Yin and Yang (a.k.a. our vacation in British Columbia)

Ross and I decided to treat ourselves to a two week vacation this year. Start off with a week-long backpacking trip on the West Coast Trail on Vancouver Island, then have a more civilized week touring Victoria, Vancouver, and places in between. A nice balance of challenge and luxury, relaxation and activity.

If you're just interested in the pictures, I took a ton more pictures that didn't make it onto the blog.  You can check them out by clicking this link, or watching the slide show at the top.

We had a great start to the trip, being present for Laurel and John's wedding in Seattle and staying with Amanda, Nick, and Amelia. The next day we left early to drive to Port Angeles to catch the ferry to Vancouver Island. There was very little traffic, and our early arrival gave us enough time to visit a bookstore and locate an outdoor gear store just a few blocks from the ferry line-up. The store opened at 12:15, which gave us just enough time to find and purchase a new pump for Ross's campstove and hurry back to load the truck onto the ferry.

With Amanda at Laurel and John's wedding

From the ferry, we headed out to Port Renfrew ("A" on the map). The highway between Victoria and Port Renfrew was marked as a main highway, but that was a generous description. Super narrow, windy, and a lot of one-lane bridges. Pretty, though.  It was a nice night, so we went for a long walk along a back road before eating dinner and going through our packs one last time.

West Coast Trail Day 1
It started raining somewhere in the middle of the night.  I didn't really think of the consequences of the rain until we walked down the ramp to the dock early the next morning to load onto the sea taxi taking us up to the north trailhead in Bamfield (near the 'Pacific Rim National Park' marker on the map).  The sections of the dock were moving in independent directions, making it a bit challenging to get to the boat, let alone get onto it.  Our boat captain was cheerful and helpful, though, and after a family of 3 joined us, we were off  -- into more than 7 foot swells.  The ride was fun for the first 20 minutes.  Then the nausea hit; that was with taking anti-nausea pills.  Everyone except the captain felt sick.  Three of us were over the rails.  I ended up spending most of the 3 hour boat ride sitting in the very back where although it wasn't dry, it moved the least.  A few whales supposedly passed by the boat.

Happy (and clean) faces starting the trail

Buoys marking camping spots (our tent is tucked in the trees)

We got into Bamfield near 10am and where taken by a local to the park trailhead about 5km (3.1 miles) from town.  Ross and I had thought that we might have to wait a day or two to get our walk-on permits.  (Most of the permits are handed out ahead of time.)  However, the weather was good for one thing - no one else was trying to get walk-on permits.  We tried to dry out our clothes as much as we could while waiting for our orientation.  While we waited we saw several people coming off the trail come in, soaked and muddy - a preview of what we was coming for us.  By the time we hit the trail at 2pm, the rain had pretty much stopped and we just had to deal with the drippy fog. Our hike to Michigan campground I12 km) was pretty uneventful.  Some on the beach, some in the forest - some nice big old trees, a lot of mud, and our first exposure to the ladders.  There were a lot of people at the campground - we later found out that rangers had been by when it was raining and told everyone heading south to stay put.  The rivers and creeks that we had to cross where too high to cross safely for about 24 hours.  After our busy day, we easily went to sleep to the sound of the ocean.

West Coast Trail Day 2
We woke up to a marine layer that burned off by 10, leaving us with blue skies and sun for the rest of the day.  Today was our first exposure to the true nature of the trail - more adventure/obstacle course than hiking trail.

Standard trail & boardwalk conditions

Tons of ships wrecked just off the coast - and are why they made the trail.

Most of the boardwalks were falling apart and all of them were super slick.  More roots and mud.  At one point, Ross slipped on a bridge and almost knocked his front teeth out.  At another, I discovered that what appeared to be a solid edge to the trail wasn't and found myself almost falling down a cliff.  Luckily I was able to grab some roots with one hand and one foot.  Ross was there before I knew it to help me scramble back up.  It would have been a long way down.

On the positive side, we saw A LOT of whales today!  At one point, at least eight playing off the coast.    Some sea lions, too.  And the scenery was amazing.

Tsusiat Falls

We ended our day at Tsusiat Falls.  Super pretty and great to be able to take a much needed shower in the waterfall - but there were way too many people there.  We didn't even bother heading over to the official camp area.  We found a nice little cave to tuck our tent into and enjoy the sunset before some much needed sleep.

West Coast Trail Day 3

This was our longest day – 17 km.  Really, not that long by normal standards (about 10.5 miles), but all the mileage on this trail took so much longer than what we were used to.  There was a problem bear at the campsite we had hoped to stay at, which forced the longer day.

The day started off nice - ate breakfast while watching some whales playing just off the coast.  Snuck through a hole in the cliffs as the tide was coming up.  Also saw an area where they are working to reintroduce an endangered plant that I work with in Oregon.

We had to take a ferry across the river at Nitinat Narrows.  This area is on tribal land and the ferry operator also has a crab/salmon/whatever is fresh shack set-up.  We each asked for a crab (Dungeness).  He pulled up a cage holding several large, live crab that had been caught just down the river, killed them, and steamed them as we waited.  Combined with two cans of Canada’s finest malt liquor – one of the best lunches ever.

We had a nice, short section of soft, level trail, but most of it was more of the muck, roots, and slick broken boardwalk.  We arrived at Cribs Creek more than ready to sit-down.  Unfortunately, this is the site where Ross got bit by a bunch of no see ums (1-4 millimeters, in the family Ceratopogonidae, related to the black flies).  The bites became red, itchy welts and his ankles totally swelled up for over a week.  Great sunset, though.

Sunset at Cribs Campground

Cribs is also where we left our float.  Old floats were hung in trees to mark campgrounds and where the trail exits/entrances (e.g. when you had to leave the beach for the woods).  Ross had picked up one as we were walking and spent time at Cribs carving it up.  It now hangs near our campsite at Cribs.

West Coast Trail Day 4

Super narrow (&swingy!) suspension bridge.

We thought this would be an easy day, fairly flat, mostly on the beach.  However, the beach was loose sand and gravel – real tiring.  We both got a second wind in the afternoon, but decided to call it a day when we got to Walbran around 3pm.  It would have taken us a bit more than 3 hours to get to the next campsite and we decided to take it easy on ourselves and rest.  There was a thick Marine layer all day, so we didn’t get much of a view, although there were some cool tidepools.

West Coast Trail Day 5

Today – super muddy, slick roots, broken board walks.  I slipped while climbing down a bunch of slick, tangled roots.  I needed Ross to help me back up. On the plus side, it was super cool to be hiking through a temperate rainforest and a super cool swamp (particularly when the boardwalk was in good shape).  On the minus side, it's looking like I tore my meniscus.  It slowed me down a bit, but I still hiked out.

West Coast Trail Day 6

The water was often stained brown like tea.

We left Camper a bit late to travel on the beach, so headed inland through the woods.  My knee hurt quite a bit, but loosened up as we moved.  The trail through the woods was actually pretty nice and there were some huge trees.

Thrasher (a.k.a. Dawson City)

Thrasher was packed.  This was the last campground for those of us hiking north to south and the first campground for those starting at Port Renfrew and moving north.  We hung out around a campfire with a family we’d been seeing on the trail and at camp all week.  It was a bit of a party as those of us heading out the next trail tried to eat up or give away the food they had left.

There was some excitement in the evening.  Ross and I started looking at the afternoon high tide line and realized that our tent was probably close to where the high tide would be that night around midnight.  At about 10pm, we moved our tent to one of the last places left higher on the beach and tried to get some sleep.  As clock ticked, it began to sound like the ocean was about to come through the tent.  A little after 11, a bunch of flashlights came on and we could hear a bunch of murmurings through the camp as several tents were nearly swamped. 

Log crossing

West Coast Trail Day 7 – Last day

We woke up early, thinking it was raining, but realized it was just rain dripping on the fly.  The last 6 km went by pretty fast (relatively – about 3.5 hours).  The trail revisited our favorites from the past, ladders, mud, boardwalks, plus a ton of logs to walk across and slippery rock bouldering.

A short ferry ride and we signed out at the ranger station.  We found out that in addition to being shuttled from the trailhead to our truck (parked near the harbor), our parking lot came with the benefit of clean, warm showers.

So, we took 7 days to do the trail.  Could have done it without pushing too much in 6 - but we were on vacation, what's the rush?  I found out that someone has actually run the trail in about 10 hours.  Someone else had been planning on trying to beat the record our first day on the trail, but decided to cancel due to the weather.  You'd have to have perfect conditions to run it in that kind of time. 

The 'civilized' half

The civilized portion of our trip started with burgers and beer at the Coastal Café, then getting back in the truck and driving on an old logging road (now paved, though still just a secondary road)to Lake Cowichan.  We camped near a lake and spent a few hours hanging out on a beach and swimming.  From Lake Cowichan, we went through Duncan, where we went on a guided tour of the cities many totem poles.  We wandered through Cowichan Bay, a cool artsy, environmental bayfront town.  We found a great park to hike in and spent some time wine and cider tasting.  We also continued our exploration of BC's best cheese shops, bread bakeries, and farm stands.  On this part of the trip almost every lunch consisted of super yummy cheese, fresh heirloom tomatoes, and crusty artisan bread.  We spent a fun couple of hours kayaking through Cowichan Bay.  We didn't see any whales, but we did see a couple of see otters munching on something tasty and a ton of seals, including some babies that were hanging out on floating logs. 

A busker at Victoria's inner harbor.

From there, we went on to Victoria.  I was able to introduce Ross to both high tea (though we went a cheaper route than the infamous Empress Hotel) and one of my most-favorite-ever restaurants, Rebar.  We saw a great exhibit at the Royal BC Museum, had drinks on the fancy porch of the Empress, and generally enjoyed wandering the city.


From Victoria, we went to Salt Spring Island.  This island is known for its artists and was where a bunch of draft dodgers came during Vietnam.  Our first stop was a bakery, followed by a wonderful cheese place (both of them were at the owners' homes and farms), and a couple of wineries.  We wandered through a few art shops before stopping for dinner at a restaurant that grew it's own vegetables and bought most of the rest of it's food either on the island or in BC.

The Olympic Torch from the 2010 Winter Game.

Our last few days were spent in Vancouver.  We had briefly passed through here a few years ago on our bike tour, but didn't get a chance to stay.  We spent a lovely two nights at Nelson House Bed and Breakfast, right near downtown.  We wandered all through the harbor and China Town, took a tour through the Dr. Sun Yat Sen Chinese Garden, and had a couple of great runs through Stanley Park (my knee actually felt better after moving).

Great trip over-all.   It was hard to come home, though very nice to see our Tobey-dog and Ceacelia-cat again (many thanks to my parents for once again watching the kids!).