ndanger.organism

2008-09-18, Thursday

I was eating an orange when the bus pulled up. It was a full sized school bus which was probably overkill for 5 people. The driver was from New Zealand. This was his norther-hemisphere summer job, in October he’d head back south for his southern-hemisphere summer job… as a bus driver. Not a bad life. Two of the hikers were a couple from Australia (I think) and they had dragged along a British guy they had met in a pub. He seemed hesitant. The ride to Port Renfrew was uneventful except for Rt. 14 near the Juan de Fuca China Beach trail head when the bus driver stopped for a bear. It didn’t seem bothered by the bus at all.

In Port Renfrew we swapped the aussies and brit for three Vancouver co-workers who had just finished hiking north-south. They were nice guys with a bit of dude in them; I just kept quiet when one was complaining about the bikers in Vancouver. “They’re like rabbits!” he exclaimed. Keeping quiet was easy since I didn’t feel much like talking anyway: I’d woken up with that tickly throat feeling that normally leads to a head cold.

After 3 hours of logging roads, we got to the Bamfield trailhead of the West Coast Trail. The bikers==rabbits guy started loading his gear into his 22″ rimmed Escalade.

“Well there you go!” exclaimed the park warden when I walked into the trail office. Because of recent cougar spottings, she (the warden) had been waiting for someone to pair up with Amelia, a solo hiker, for the first 10 km. I don’t look intimidating (at all) but I had my emergency whistle. Figuring it could also double as a rape whistle if Amelia tried anything funny, I agreed.

Turns out that Amelia used to work for a Victoria based CRO before it got bought by evil Americans and turned into a dilbert inspired carnival of horrors. She quit her job and went on adventures. We spent time talking about clinical research and her time on Everest. Time passed quickly and soon we were at Michigan (12km). Amelia decided to stop there for the night. Since we were out of cougar country, I pushed on solo to Tsocowis (16.5km).

I knew it was beach camping, but imagined that meant “at the edge of the forest” and not “you’re sleeping on sand”, which was a first for me. Luckily I had just read Mike Clelland’s article and knew how to make deadmen deadpeople . Making it a night of firsts, I boiled water in my brand new Foster’s can cook-pot and ultralight stove and made boil-in-bag cous cous–a new recipe.

The tide wouldn’t be in until 3am. Given the dry wood, I felt pretty safe, but I was a little nervous about getting a night-time soaking. I went to bed with my shoes outside the door and my important gear ready to grab if I had to move out of a flooding tent in the middle of the night. I woke to the sound of waves and went outside to look. The ocean was still where it should be, far away from my tent.

2008-09-19, Friday

I woke up, Hydropel‘ed my feet and was off. I’d packed eat-while-hiking breakfasts so I could get started to shake the morning chills. It was now obvious I had a cold. Despite that, I felt pretty awesome. This also turned out to be my day of pictures, so here they are:

Bridge over Tsocowis Creek.

It’s hard to tell but that’s a baby seal. It was napping behind a rock on the beach and made a break for the sea when it saw me. After seeing a seal run I can see why people think they’re so cute. You just want to help the little guy along.

Klanawa River cable car.

Bear scat.

Cougar scat.

Those are all logs. A giant sea of dead logs.

Km 43, where the forest trail was closed “for erosion”. It was getting late and the tides were too high for the beach route. I thought about camping here but the animal prints convinced me to backtrack to Cribs creek (41.5km).

I took advantage of the tidal flats to get some sea water for cous cous flavoring–I sort of forgot to salt my cous cous–and gargling.