West Coast Trail Vancouver Island - and some faffing in Washington

Unbelievably, I convinced my boss to give me a vacation. Despite the fact I have only worked for about 4 months, she let me take a week and a half off to go hike the West Coast Trail of Vancouver Island. To maximize my vacation time, I left Thursday after work and drove all night long to Spokane, Washington. There I visited my cousin Jen and caught up on sleep. Then I headed over to see my grandfather near Lake Chelan, then went to Seattle to see my old fabulous friend Kristan, then up to Everet to visit my aunt and uncle, then further up to Sedro-Wooley on Sunday to see my grandmother and another aunt-uncle pair. It was more family in 3 days than I have seen in the last 5 years.

Hike in Spokane
Me and Jen
Grandma and I (I am rolling my eyes at some silly comment Aunt Judy made)

On Monday I took a ferry to Victoria to meet up with my very good German friend Leif and his people Marcus (German), Ryan and Holly (Canadians). Holly was gracious enough to let all of us stay at her house while we prepared for this hike. I kept urging everyone to lighten their load, but the threat of rain made us all skittish about taking less. On Wednesday morning, Holly dropped us all off (or more like just let us open the doors and pour out of her and Ryan’s tiny hatch-back Volkswagen….imagine the disappointment of hitch-hikers we passed along the way!).

After a short orientation and a realization that we were going to be gouged for another 36 Canadian dollars for 2 ver short ferry crossings on the trail, we headed out. Ryan scored us a free ride in a van to the trail head, then we took a 5 minute (16 Canadian dollar) ferry ride and we were off. The first 5 km were definitely the hardest – very steep and rooty. We also reached the highest elevation of the trek (200m above SL) on this stretch. The next 8 km were a bit better but still tough, then we reached camp very satisfied that the worst was over. However, we couldn’t be too proud of ourselves as we still had 62 km left to go. We got a great camp site on the beach at a river mouth so we had the best of both worlds – fresh water and plenty of driftwood for fire. As we continued the next days, the terrain got more variable and beautiful. Just look at the pictures. I think they say it better than my babbling.

All together the hike was 75 km (47 miles), had over a hundred bridges and over 90 ladders we did it in 5 days. I got up and left a little early because the ferry schedule and bus schedule necessitated that. We got rained on a little, but Ryan made a good fire to dry us out. I returned to work on Wednesday, tired, but got to work late doing Turkey Vulture trapping and blood sampling. Mmmm! Fragrant! I will put pictures up from that soon.