Solo hike

I got up at 5.40am to walk to get the 6.15 bus from Victoria to the Juan de Fuca trail. The bus ride was long and winding and bumpy and I was glad to get out at Port Renfrew for breakfast. After tea and a burrito, I set out further along the road we'd driven in the bus. The trailhead was still 4km away! What kind of trailbus drops you off 4km from the trail?! I was raging all the way (the bus fare was $60 each way) and was hot, sweaty and tired before I'd even started.

Finally! The trail. I paid my backcountry camping permit at the honesty box in the car park (that the bus could have driven to) and started my 20km hike. At first, the wide trail was easy going and I was soon at the rocky shoreline. After a quick chat with an Irish lady, I carried on along the shore in the trees. The trail was narrow here and harder to walk on - slippery roots, mud, sections of boardwalk built decades ago, mossy and rotten, some planks missing entirely, consumed by the forest floor. 

When I wasn't in the dense trees, I was in creepy dark sections of forest with no undergrowth or going through tunnels of bushes - salal berry bushes 7ft high on either side, closing in, trying to take back the trail. And it wasn't just people who used the trail. There were bear poos everywhere! Most looked like pats of smooshed salal berries. They were pretty big, so I guess their makers are too! I sang as I walked or recited poems to the forest, trying not to feel embarrassed when I met someone coming the other way. 

I saw maybe 20 people all day, in pairs or groups. And I saw almost 30 bear scats. When I got too tired to sing and walk, I whistled and walked. When I got too tired to whistle, I clapped. And when I was too tired to clap, I just walked. I stumbled a few times on slippery logs and was feeling pretty keen to get to the campsite. I'd set off in a pair of socks that had a hole in the heel and despite my efforts to plaster it over, my sweaty feet kept shedding the plasters and by the end of the day, I had a painfully raw heel.

The path took me down to the beach and I wandered across the rocks, rounded pebbles and sinking sand. I could see some tents around the bay but couldn't walk on the beach all the way to them - the path must go back into the trees somewhere. I saw a sign that marked an alternative high tide route, but there was plenty of beach, so I carried on along it. Then I saw where the tide came up to the cliffs. It was still shallow enough to walk but deep enough to get my feet wet. I ended up wading through 8 inches of salt water, my raw heel burning then being rubbed harder in my wet boots. 

I saw a rope hanging off a steep scree slope of a cliff and climbed up, only to find that the path at the top went the wrong way - it was the alternative high tide route I should have taken. Back down the rope, arms and legs mad at my bad decision making. Then along the beach until the path actually went back into the woods and I made it to the campsite sweaty, salty and bedraggled after 8 hours of hiking and a total of about half an hour in breaks.

I found a sandy pitch above the driftwood line, changed into dry clothes and hung out my sweat-drenched shirt and sports bra, socks and boots before setting up camp and cooking dinner. 

The campsite was fairly busy, being near a car park accessible from the road above. The girl in the tent next door was Elle, here on her own too, spending a week on the beach to unwind from her full time job and full time studies. I also met Mike, who gave me a beer before he set off down the beach to a quieter spot to cook up the muscles he'd colleted that day.

I went to bed early but was kept awake a while by the noisy people the other side of Elle (they had been taking acid all evening and were now feeding the gulls and playing music) and my thoughts about the day ahead...

If I'm honest, I didn't really enjoy the trail. I didn't mind being on my own too much, it's just that it wasn't as nice as the places I'd been with Dave. The forest wasn't as pleasant to be in and there were no incredible views, no mountains, no glaciers, no lakes, no alpine meadows. Just lots of trees and mud and poo. I was dreading getting up, putting on my wet clothes and doing another 20km that was marked on the trail map as 'very difficult'. Then I had an epiphany - I don't have to get up and do more of the trail! I am on holiday after all. My plan at the end was to hitch back to Victoria and I could do that from anywhere. So I turned off the alarm that I'd set and fell asleep with the weight lifted from my shoulders.

In the morning I woke to a spider crawling up the walls in my tent. I'd opened the door a little in the night and the warm, dry tent had attracted a woodlouse, several fattened mosquitos and a few spiders, all of which had to be captured and released. That done, I had breakfast under cloudy skies as a thin mist blew in off the sea, finished my book, chatted to Elle, had a nap then sat watching the waves, reflecting on the last few months and thinking about how to shape my post-Canada life as the gulls picked through the trash left by the acid-taking crowd.

In the afternoon, I walked along the beach and bumped into Elle again. She told me about a nice waterfall and some good bouldering rocks so along I went. The rocky beach was home to ants, spiders and other creepy crawlies. There were so many spiders sunning themselves on the pebbles that I'd see them scatter with every footfall. I'm surprised there were only a handful in my tent this morning! I got to the rocks in a nice bay and did some bouldering - I even got kudos from a passing couple for some nice moves on a little overhang. Then I headed up the creek and saw ahead 20ft rock faces either side of the creek and a fallen tree on top, creating a cave effect by blocking some of the light from above. At the back of the cave, a waterfall cascaded down and the walls were damp with mossy growth.

I wandered back to my tent, waved goodbye to Elle as she left to catch the bus and sat on my driftwood log as the sun came out from behind the clouds and warmed me up. I watched a spider hunt and kill an ant and saw a seal in the water, then turned my attention to people watching. The couple in Elle's old spot had carried in pillows, a hammock, a bbq, chairs and a big water container in addition to all their camping gear. The big family further along had a collection of coolers and food boxes and even brought a hammer to put their pegs in with (on a beach full of rocks!!). Lots of people had brought heavy containers of tap water all the way down here - madness!

As evening came, I took another walk along the beach past all the people and climbed back onto my boulder. It only had one dry edge now so I sat on the top at the far side where the waves were all around. Earlier in the day, the waves had crashed onto the beach with thousands of pebbles dancing ahead of them, catching a ride up the beach. Now the tide was on its way out and the sound of a wave breaking was followed by the rain-maker sound of thousands of pebbles being dragged back into the sea. The low sun reflected on the water and little wading birds hurried back and forth along the shore. 

Eventually I went back to my tent, had a chat with a couple next to me and made quesadillas before going to bed.

In the morning, the forest looked magical as the sun shone shafts of light between the big trees whose branches dripped with lichen. I packed up and headed towards the car park behind a couple who were parked there. I asked for a ride and got taken almost to Victoria, where I caught a bus to the hostel.