Hiking the Juan de Fuca Trail – Part 1

July 3, 2017February 8, 2019 / Maria / 9 Comments

It’s a been awhile, so I figured it’s time to get back on the blog with a new post!

Emily was in town last week, which is a sure indication that we’re off on an adventure. I haven’t taken any extended holidays in BC since I’ve moved here (just the occasional long weekend), so I finally took a week off and we hit Vancouver Island to explore for the week.

Visiting Canada’s “gnarliest” tree on the way to Port Renfrew

Hiking and camping have quickly become my favourite Vancouver pastimes. Our first summer here in 2014 we tried some car camping, loved it, and proceeded to do a ton of car camping in 2015. We also started doing some intense hiking in 2015, which quickly got me interested in the idea of backcountry camping so that I could visit areas beyond where I could hike to in a day. I’ve since discovered there’s nothing quite like waking up and poking your head out your tent to a beautiful lake or forest view.

So 2016 was the summer I took up backcountry camping, but I kept it pretty low key – mostly lugging my backpack into a campsite and then doing day hiking from there so that I didn’t have to keep carrying around all my gear. It was a good transition into backcountry, but my heart just kept screaming “more, more, more” at me, so this year I attempted my first multi-day trek.

If you know much about hiking in BC, then you’ve probably heard of the West Coast Trail, which has quite the reputation around here and a pretty cult-like following. I’m definitely not ready for a 75km trek in intense coastal wilderness, so I opted to set my sights on the 47km Juan de Fuca Trail instead.

Starting the Juan de Fuca Trail

Both trails are located along the west coast of Vancouver Island. The West Coast Trail starts in Port Renfrew and heads north along the coast to Bamfield. It’s a national park and you have to register to hike the trail. There are only a limited number of people allowed on the trail at any given time and there are no exit points along the trail – so once you start, you’re committed to finishing. In contrast, the Juan de Fuca trail starts north of Sooke, at China Beach, and extends north to Port Renfrew, ending off near where the West Coast Trail begins. Juan de Fuca is a provincial park, so it doesn’t require any registration to do the trail, which can be a downside in the high season as campsites can get pretty full. However, it does have the benefit of having 2 exit points along the trail – so if you’re struggling, it is possible to bail out.

We thought the Juan de Fuca Trail sounded like a good intro to multi-day hiking and decided to attempt the trail in 4 days/3 nights. We thought this would be totally manageable and I was pretty optimistic about our abilities and thought we wouldn’t have too much trouble on the trail. Even though it was my first multi-day hike, I’ve done lots of hiking and I’ve always kept up a pretty good pace.

The Juan de Fuca definitely challenged us. I won’t say we were unprepared for it, we had good gear and realistic expectations about the trail, it was just a whole lot harder than we thought it would be!

Day 1 was a bit of a rough start for us. We stayed in Port Renfrew the night before and our plan was for me to drop the car off at one end at China Beach and then catch the bus back to Port Renfrew. Unfortunately, the bus only goes to Port Renfrew and not all the way to Botanical Beach (another 3km down the road), which is where the trail starts. Originally we planned to drop Emily at the beach with the bags and I would just walk the extra 3km to meet her, but it was raining when we got up and we didn’t want to make her wait for hours in the rain, so I met her in Port Renfrew instead.

Rain, Yay!

The most common route to hike the trail is starting at China Beach and ending at Port Renfrew. The harder section of the trail is supposed to be located at the China Beach end of the trail, so it’s recommended to get the hard part out of the way first. However, based on our itinerary, the longest day of hiking would be the Port Renfrew section, and the shortest day the China Beach section, so we decided to do the trail backwards to get the longest day out of the way first. Now that it’s all said and done, I definitely don’t have any regrets about our decision as the first day turned out to be a pretty challenging one.

It’s definitely disappointing to start a hike in the rain, but fortunately it was pretty light rain and it was the only rain in the 5-day forecast. We had hoped to eliminate the extra 3km along the paved road, but sometimes you can’t always win, so our longest day of 14km on the trail became 17km right off the bat. We did try to hitchhike the road as we went, but we only saw two cars and sadly neither stopped for us.

It was still raining when we reached the trailhead, but we made it in pretty good time and we had a nice first km along the trail to reach the coast. The first few km’s follow pretty close to the coast through the woods and weren’t too difficult, but gradually the trail started getting more and more challenging. It became more technical, it was slippery because of the rain, and the mud started building up along the trail, so it was pretty slow going.

An idea of what “technical” means

We were aiming to hike 14km of the trail on Day 1 to camp at Little Kuitshe Campsite, so we would be passing through another campsite, Payzant, at the halfway point. We’d hoped to make it to Payzant for lunch, but unfortunately it wasn’t in the cards and we found a rock looking out over the ocean at the 5km mark to have our lunch. Fortunately, it did stop raining around the same time though.

9km was a lot of hiking to do after lunch, so we didn’t rest too long before hitting the trail to make our way to Payzant. Similarly, we only stopped in Payzant long enough for a pee break before heading out again. The further we went, the more the trail started to deteriorate. And by deteriorate, I mean it got pretty muddy. I’m not sure quite what I was expecting the trail to be like, but it was definitely more technical than I had anticipated. Since it’s mostly through the woods along the coast, you’re always going up and down from one creek to the next. If there’s no suspension bridge (and they are limited), sometimes you have to go fairly far back into the woods to get around the creeks. So lots of climbing and lots of mud.

We passed quite a few people on the first day. I suspected the trail probably got pretty busy on the weekends, so we decided to start our hike on a Sunday to try and avoid the crowds. We passed a lot of people going the opposite direction who were finishing up the trail. We only encountered one group going the same direction as us and we kept passing back and forth on the trail.

Our lunch view

Since you don’t see that many people on the trail, it’s pretty common to have a quick chat with the people you pass about how their hike is going and what you can expect to find ahead and behind you. The main news on the trail on Day 1 was that some people had been seeing a black bear along the beach. There were reports of a lone male bear and of a female bear with two cubs. I’d read it was pretty likely we might see a bear while on the trail, so it didn’t bother me too much and I had my bear horn and bear spray on me.

Fortunately, just before we reached the bear, we ran into a group who gave us a heads up that it was right ahead, otherwise I think it may have given us a bit of a fright when we first saw it. They told us it seemed friendly enough and was just minding its own business at the end of the beach. It was a bit of a weird area because we were going along the bluffs through the woods, but because the tide was out, a large section of bare rock was exposed below the cliff. We could see the male bear hanging out by the water at the end of the rock. Unfortunately, it’s right at this section that the trail slopes back down and you have to go out on the rock in order to cross back up on to the trail. I don’t think it would have been a problem if the bear hadn’t decided to head back to the woods at the exact moment that were we’re getting ready to exit them.

I’ve seen black bears before, but never as big as this guy. I would compare him to the size of a grizzly, so he was pretty scary. I didn’t want to cut him off, so we went back up the trail where we could watch him from above. But we were nervous that he would start to climb the trail up to where we were, so I decided to break out the bear horn to dissuade him from coming our way. It was a great time to discover that my crappy bear horn doesn’t work – it’s not like I was depending on it to potentially save my life or anything. So I’ve learned not to get a cheap air horn from Army Navy and I will be investing in a decent one.

Mr. Bear

Since the air horn wasn’t going to be any help to us, we made noise by singing Ed Sheeran’s Castle on a Hill at the top of our lungs instead. This did the trick. We could tell the bear heard us and he didn’t seem too interested – instead he went the other way and popped back into the woods further up. We kept singing and waited him out for about 15 minutes before heading down the trail and back up into the woods on the other side. I was still worried he would be up on the trail ahead of us, so we continued singing girl guide songs for the better part of an hour until we finally ran into some people going the other way and reached the parked cars at Parkinson Creek, which is one of the 2 bail-out opportunities.

We were in much better spirits once we reached Parkinson’s and had only 4 km to go to the campsite. Our trail notes informed us there was a nice flat section ahead, so even though we were really tired and it was later in the day (4pm), we were optimistic we could reach the camp by 6pm since we were averaging about 2 km an hour.

Along the trail we’d passed some pretty muddy people and they kept commenting to us that we were so clean. We didn’t think we looked very clean, but we figured it was just because we were only on our first day on the trail and some of the people we passed were on their 3^rd or 4^th day. We should have realized it meant that the worst was still ahead. Our flat km turned out to be the worst km of the day as “flat” translates into “super muddy” when it gets wet or has been wet for a while. It rained the whole week prior to our trek, so it’s not surprising that it was pretty muddy.

Her face says it all

Km 10 was definitely the worst km of the entire trail. We’d still managed to stay somewhat clean (thank goodness for gaitors), but km 10 was another story entirely. The whole trail was totally covered in thick, wet mud, often mid to knee deep and impossible to go around. We tried our best to navigate it without getting our feet wet (it was the type of mud that’s about a foot deep with another foot of dirty water on top of it), but after km 10 took a whopping 50 minutes, we knew we had to just give into the mud and go straight through it or we’d never make it to the camp.

It was a pretty grueling last 4 km and we got entirely covered in mud. Emily somehow managed to get it all the way up to her crotch during one dark moment when she got stuck and I had to pull her out. Our feet were wet and our socks squished out mud every step we took, but at 6:30pm we finally strolled into the campsite. We hadn’t stopped or taken our packs off once during the last 2.5 hours, so when I finally took it off my spine actually bent me completely forward because it was so used to my 35lb pack and I had to hobble around for a minute before I could properly stand up straight.

Little Kuitshe Campsite

Little Kuitshe was definitely my least favourite of the 3 campsites we stayed in because it’s a wooded campsite and you can’t see the beach, but we found a really nice spot to pitch our tent that was complete with a home-made benched cooking area and a clothesline. It wasn’t hard to find a camping spot, but it was reasonably busy and by the end of the evening I think every campsite had been taken. There were 2 or 3 other groups that wondered in after us – but everyone else was hiking the opposite way and was on the final leg of their journey.

Emily led us in a nice yoga/stretching exercise and then we pitched the tent and got supper on the go. But we were zonked after 17km and 9.5 hours straight of hiking, so we hit the sack pretty fast. I still didn’t really know what to make of the trail after Day 1, I just hoped it would get easier on Day 2!

To Read Part II of this blog post, click here.

Here’s a few more pictures from Day 1:

A Hot Start to Summer

July 18, 2015July 21, 2015 / Maria / Leave a comment

Summer has been off to a great start this year! I think I’ve alluded to how much I love spring in BC and this year summer has been just as much of a treat for me. Temperatures have been in the high 20’s since the end of May and it always amazes me to realize that I’ll actually get to enjoy three full months of summer!

Our warm and dry winter led us into an even warmer and dryer summer. The grass that was beautiful and green all winter has turned golden brown in the summer heat. I can only recall two days when it has rained since the beginning of June. I love the sun, but the heat has definitely required a little bit of an adjustment from what I’m used to. At any given time it’ll be between 27 and 30 degrees in our house and I’ve taken to leaving all the windows open and sleeping without blankets and the fan pointed right at my face. Unfortunately, the dry heat and lack of rain hasn’t been great for the wildfires across the province and the air quality has been pretty bad in recent weeks.

But I won’t complain because I absolutely love the sunny weather! I’ve been planning my summer activities with abandon, not worrying about how the forecast might turn out. We’ve already crammed in a ton of summer activities and knocked a few more items off my bucket list.

The fun started right after my return from Brazil with a visit from my wonderful parents! They came to stay with us for the May long weekend and we took advantage of the holiday to travel down to Washington State for the weekend. It was Mom and Dad’s first trip to Seattle and we did a little exploring around famous Pike Place Market and then cheered on the Boston Red Sox at a baseball game at Safeco Field (I think it was my first time not cheering for the home team). We didn’t spend too long in Seattle though and opted instead to spend the weekend exploring enormous Olympic National Park.

The Park is located south of Seattle along the west coast, just below Vancouver Island. It was quite a bit larger than we thought, so we spent two days driving around the park trying to fit in as many of its diverse attractions as we could. We had a picnic lunch at a waterfall in Elwha, hiked through the forest near Crescent Lake, went tidepooling at Rialto Beach, and took in the amazing views along Hurricane Ridge. It’s a beautiful park and I wish we’d had a bit more time to spend there. We tried to fit in a few small hikes so we could see a bit of everything, but we did have to spend large portions of our time driving.

Olympic National Park is also home to another setting you might be familiar with, Twilight. The area serves as the setting for Stephanie Meyers popular franchise and we passed through many of the towns from her book. Rialto Beach is located just across the river from La Push and we had a good laugh when we drove through Forks on our way there. They’ve definitely capitilized on ‘Twilight Fever’ and we saw a lot of references to the books around the town. The sun came out for us though, so we didn’t see any vampires around!

Towards the end of May, Seth and I bought bikes as a new way to explore the city. Steph joined us for a bike ride around the Stanley Park seawall at the end of May, but otherwise we’ve mostly been biking around New West. We discovered one of the outdoor public pools within biking distance is free, so that’s been a great way to cool down on hot days. New West is very hilly though, so I really need to work on my leg muscles for biking!

In June we kicked off our camping and hiking season. Our first camping trip was out to Chilliwack Lake Provincial Park. Karen and Grant joined us and we had a fun drive out, stopping for a pretty memorable meal at one of the local bars called Tractorgrease. We spent the weekend BBQing, lounging by the lake, working on our frisbee skills, and making s’mores over a campfire. We ended the trip with a short hike up to Lindeman Lake, one of Chilliwack’s many mountain lakes.

We also made a trip out to Golden Ears Provincial Park in early June with some of my colleagues and went on a nice hike out to Viewpoint Beach, nestled in the mountains along one of the freezing, snow-melt rivers. The river would numb your toes, but we went for a swim in gorgeous Alouette Lake at the end of the hike, one of my favourite places from last summer.

One of the biggests excitements of the month was the FIFA Women’s World Cup, which I’m sure you know was hosted in Canada this year! I bought a set of tickets to several games in June of last year and I couldn’t wait to finally see the women play. We had tickets to two games from the group round (Cameroon vs. Ecuador and Japan vs. Switzerland), two games in the round of 16 (Canada vs. Switzerland and Japan vs. Netherlands), and the quarterfinals (Canada vs. England). It was so incredible to cheer on Canada twice at sold out games with more than 50,000 people in attendance! We finished off the tournament with tickets to the final; it was a bit of a disappointing game since we decided to cheer for Japan, but still an incredible event to witness! Most of all, I was happy to support women’s sports and I hope that Canada came to appreciate their awesome female atheletes a little bit more.

Some other highlights from June included going on a tour of UBC and Wreck Beach with Amy, seeing Ed Sheeran in concert, and celebrating my 25th birthday. I didn’t manage to get tickets to see Ed Sheeran in the first sale, so I had to pay a lot more to get tickets from a third-party, but it was so worth it! Ed is such a fantastic performer – it’s just him, his guitar, and a loop station on stage. Steph and I had such a blast watching him, we decided if he ever comes back we’ll be shelling out for floor seats! I also had a great birthday. I’m pretty sure we gathered up all the Newfoundlanders we could find in the city and had a nice BBQ at the house; although sadly, I forgot to take any pictures.

Our most recent exploit was a Canada Day hike in Garibaldi National Park. I’d heard a lot of good things about Garibaldi from people at work, so we wanted to check it out. We did the 18km hike with one of my colleagues and it was just as impressive as everyone raved it was! The hike itself is a bit of a slog – you start with about 6km of steady uphill through the trees before you really get to any scenery. We stopped for a snack at the 6km mark and encountered one of our favourite birds, Gray Jays (or as they’re known in BC, Whiskey Jacks), which don’t need much enticing to eat straight out of your hand!

The scenery improves a little after that and we hiked through some peaceful meadows before finally reaching gorgeous Garibaldi Lake. It’s a glacial lake and has some of the clearest, blue-green water I’ve ever seen. It’s surrounded by snow capped mountains with the Sphinx and Sentinel Glaciers on the far side of the lake. My colleague was doing a dry run with his big pack for a weeklong hike he’s doing in August, so he had his bag filled with every sort of sandwich fixin’ imaginable and we had a delicious meal on the shore of the lake. After lunch, we all went for a swim in the freezing, crystal clear water to cool down before the hike back. We ended the day with the New West fireworks show, which truly made for a perfect day!

That’s my summer thus far in a nutshell. I’m looking forward to lots more camping in July and I’ll be home for a full two weeks in early August. Sending lots of love and sun back to Newfoundland!

Maria

A Year in British Columbia

January 31, 2015 / Maria / Leave a comment

It’s officially been a year since I moved to the West Coast!

It’s been a pretty eventful year and I can’t believe how fast the time has gone by! Looking back, I realized I’ve actually done very little writing about my time in BC over the past year and decided to reflect on some of the adventures I’ve had. Despite the lack of blog entries, I have been pretty busy and decided to make a list of some of my favourite things I’ve done in BC over the last year to share with you. Here are the top 12 highlights of my year on the West Coast:

12. Annual Festivals in the Lower Mainland

Enjoying hot cider at the Christmas Market

I’ve discovered there’s always something going on in and around Vancouver and there are tons of events and festivals to check out throughout the year. There’s the Celebration of Lights firework shows in July, the rotating Food Cart festivals around the city, the Pacific National Exhibition in August, Fright Night at Halloween, and the many Christmas light festivals and Christmas Market in December. We recently did Dine Out Vancouver as well, a 2 week festival in January where restaurants all over the city offer three course meals for $18, $28, or $38.

Skiing on Seth’s Birthday

11. Skiing Cypress

I have to admit that the ski weather isn’t always the best outside Vancouver, but I love having access to skiing so close to the city! I’ve been up to Cypress three times since I moved here; they do seem to struggle to get enough snow and to keep it on the mountain (although I’ve been told it’s been a bad season), but it’s a great size mountain and only 30 minutes away! I am hoping to get out to Whistler this year though!

10. Hiking in the Okanagan

HIking in Summerland

Over the Labour Day long weekend Seth and I drove out to the Okanagan and spent three days camping in Okanagan Lake Provincial Park. We spent our time swimming in the beautiful lake, visiting wineries in BC’s premier wine region, and hiking along the train tracks of an old steam train. It was a pretty relaxing weekend and we loved all the beautiful scenery in the Okanagan and along the drive.

Canadian Women’s Soccer

9. Sports and Concerts

Living near a city that actually attracts popular artists and has several home teams in multiple sports has been a real pleasure, although one that I still haven’t really taken full advantage of. We saw the women’s Canadian soccer team and the Vancouver Giants play this year and we’re planning to catch a Canucks game soon. Hopefully this summer we’ll also get a chance to see the Vancouver White Caps (soccer) and the Vancouver Canadians (baseball) play. I only went to one concert last year, Elton John, but there’s always someone putting off a concert downtown and I plan to pay closer attention to who else visits this year!

8. Hiking the Chief

View from the Chief

One of BC’s more popular hikes in the lower mainland is The Chief. We decided to hike it when my Dad visited in early June. As challenging as the hike proved to be (it’s about a 700m elevation gain in just a few kilometres), the view from the top was amazing! The Chief has three peaks that you can hike to, but we were so exhausted after the first one that we decided just to do one. Pretty much the entire hike is rock steps and near the top there’s a fair bit of climbing using chains attached to the rock, but it’s well worth the effort once you reach the top!

Cherry Blossoms in April

7. Spring weather

Spring is actually a real season in BC and this was the first year I’ve ever appreciated it! I couldn’t believe when the cherry blossoms starting budding in April and that it was 22 degrees outside when we had a team BBQ outside at work in early May. Sorry Newfoundland, but I do not miss snowy May 24 or Juneuary.

6. Kayaking the Sunshine Coast

A little starfish I found

My parents came to visit in September and we made a little journey over to the Sunshine Coast and ended up going kayaking in Porpoise Bay. It was probably one of my favourite times kayaking! Porpoise Bay is completely sheltered, so the water was super calm and we saw all kinds of interesting things, from starfish and sea cucumbers, to harbour seals and river otters! We didn’t even need a guide because it was so easy going, so we just spent the morning exploring several bays.

Skagit Valley Tulip Festival

5. Trips across the Border

Vancouver is so close to the US border and I love being able to hop across the border when it strikes my fancy! In April Emily came for a visit and we went down to Washington to see the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival and to visit Seattle. Then in August, as you probably know from my previous blogs, my friends came from Newfoundland and we went on an epic road trip from Vancouver all the way down to San Francisco! We decided that Oregon is the undiscovered gem of the west coast.

4. Camping at Cultus Lake

Grilling burgers on our camping trip

Camping was my new discovery this year. We went camping for a weekend at Cultus Lake, but honestly, I don’t think it mattered where we went, I just loved it! My parents gave me their old tent from the 80’s and we bought little bit of camping gear and just had a great time soaking up the sun, swimming, having campfires, and cooking outside. It’s so nice to get out of the city, especially in a place like BC where there’s so much gorgeous landscape to explore!

Alouette Lake

3. Exploring Alouette Lake

We didn’t get a chance to go camping at Alouette Lake, which is located in Golden Ears Provincial Park, but we went there for a day trip in July and loved it. The lake is located right at the base of the mountains and just has the most beautiful backdrop! You can rent canoes there, which was tempting, but we opted instead to go for about a 5km hike along the river next to the lake up to a waterfall. It was a great day and we hope to go camping there this summer.

2. Adopting the Vancouver Lifestyle

My first race!

Don’t worry, I’ll never stop being a Newfoundlander, but one of the things I love about Vancouver is the active lifestyle that people try and live. I really took ownership over my health this year; I started running and hula hooping and made a big effort to adopt better eating habits. Like Newfoundland, everyone here loves the outdoors, but there’s a bit more of an opportunity to enjoy it (weather-wise), so I made every effort to get out and enjoy nature!

Trying some Ethiopian Food!

1. Trying all the restaurants!

Vancouver is so incredibly diverse and there are so many amazing places to eat here! One day I was just thinking about all the restaurants here and realized that I’ve barely eaten at any chain restaurants in the last year! I love trying new foods, especially those that are not easily available in St. John’s, and have been busy trying out as many new foods as possible. My favourites are probably Indian, Thai, and, of course, sushi, but I’ve tried a lot new foods since I’ve been here and love that most of the restaurants are locally owed and pretty authentic. I currently have a tie going for my favourite restaurant between this wonderful vegetarian mexican restaurant at Commercial-Broadway, Bandidos Taqueria, and a delicious sushi restaurant at Royal Oak that my friend introduced me to, Sushi Oyama.