The West Coast Trail: Grunt it Out Tour, 2010

Well, hello, kiddies! I'm pleased to say I have returned from the wilds of Vancouver Island and am back online to regale you with tales of early mornings and mud bogs. That's right, I just came back from hiking the West Coast Trail. That epic, famous hike that covers 75 km worth of "backcountry" on the west coast of Vancouver Island, from Bamfield to Port Renfrew (or the other way around, if you prefer). I use the "backcountry", 'cause I'm not really sure you can call it backcountry when it's right on the coast and the ocean is steps from your tent each night. It's more like "remote frontcountry". And even then, the remote part is relative. But more about that later.

Let's start with the bare bones, shall we? The hike itself is 75 km, and you can either hike it north to south or vice versa. We chose north to south, and I'm quite happy about that, given that the most difficult and taxing parts are at the southernmost part of the trail (the last 5 km took us nearly 4 hours and there were multiple ladders). We started in Bamfield and hiked all the way Port Renfrew. When I say we, I mean myself, Krista (a woman I worked with in the lab in Campbell River), Tim (an Aussie nurse from CR), Jerome (a French nurse, formerly from CR), and 2 young Aussie girls who were staying with Tim for a few months, Bonnie and Sarah (henceforth she shall be known as Sabz, since that's her nickname and it's less confusing for you, dear readers, if there is only one Sara in this story).

Krista picked me up from the ferry terminal in Nanaimo and we set off for Victoria to pick up Jerome. Then we headed for Bamfield where we were to meet Tim, where he would leave his truck in Port Renfrew so we would have transportation when we came off the trail. We'd leave Krista's car in Bamfield. Tim ended up being 2 hours late to meet us, probably owing to the fact that the road between the 2 towns is just an old logging road, and thus, totally sucks. On the way back to Bamfield, we missed a turn and ended up taking about a 1 hour detour on crappy logging roads, but did finally find out way back t Bamfield.

The next morning I waited anxiously outside the trailhead office, as I had only been able to make a reservation for the next day, and everyone else was leaving that day. I was hoping they would let me switch my reservation so I wouldn't have to book it the next day and try and catch up. Thankfully they weren't busy so I managed to get on the trail that morning with everyone else. It's a pretty good thing, too, since I would've had to cover nearly 30 km if I'd needed to catch up. After sitting through the orientation session in which they stressed over and over again the dangers on the trail, away we went. I should mention now that Tim was extremely disappointed that there was no picture of the Queen in either the office or in the presentation. He complained about it the whole trip. Seriously, he did.

The first night we stayed at Orange Juice Creek, and covered 15 km. It was pretty easy trail that first day, but still hard as we were adjusting to the added 50 or more pounds each of us as carrying in our packs. Krista, the smallest in the group, probably had the heaviest pack. I don't know what was in there, but I'm surprised at how well she did, considering her bag probably weighed half of what she did.

The second night we stayed at Tsousiat Falls, and covered 10 km. This site was fantastic, as the falls were actually warm enough to go into, and there was a good-sized pool at the bottom of them. Which meant we could all basically have a shower. It was lovely, especially when you're used to hiking in the Rockies where the water is so arctic fresh that you'd never even consider immersing yourself in it. But I managed to wash my hair and all the other bits, so it felt pretty good to be clean. And that's a rare novelty when hiking. Usually you just have to marinate in your own juices until the smell gets beyond tolerance and you're forced to at least rinse out your armpits. At this point I happened to be caught without a bathing suit, as this was a situation I had not anticipated, but I decided that given the circumstances, a sports bra and a pair or underpants would do quite nicely.

I should mention at this point that all the designated campsites on the trail are on the beach. Some of them are sandy beaches, some are a little more rocky or have course sand, but they're all right on the ocean where a river or stream meets it so you have access to fresh water. I haven't done a lot of beach camping before, and let me tell you, the sand gets in everything! I was trying to get the group to help me write a hiking song, 'cause I'd come up with a fantastic name for one, "Sand in My Sleeping Bag". It never got written, unfortunately, but I did end up with a fair amount of sand in my sleeping bag.

The third day ended up being the longest, and most of us were getting to the end of our ropes by the time we pulled into camp. Though we left that morning headed for Dare Beach, when we got there the driftwood was too thick to even consider camping there. Fortunately, there were 2 trail maintenance guys that happened to be taking a break on the beach who pointed us to Cribs Creek, which was just 2 km farther down the trail. They even told us that, despite the fact that the tide was coming in, if we walked along the beach it would still be accessible and we didn't have to use the inland trail. Which was fantastic since as soon as the trail left Dare Beach it went straight to a long set of ladders. They also said it was a much nicer place to camp and a lot larger. By the end of the day we covered 17 km, and my dogs weren't just barking, they were wailing like they've never wailed before.

Day 4 took us to Walbran Creek. It was an interesting day, as almost all of it was spent walking along the beach. Thankfully there wasn't huge amounts of shifting sand, and it was pretty easy going. Especially since there are no hills along the beaches. This was the day we came across Chez Monique's. It's this ramshackle operation along one of the beaches inside an Indian reservation where you can buy burgers, beer, candy and various other things. I'd heard about it before but expected something a little different than what we found. It was made mostly of posts and tarps, and they did all their cooking on coleman propane camping stoves. It really was a pretty ramshackle operation. But it's not like you can just wander down the beach to the next place, so we stopped in. The burgers were $20, fully loaded with mushrooms, bacon and cheese and with a little couscous salad on the side. At first this seemed ludicrously high, but take a look at the picture above and you'll see that they didn't really spare much with the burger itself. Plus, you're in the middle of a week-long hike, and a big greasy burger just sounds right somehow. It was delicious, and despite what anyone says, worth every penny. Even if the people working there were crabby and a little mean. I also bought some candy, of course.

On our 5th day on the trail we covered 9 km which took us to Camper Bay. It was a lovely little spot along a river with a spot deep enough to take a dip and wash off the day's mud and grime. Which we needed given that the day's hiking had taken up through some pretty good mud bogs. We'd been hearing from the people at the previous camp that the mud along the that stretch of trail was just horrendous, so we were bracing ourselves for the worst. I put the gaiters on first thing. But it really wasn't a bad as everyone had said it was going to be. If you were careful you could avoid the mud, and there really wasn't as much of it as we expected. There were also a lot of big tree roots to climb round and over, but in the end it was relatively doable and it took us a while, but we made it to camp all right, and not too dirty, either.

This is the point where we started seeing fishing boats just off the shore, and hearing boat motors as we were getting out of our sleeping bags in the morning. It was really irritating. Here we are, on this lovely hiking trip, trying to get away from it all, and suddenly there are these noisy boats getting in our way and reminding us that the rest of the world still exists. Bastards! I just wanted to yell at them "You're ruining my wilderness experience!" I don't think it would've made them leave, though.

Our 6th day took us down the inland trail about 3 km, and because the tides were out (and this in our favor), the rest of the day was beach walking. But this was also the day of the boulders. We only needed to cover about 5 km, which would take us to Thrasher's Cove. Tim had hiked the trail before and insisted we get up early and head out so we could get there early, because the beach at Thrasher's was quite small. We made it there by just after noon, and got the best spots on the beach, so it was worth getting up early, I guess. This was the day of the boulder-hopping. I've done a bit of boulder hopping before, but never to this extent. This was something else entirely. The boulder-hopping consisted of making your way around huge boulders, some quite small but others the size of large SUV's, along the beach for nearly 2 km. And the boulders aren't flat. They're curved, angled, and quite sharp in some places. Now try and get up, around, over and down them with a 50 lb pack on. It ain't easy. I'm actually quite surprised that no one got anything more than very minor scrapes that day. I did managed to tweak something in my hip and overbend my knee, but that's not too bad considering how badly it could've gone. And Krista and I managed to have a few full-on rock climbing moments too. Moments where we had to pull ourselves up with our hands while trying to pull off rock climbing moves in hiking boots. It wasn't exactly elegant, but it got us through.

The last day we hiked to the trailhead and got the ferry across to our ride and Port Renfrew. It was only a 5 km jaunt, but it took nearly 4 hours to get through it. There were multiple ladders (the very first thing we came across was a set of ladders right next to camp that no one was looking forward to the next morning), tons of tree roots and a good amount of uphill. Once again I was pretty happy we decided to start from the north end rather than the south. I might've lost it if our first day had been that part of the trail.

And now the little tidbits that need mentioning but don't really go anywhere else.

The Bugs. Oi! The bugs! Having lived on the Island for 4 years, I wasn't really expecting too much in the way of bugs. There are mosquitoes in the treed areas, but for the most part they don't bother you unless you're standing still. And since we were hiking I figured that wouldn't really be an issue. There aren't usually bugs on the beaches because there's generally enough of a breeze coming off the ocean that they don't bother you there. Well, I underestimated the little buggers. There were mosquitoes, of course, but those weren't the main problem. It was these teeny little bugs that you didn't really notice until they started biting you. And bite they did. They seemed to especially like getting at you when you were in the outhouse, defenseless and busy taking care business. My legs and various other parts are currently covered in a lovely pattern of raised red bite marks that make me appear as though I have some delightful tropical disease. No, it's just bug bites. Itchy, irritating bug bites. Really. really itchy bug bites. But they're not contagious, I promise. I did have bug spray with me, the problem was that I didn't think I needed it until it was too late. Little bastards (scratch scratch).

The Boardwalk. The were huge, and I mean HUGE sections of trail that were covered by boardwalk. It really does make sense to use it, I guess, given that the sections of trail not covered by boardwalk seemed to turn into giant mud bogs, but after a while one does tire of the boardwalk. And since it is the wet west coast, the boardwalk gets a little sketchy at times. If it gets wet, the boards get ridiculously slippery because of all the moss and mud caked on them, so you have to slow right down to avoid faceplanting right into the bog. They've also rotted out quite badly in sections, so there are broken boards, boards that are missing, and whole strips where one side of the supporting boards underneath have rotted, so one side of the boardwalk sags, leaving the planks on a treacherous angle, especially if they happen to be wet. All in all it's not a particularly pleasant experience, but I think I'll take the boardwalk over tromping through the same amount of mud. There are also sections where, in place of boardwalk, they've simply used an already fallen tree and just chainsawed cross-hatching into it. I've never been a circus performer but I felt like one a few times on this trail. The one bonus of the boardwalks is that it makes the trail delightfully flat. There's no need to clamber over tree roots or step around boulders, because the boardwalk's been built overtop of them. It's a love/hate relationship with the boardwalk, really.

The Bogs. Sometimes, it's like Tim says, you just gotta embrace the Bog. The Bog, for those of you initiated in hiking on the wet coast, is a huge pool of mud created in a depression on the trail. The water and dirt collect, thus creating a lovely bog of mud. A good chunk of the time you can just skirt around the edges of said bog without getting too dirty. Other times, you have to pick your way across using the logs, roots and other things people or Mother Nature have thrown into the bog to make it passable. And yet, sometimes there's no choice but to go straight on through, mud be damned. There were quite a few Bogs along the trail, but I'd have to say that pretty much all of them were avoidable. Gaiters were a common sight on the trail, but if you were careful you really didn't need them. If we had been a few weeks earlier, or it had rained a bit more than it did, then it would've been a different story. But it was relatively dry when we were hiking, so it kept the mud to a relative minimum. I was still pretty glad I had invested in some gaiters, though. After a while, the mud just really gets irritating and you get tired of pussyfooting around the bogs. Or, if you're like me, you have bad balance and fall into one of the Bogs anyways. So the gaiters make it possible to just charge right on through without getting the tops of your boots and beyond covered in mud and wet. They're lovely inventions, those gaiters. Sexy, too. That's right, I make gaiters sexy.

Food. Food is always a big part of any trip. Whether you've got too little, too much or not enough. I underpacked on the snacks for this trip, and I'll say that outright. I coulda used more snacks. Luckily Krista overpacked on her snacks, so I was able to mooch off her, under the guise of helping her to lighten her pack. Worked pretty good, too. Before I started packing for this trip I was searching the internet for meal ideas, and recipes I could use on the trail to break up the monotony of oatmeal for breakfast and Lipton Sidekicks for dinner. And I think I succeeded relatively well. I even inspired some breakfast envy in the rest of the group. I had breakfast burritos the first morning, complete with freeze-dried eggs. They were pretty good, and the eggs even turned out like real eggs. I also found a delightful way to make pancakes a lot more trail-friendly. You put the mix in a Ziploc, then add the water and margerine, and mix it in the bag. Then you cut a corner off the bag and use that to squeeze the mix out of. It worked like gangbusters! I also discovered that jam on pancakes is almost as good as syrup, but that you don't need nearly as much to cover the pancakes. So for all my efforts I was not only rewarded with some delicous breakfasts, but also the envy of my fellow hikers as they sat slowly eating their oatmeal. I myself had some serious lunch envy on this trip, though. Tim, Jerome and the girls actually packed lunches for each day. This is a new concept to me, as when I hike, normally there is no lunch stop, and it's just gorp or granola bars along the way. And they had delicious things such as PB & J on thin buns, and sausage and cheese on wraps for lunch. It looked rather good as compared to my dehydrated apples. For this trip, Krista got good and cozy with her food dehydrator and made most of her meals that way. And it worked pretty darn well. At dinner it was always an adventure to see what she'd come up with. A couple times she had spaghetti and it looked just like she'd cooked it up fresh. I have since vowed to purchase myself a food dehydrator. Not that there's room in my kitchen for one, but I'll find a place to put it, don't you worry.

The walking sticks. At the beginning of the trail myself and the Aussie girls all managed to pick up walking sticks. Tim, Jerome and Krista all had trekking poles. Well, it took me less than 5 km to completely ditch my stick, but the girls managed to hang on to theirs for the rest of the hike. In fact, they became so attatched to them that they actually named them at the end. Bonnie's became George Negus and Sabz' was previously christened "the Slayer", to which she added Excalibur as well. The sticks come in handy, I'm not gonna lie, with balance and testing the depth of mud in the bogs. But I've never hiked with poles or a stick so it felt weird to have to carry one. Tim seemed rather impressed with my no-stick technology for some reason. I figured my balance was bad enough without hampering it with a walking stick. And technically I didn't need it to test mud depth because I had the gaiters. Though I did borrow the Slayer one in one particularly bad bog.

The ladders. The ladders on the trail were an entirely new experience for me. I've never tried to climb a ladder with a 50 lb pack on. It wasn't particularly pleasant. My pack swayed a little as I was climbing, and your waist strap likes to climb up during your ascent or descent, so it's really quite an irritating experience. Not to mention it's a crapload of work hauling yourself and your gear up a ladder. The longest one we climbed (well, of the ones we counted anyways), had 60 rungs, so you can imagine you get a little sweaty by the time you get to the top. Thankfully the ladders on the trail aren't at 90 degree angles, but are sloped a little so it's not as bad. Though there are some that get pretty close to vertical, and they're the hardest ones to climb. Some of them are also set quite a ways from the actual ground, so you feel a little danger at times. I used to wonder how people would get hurt and need to be evacuated from the trail, but after experiencing the ladders, I can completely understand it. They're dangerous, and all it would really take would be one missed rung and you're waiting for the helicopter pilot. It's another love/hate relationship with the ladders, really. It sucks to climb them, but at the same time, you're covering a lot of vertical distance in very little time. So instead of spending an hour hiking uphill with switchbacks, you get 10 minutes of vertical ladders. I don't know about you, dear readers, but I'll take the ladders anyday.My poor, poor feet. Blister seem to be a given on any hiking excursion. Whether it's because you're breaking in a new pair of boots or you wore the wrong socks, they always seem to happen. And this trail was no exception. Though I did get off pretty easy and managed to get only one medium-sized blister. Which, given what happened at Cape Scott a few years ago, seems like a miracle to me. The blister didn't hurt too much, and once I let the fluid out of it, it dried up and didn't give me any trouble after that. But that's not all my sad little feet had to endure. Being crammed into my hiking boots for at least 6 hours a day for 7 straight days didn't really seem to agree with them too much. Especially since they never really completely dried out at night. So I was hiking in damp boots every day. That, combined with the pressure of an extra 50+ pounds on my back didn't do much for my little toes. Or my big toes. Or any of my toes, really. My little toes ended up bruised and red, and probably about 1/3 bigger than they normally are. The bottoms of my big toes ended up the same. And because of the moisture, I managed to get a mysterious rash on the tops of my feet. Tim, being a nurse, had a look at them one night and figured they'd be fine and there was nothing I needed to worry about. And since they weren't itchy or sore, I figured he was right. The rash is slowly going away now and my little toes have gone back to their normal size, but I think it's gonna be at least another week before they look even remotely normal again.

So that, in a nutshell, was my experince hiking the West Coast Trail. If you're considering it yourself, I would definitely recommend it. It's strenuous (even for someone who's in pretty decent shape), but it's well worth the effort. And if you take your time, don't rush and enjoy yourself along the way, it's a rewarding and amazing experience. Even with the blisters.