The road chose me

Mike and I have been wanting to hike The West Coast Trail together ever since we came to Canada a few years ago. Severe weather a couple of winters ago delayed the opening of the trail that year, forcing us to shelve our plans and bide our time. After talking about it for so long we are both really excited to finally get to hike The West Coast Trail and can’t stop chatting and grinning all the way to Port Renfrew, the southern trail head.

Much like the Chilkoot, the First Nations people of the area had been using the trail for hundreds of years before foreign sailing ships came into the picture. The rugged coastline claimed many unsuspecting ships and so from 1888 to 1890 the government built a telegraph line on the trail in the hopes of saving lives through better communications. Twenty odd years later a second lighthouse was constructed and the trail was greatly improved to act as a life saving route for shipwreck victims. As technology improved shipwrecks became a thing of the past and the trail was abandoned until 1973 when it became part of the newly established Pacific Rim National Park.

Today the 75 km trail is by far the most famous in Canada, often making an appearance on lists of the world’s best hiking trails.

Port Renfrew seems to brew it’s own weather, mostly of the oceanside misty, damp kind. Our tent is soaking wet in the morning, which we think is rain but turns out to just be ocean mist/fog that settles on everything. Amped to get hiking we amble into the ranger station and discover we’ll have to wait until the following day before we can begin. The number of hikers per day is limited and a reservation cost an extra $25 each so we thought we would just wing it. While we’re there we pay the hiking fee of $160 each and sit through the hour or so introduction which is useful, but really only makes us wish we were hiking today. We spend the day organizing gear, walking around town and drinking cheap coffee.
Camp for the night is beachside and free

Early the next morning we drop off my Jeep in a secure parking lot (for $18) and get a ride to the starting point – a ferry across Gordon River. Everyone is hugely entertained weighing their packs when we discover a set of scales hanging nearby. Mike at I ring in at 36 and 40 pounds respectively, which is 10 pounds lighter than the next nearest hiker. One guy about half my size has 62 pounds. Ouch. The other hikers are keen to talk about how long we’ve planned for the hike and are quite taken aback when we shrug our shoulders and grin our usual answer to such questions; “As long as it takes”.

Mike and Dan starting The West Coast Trail

Happy at my own pace, Mike quickly disappears into the misty fog that surrounds us. We’ve been told over and over the first 10 km we encounter are the hardest of the entire trail. Most people prefer to start at the other end and cover this ground on their last day when their packs are lighter – I am happy to tackle it while eager and fresh. Quickly I am in the thick of it; mud, tree roots, uphill, downhill, bridges and ladders and all of it very very slippery. It’s been one of the driest summers on record, so I can only imagine what it’s like in a rainy year. Passing people hiking in the opposite direction I notice how tired and muddy they all are, not to mention they all reek of campfire.

The scale of the trail...

By the time I catch up with Mike he has made a friend, Roger from the Netherlands who moves at a similar rapid pace. In many places along the trail we can choose between staying inland or hiking along beaches. We’ve been told over and over again to take the beach option whenever we can, so we head down a string of ladders to Thrasher Cove, our lunch stop.

Dropping down some stairs

Mike cooking lunch in the sun

Hiking around Owen Point requires the tides to be just right, so we wait a couple of hours in the amazing sunshine and head out right as the tide is going down. Some great rock-hopping is required and throughly enjoyed by all. Owen Point has beautiful colored rock formations and we stumble upon an alternate trail that has us use ropes to go up vertical rock and over the still too-high tide.

Mike in the rock formations at Owen Point

We follow the beach around, head inland for a few kilometers, use our first cable car with much calamity and arrive at Camper Bay, our stop for the night after 12 km.

Roger and Mike in a cable car

The number of people here is mind-blowing – I count 14 tents in view when we arrive, with more being set up by the minute. We bump into some people from our ferry earlier in the day, including the guy with 62 pounds. They hiked inland for the entire day and did not look like they were having any fun at all on the rooty, muddy trail.

Mike navigating the endless mud

The next day we have a stretch of inland hiking that has an impressive vertical drop of about six ladders immediately followed by six more straight back up.

Going up?

Navigating the one and only river crossing on the trail is disappointingly only a trickle that we walk straight across.

We love these high logs, called 'Nerve Testers'

Walking along the beach and rock shelf is a great way to finish the 16 km for the day at Carmanah Creek campsite. We quickly throw everything in our tents and start walking up Carmanah Creek, happy to be rid of our packs. Jeff from Seafun told us about the world’s largest sitka spruce tree, the Carmanah Giant which lies only a kilometer up the creek from the campsite. Rock-hopping with tired legs is hilarious and we all inevitably get a boot wet in the creek, laughing the whole time. The trunk of the giant is much much bigger than any other tree at 3 meters, and even though it’s right at river level, it towers over all the other trees growing higher up the valley wall.

The Carmanah Giant complete with tree hugger

Dan & Mike beach hiking

There is plenty more to come on this one…

-Dan

Mike and I have had our fill of hot springs and start heading for Vancouver Island, via the scenic route of course. We play 27 holes of disc golf at a rugged course in Whistler and after all that Mike wins by one shot – I must be rusty

Driving the Jeep

We leave Mike’s motorbike in Horseshoe Bay and catch the ferry to Langdale, where we meet Bill’s brother David and his wife Barbara. David and Barbara drove to and around South America for their honeymoon and we spend many hours looking at mind-blowing photos and hearing stories of civil war, flat tires and good times.

Mike, David, Barbara & Dan enjoying the view

David tells one story of being the first people to drive a road in the Amazon after the rainy season, a few hundred kilometers winds up taking six days of crazy full-on adventure I can only dream about.
I lie awake for hours at night, too excited to sleep.

Mike & Dan camping together

We drive north along The Sunshine coast, passing gorgeous seaside towns every twenty kilometers or so. It winds up being a day of ferry crossings, first to Powell River then another to Comox, where we find one of my better guerrilla campsites. What a view.

The view from one of our "campsites"

In the morning we play a quick nine holes of disc golf at Mt. Washington, then drive down to Nanimo for another eighteen. We catch up with Judy (from the Chilkoot Trail) and Kirby, who fill our heads with stories and pictures of The West Coast Trail, our next adventure. We play another eighteen holes in the morning and I finally beat mike on the playoff hole.

It doesn’t take us long to meet up with a good friend Joel when we arrive in Victoria, and we are shortly enjoying a beer and takeout noodles in the afternoon sun. Budget be dammed. I’d forgotten how similar Victoria is to Melbourne and it takes us no time at all to enjoy the sights and sounds.

In the morning we jump aboard a Seafun Safaris boat, bound for some whale watching. I’ve never been before and it is quite the experience. Boats are not allowed to use their engines within 100 meters of whales so the basic idea is to get into a position where you think the whales are coming, cut the engines and wait.

All geared up to go whale watching

We wait only a few minuets when a female Orca surfaces just 15 meters from the boat, noisily exhaling in a plume of water. Our captain Jeff tells us she is “Grandma” the oldest and leader of this pod, at 98 years old. Soon afterwards a male, with a massive dorsal fin surfaces also very close to the boat – this one is “Ruffles” so named because the shape of his dorsal fin resembles a Ruffles potato chip. As we float around we see Orca from this pod in all shapes and sizes – big, small, nursing young and some just cruising around completely ignoring us.

Killer whale called "Ruffles"

Jeff has been whale watching for 10+ years and it shows – his knowledge and expertise are very impressive and we have a fantastic morning outing to see killer whales in their natural environment.

-Dan

Always on the lookout for more hot springs, Mike and I camp a night at Sloquet Hot Spring.
We arrive and setup just as the sun is going down. We both freak out a little when the Jeep starts slowly moving backwards while parked on a really steep hill. The strange part is that it’s in first gear and the handbrake is on.

A few tests in the morning show the hill is steep enough to turn over the engine while in reverse.
Good to know.

Sloquet Hot Spring waterfall

The hot spring is just as beautiful as I remember; hot water cascades over a waterfall and flows down through a series of pools that start at insanely hot and go all the way down to river level and temperature. Once again we have the spring to ourselves for an evening soak filled with star gazing.

Main soaking pool

A morning soak is by now a much enjoyed habit.

More soaking pools

Mike and I have just visited six undeveloped hot springs in two days! Yep. it’s an addiction

-Dan

During my previous trip to the area with Mark, we tried to find the much rumored August Jacob’s Hot Spring. The spring is supposedly on Frank Creek, which is the only direction given. Our bushwhacking was futile against the high water in the creek and dense foliage surrounding it, so we gave up in less than two hours.

One sentence in Glenn Woodsworth’s Hot Springs of Western Canada seems to attract those keen for a hunt:

Recently rediscovered by hikers, but I don’t have details.

During my previous trip to the area with Mark, we tried to find the much rumored August Jacob’s Hot Spring. The spring is supposedly on Frank Creek, which is the only direction given. Our bushwhacking was futile against the high water in the creek and dense foliage surrounding it, so we gave up in less than two hours.

So the spring exists, the only question is finding it. Because of my recent success finding Deer River and Portage Brûlé Hot Spring, a very knowledgeable person shared information with me about the location of the spring.

Ever on the trail for more hot springs, Mike and I camp at Skookumchuck Hot Spring and enjoy many hours of soaking long into the starry night. (Not) early the next morning we drive out to the starting point and begin our hike, not knowing at all what to expect. Borrowing a GPS seemed like a good idea, although we quickly find it useless in the very dense trees – it just can’t pick up any satellites. Even in clearings when it can get enough satellites for a location lock, the elevation it reports is wildly inaccurate. Sometimes the elevation gained in just a few steps would register as a hundred feet or more. This, combined with our lack of preparation and detailed map leads to much backtracking and back-backtracking.

On more than one occasion we talk seriously about giving up; “are we giving up completely, or just on this part of the directions?” Being a little tired and irritable does not help the situation.

When the spring comes into view we are both elated, grinning from ear to ear. Mike is the first to ‘do the honors’ and yells “It’s hot!”, “Wow, It’s really hot!”.

Dan arriving at August Jacob's

The hot water cascades down a rock face about four meters into the creek below. The creek has carved quite a narrow rocky valley, making for a beautiful setting. A waterfall does it’s thing just a few meters away from the spring.

August Jacob's valley

My thermometer shows 49 °C when placed right at the top in the very source. Two main sources have solid flow rates and are that temperate, a few others nearby are more like small trickles and are cooler, probably around 30 °C.

August Jacob's Temperature - it was 49 up at the source

There are no soaking pools, and not a single sign of human presence here, so we leave the spring in it’s perfectly natural state. It would, however, be possible to build one or two rock pools fed with hot water and even channel in some cold from the waterfall.

The setting of August Jacob's - hot water spurting out of rock in foreground

I can’t help but wonder how long this will take when the directions become public knowledge…

August Jacob's Hot Spring

On the hike down we are beaming to have made it to the spring, a place that very few people have ever been.

Mike and Dan excited to be at August Jacob's

-Dan