic Beach, either a 1km moderate descent from roadside parking or a 2km walk from China Beach parking lot (trail closed in 2025)
- Sombrio Beach, 500m moderate hike down to the beach, followed by 1km hike along the beach and up to a hidden waterfall
- Botanical Beach, 1km easy hike down to the rock slabs with many tide pools
China Beach
First we tackled China Beach since it’s only 1km drive west from our campground. The parking lot was large but filling up fast on this Saturday. BC Parks is planning to expand the parking lot due to demand.
The hike down was easy for our 7 and 5 year olds. In fact, it’s so easy that it’s borderline boring them. Baby Bro needed some TLC to get down to the beach. It’s a nice sandy beach below the pebble line for lounging and sunbathing, but otherwise China Beach wasn’t very memorable.
Botanical Beach
After China Beach, we decided to drive all the way to the end of the trail and visit Botanical Beach next. The drive was a long 45 minutes down a paved but surprisingly bumpy highway.
We knew we should have visited at low tide but we ended up coming here when the tide is much too high, so the tide pools were all but under water.
The first 200m of the trail was somewhat rocky and rooty, which was more interesting for the kids. But soon it changed into a pretty flat, gravel-covered easy walk again.
The beach reminded us of the tide pools in Ruckle Provincial Park, but at low tides, people have reported seeing sea urchins, giant anemones, and other sea creatures at Botanical Beach that we haven’t seen in Ruckle.
The small town of Port Renfew didn’t have much in terms of tourist spots, mostly offering lodging and food. We stopped for some coffee and Tina shopped in a boutique fasion truck.
Sandcut Beach
On the last day of our trip, we took down camp early and squeezed in a final beach on our way back. Sandcut Beach is just east of China Beach, between French Beach PP and Juan de Fuca PP. It’s a CRD regional park, but it’s actually the most memorable out of the ones we visited this year.
The trail to the beach is the most interesting, including a small creek crossing on a boardwalk with an embedded downed tree.
The beach itself is basically the same as China Beach, but the magic lies 500 meter to the east: a pair of waterfalls drop from a carved-out sandstone cliff directly on to the pebble beach, and the water disappears into the beach!
This was by far the most unique beach experience. Some beach goers used the waterfall as a natural cold shower to rinse off. We lingered here for a snack break before finally heading home.
We skipped Sombrio Beach and Mystic Beach this trip, since they seem to be the most challenging and our team of youngters were tired. This gives us a good incentive to come back and revisit this spectacular region again.
We hope that the JDF Marine Trail will be repaired soon, so that we can tackle the whole trail from end to end. I have a feeling that Big Bro is close to being ready for this 4-5 day hike, but the question is when Baby Bro would be ready too…
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