SCT Part IV: Powell River to Confederation Lake

October 12, 2022October 21, 2022 / Maria / 1 Comment

Click here to start reading Part I.

When I got off the trail on August 6th, I felt like the disappointment of not finishing was going to swallow me whole. I’ve had to be pretty fluid with a lot of my trip planning through Covid (like everyone else); when my trip to Assiniboine was cancelled in 2020, I did the North Coast Trail; when Seth got a new job in 2021, we postponed our kayak trip to Desolation Sound; and when Jasper caught fire in 2022, Brandon and I relocated to Strathcona Park. But the SCT had been on my bucket list for several years and I had trained for it and prepared all my gear for this year and I really wanted to finish it.

So I did. Carolyn had been forced to do the entire thing solo when me and Emily got off the trail, so I’d like to think she gave me some confidence to return and finish the rest of the trail solo too. I already had time off in early September, so I finished work a little early on the Friday before the Labour Day long weekend and flew back to Powell River for another attempt. Seeing as I got off the trail at the Shingle Mill Pub, the float plane was the perfect way to return. The shuttle company dropped off some of the supplies I couldn’t fly with (bear spray and fuel) and I arrived at the pub around 5pm and was back on the trail within minutes of arriving!

After leaving the pub, you cross the bridge towards Powell River and then you can immediately jump back on the trail. Emily and I had been planning to camp at Tony Point the night we got off trail, which is 5km from the pub (seen from the float plane in the photo above), so I just picked up my old itinerary and started walking. It’s about an hour to Mowat Bay, which is a popular recreation site on Powell Lake where I stopped for a quick snack, and then another hour to Tony Point, also located on the lake. I did modify my itinerary when I decided to go solo to stay mostly at huts, but given my late start time, I knew I would have to camp the first night.

Tony Point is a lovely little site next to the water. It has a picnic table, a monument, flat space for ~2 tents, and not much else. I assumed I would be alone, but fortunately, there was another solo female hiker there as well! I was prepared to sleep alone, but was also thrilled to have someone to help ease into solo camping. We ended up crossing paths for several days and it was nice to trade stories.

I went for a quick swim when I arrived and then had supper before setting up my tent. I was feeling pretty confident, but the forest definitely changes when you’re alone at night. On this evening, it was windy, which created a lot of ominous sounds in the woods and the trees kept dropping leaves on my tent, so I was glad for a companion. I kept thinking a bear was walking into the site, so eventually I got up to have a look around. It was clear there was nothing there and that helped ease my mind and eventually I was able to fall asleep. I ended up sleeping in the huts every night after that, so it was a little annoying to carry my tent for another 130km for no reason, but still a good safety precaution.

It was nice and sunny the following morning, so I set off before 8am. The other hiker was hoping to go all the way to Fiddlehead Hut, but I was only aiming for Confederation Lake Hut. It’s still a lofty 19km of hiking, but I really wanted to go the long route around Inland Lake, so I ended up clocking 24km. I was a little on edge hiking the first morning because I was very weary of bears. The trail continues around Powell Lake before going through the Haywire Bay Car Camping park. Shortly after Haywire Bay, I scared something large in the woods – I never saw it, only heard it running away from me – it was either a bear or a deer, so I was very diligent with my bear calls after that. I saw lots of evidence of bears (poop), but I never actually saw a bear, so I got a lot more comfortable walking around alone in the woods after a few days.

The trail continues around Lost Lake, which is pretty overgrown, before you come to Inland Lake, which I was really looking forward to. Inland Lake is a provincial park with some frontcountry sites, huts, and a huge loop around the lake. If you do the whole loop, it’s 12km, but on the SCT, you can either do the south end (4km) or the north end (8km). I was looking forward to this section because it follows the shoreline around the entire lake and as a result, it’s completely flat. I was determined to do the longer route because there’s a hut on the west side of the lake that can only be accessed on this route.

I really wanted to visit every hut and take a selfie at each one, so I decided the extra kms were worth it. But I ended up really messing it up. I was having a great time walking around the lake – the kilometers were going by quickly and it was a gorgeous sunny day. I hadn’t yet seen any people, but I was enjoying walking along the lakeside. Such was my enjoyment, that I ended up walking right past the hut without realizing it!! I passed a small log building and picnic shelter that I thought was lovely, but I didn’t stop because according to my GPS (Gaia), the hut was still 2kms away. The paper map shows “Pier Hut” in this location, so I assumed that’s what it was and continued on towards “West Hut” as it’s called on the SCT website. As it turns out, Gaia is wrong about the hut location and West Hut and Pier Hut are in fact the same thing! I didn’t realize my error until 2kms later, so I ended up completely missing it.

There are 2 huts on Inland Lake: “West/Pier Hut” and “Anthony Island Hut”. My guess is that these two huts were built and designed by BC Parks since they’re in the provincial park and are completely different than all the other huts on the trail. These huts were 1 story and could sleep ~3 people, whereas the rest are all 2 stories with a sleeping loft, so I’m not surprised I didn’t recognize it. I don’t have a photo with Pier Hut, but I don’t regret going the long way around the lake because it was a very beautiful trail that passed quickly. Plus I later learned that the south trail has a detour along most of it, so I was glad I got to spend so much time on the lake, as the south route mostly bypasses it with the detour.

I took a short break at the end of the lake to go for a swim and then continued to Anthony Island Hut for lunch. I finally saw a few people around the lake, but it was pretty empty. I passed a group of day hikers, a family bike riding, and a couple on their paddleboards. Otherwise I didn’t see anyone else on the trail all day! When I stopped for lunch before 1pm, I had already hiked 17km, so it was a big start for me and I was feeling good!

I was able to maintain this pace since it was mostly flat, but after lunch it was all uphill to Confederation Lake. The trail does 600m of elevation gain in 5km through the forest, so I listened to my audiobook while I trekked up through the woods. It’s a pretty boring and steep trail up to the lake – I’d briefly flirted with the idea of going all the way to Fiddlehead to catch my companion from the night before, but 24km of hiking was definitely enough for me. The most annoying part of Confederation Lake is that when you finally get there, there’s still another 2km through the woods around the lake before you finally get to the hut. But I loved the hut!

I haven’t heard a lot about Confederation Lake Hut, but it’s really nice! It’s located right on the lake and is fully enclosed, with enough room for a handful of tents. I arrived around 4pm and was the only person there. I took a bath in the lake and then settled in for a snack. I was expecting to be alone at the hut, but it felt nice and safe, so I was okay with it. So I was thrilled when I came back from filtering water and found a family of 4 had arrived for the night! It was an older couple with their grown daughter and her friend/partner. They were super nice and I enjoyed hanging out and chatting with them for the rest of the night after having been alone all day. I’m an extrovert, so I definitely relish the opportunity to chat with people after a day on my own. The theme of my trip was early nights and early mornings though, so I said goodnight as soon as the sun went down.

Continue reading Part V.

SCT Part III: Big Sliammon to Powell River

October 5, 2022October 21, 2022 / Maria / 1 Comment

Click here to start reading Part I.

The next day was exhausting in a whole different way. Emily had almost a dozen blisters on her feet and wasn’t feeling great. She has a bad history of getting blisters and has tried so many different pairs of boots. She hadn’t been having any issues with her current boots, but she also hadn’t done any hikes longer than 2 days in a while. Usually she doesn’t get blisters until around day 4, so it was a little concerning that she had them after just 2 days of hiking.

We had 3km to get to Little Sliammon Lake, also known as Shangri-la. Emily was moving pretty slow, but we got there and I went for another swim. Little Sliammon is more popular than Big Sliammon, but I’m not really sure why. Little Sliammon is more of a pond in my opinion, with lots of vegetation growing in the lake – but it does have a dock that extends past the vegetation, so I guess that’s why it’s popular. In contrast to us being the only people at the big lake, there were about a half dozen groups that had spent the night at the little lake. Some of them were thru hikers just doing the northern part of the trail and the rest of them were day hikers.

Emily didn’t want to have to re-do all her moleskin, so I went for a swim on my own. The water was still super warm so I opted to wash my hair with biodegradable shampoo and was feeling really nice and clean, despite my shirt and backpack smelling terrible.

Things went downhill after that. We had 7km to Powell River and Emily was really dragging her feet. I could tell she was upset, but I didn’t want to push her. There’s a bit of uphill after the lake, but then you hit an old logging road and it’s a very gentle downhill for 1.5km. Emily finally had a breakdown on the downhill and declared that her feet hurt too much and she couldn’t do it. I wasn’t sure if it was just your standard thru-hike trail despair or something more, so I told her to just focus on getting to the pub for now and think about the rest later.

Eventually the road ended and the final 4km were pretty brutal. Not physically for me, but physically for Emily and mentally for both of us. The trail climbs up to Scout Mountain, which is similar to Manzanita Bluff and has amazing views looking out over Powell River – in any other circumstance I think we would have loved it – but we were both seeing our dream of completing the trail slipping away and the mood was very somber.

As we approached Powell River we had a frank discussion about the trail and Emily admitted that she thought it would be a mistake to continue onwards. Her feet were in a lot of pain and she cried a lot of the way down. I think it was a combination of pain from the blisters, but also disappointment and questioning of whether she would be able to do long distance hiking at all in the future.

It felt like it took forever to go up and over Scout Mountain and the descent was particularly hard on Emily’s feet. Eventually we stumbled into the Shingle Mill pub, which marked 10km for the day and km 50 overall. If it was anyone else, I would have helped them figure out a way home and then continued on. Carolyn was coming through Powell River the following day and I could easily have completed the hike with her. But this was my baby sister who no longer lives in BC and had travelled thousands of miles to spend the week with me, so there was no question of continuing for me.

It was a disappointing decision because I was feeling really good. I’d loved the first 50km and I was feeling ready and capable of completing the next 130km. My family seemed pretty concerned about Carolyn and whether she would also get off the trail, but I knew she wouldn’t hesitate about completing the trail and she did go on to finish the entire 180km in just 7 days – 1 day faster than she’d originally planned. What a tank!

Anyways, we had lunch in the pub while figuring out our next steps. We were planning to drive home with Carolyn and wouldn’t be able to go home that day because the shuttle bus only goes once a day, so we needed somewhere to stay for the night. We were trying to sort out hotels when Emily cracked a joke about how we should just fly Harbour Air back to Vancouver. Harbour Air actually flies right out of the pub because it’s located on Powell Lake, and while Emily was joking, I thought it wasn’t a bad idea.

I looked up the flight schedule and saw that there was one leaving in 3 hours, so we decided to go for it and booked 2 seats. With the cost of hotels, ferries, and shuttles, it was only about $100 more to book flights for the 2 of us and that put us both back in Vancouver the same day. Plus we got a scenic flight over the sunshine coast! You only need to check in for the flight 30 minutes early, so we hit up Townsite Brewing for a beer before heading back to Shingle Mill. I took a float plane once before to the hot spring in Tofino, but it was only a 3 seater. This plane had 14 seats, but it was hilarious that you literally just check in at the pub. They set up a little kiosk and take your bags – there’s no assigned seating or tickets.

It’s about 45 minutes back to Vancouver harbour. It was very scenic, but it was definitely bittersweet. You fly right over the trail and I was disappointed about not getting the opportunity to summit Tin Hat, Walt Hill or Mount Troubridge – especially knowing Carolyn was going to do it days later. Seth picked us up downtown and we spent the rest of the week taking it easy. We couldn’t do any hiking, so we did a lot of swimming instead, visiting Sasamat Lake, Belcarra, Buntzen Lake, Alouette Lake, and the Cultus Lake Water Park. We went kayaking to Jug Island and the 8 Corners Tea Room and caught up with Carolyn when she finished, just before Emily returned back to Newfoundland.

That should be where this post ends for this year, but like I said in my first post, I haven’t been able to get this trail out of my head for 2 years and it kept haunting me after I finished. I still had 7 days of dehydrated food for 2 people that I’d spent weeks preparing and I felt incomplete. I didn’t want to put the trail off for another year. Who knows what next year might throw at me and I was ready to do the trail now.

So I decided to go for it. I’d already scheduled 2 weeks off in early September and was planning to go to Jasper for a week and a half with Brandon. He understood that I needed to go back to the Sunshine Coast, so we scaled our trip down to just a week and I returned to the trail on September 2nd, less than 4 weeks after me and Emily had got off the trail, this time solo. So stay tuned for Part IV!

SCT Part II: Manzanita to Big Sliammon Lake

September 28, 2022October 21, 2022 / Maria / 1 Comment

Click here to start reading Part I.

This was the biggest day of backpacking I’ve ever done. My sweet spot for backpacking is probably around 15km per day (except for the North Coast Trail, where it’s 10). We had a good experience doing 16km the day before, but we had to do some big days to finish the trail, so we opted for a big day after Manzanita. At minimum we had to go 17km to Rieveley’s Pond Hut, but we were hoping to push for 24km to Big Sliammon Lake, also known as Kokanee Campsite.

We aimed for an earlier start and were hiking before 8am. It’s a steady downhill for the first kilometre until you come to a water source just past the junction for the Spire Trail. The next 2-3km were a bit tiring; it was humid and there was lots of up and down, but the trail evens out around km 20 and it was nice and easy forest walking for most of the morning.

We stumbled upon some trail magic around km 22 where the trail intersects with Malaspina Road. Someone had left a cooler full of cold drinking water! So we didn’t need to hold out until the next source and filled our bottles. We hit Fern Gully campsite at km 24, which was a very basic and rustic site. It was nice enough in the forest with lots of shade, but I think it might be a little creepy to stay there on your own.

There’s a steep uphill after Fern Gully, but it’s short lived and then the trail continued to be pretty easy. Our goal was to reach Plummer Creek Campsite by noon and we succeeded around 11:15am. Plummer Creek is located at km 26, so we’d already done 10km for the day. Plummer Creek itself is a great water source and I liked the campsite, which has lots of flat ground and a few picnic tables. The outhouse left a lot to be desired, but at least it had an outhouse! If you’re looking for a campsite between Manzanita and Rieveley’s, this is the one I would pick.

From there we decided to continue on to the next campsite before starting our lunch. It was 3km that took us through Tokenatch Forest, which was some of the nicest forest walking. There’s a lot of water and several small waterfalls in this section as the trail follows the Tokenatch River. The trail runs parallel to the road until you cross it at Homestead Rec Site, which consisted of lots of easy walking but a very disappointing site. It’s really just a gravel lot on the side of the road with a very dicey outhouse. It didn’t feel like a very safe site to me because of its proximity to the road (I’d rather take on bears than some people), so we stopped to eat some food and quickly continued on. We were sad to hear that Carolyn ended up staying at this site a day later, but she didn’t like it either.

After that it was 4.5km to Rieveley’s Pond Hut, which is located at km 39. This was one of the more challenging sections of trail for the day. There’s a pretty big climb up to Gibraltar Lookout, which was extremely hot and wore us out. Plus the most disappointing part was that Gibraltar Lookout is optional and after a brief discussion where we decided to slightly extend the hike by doing the lookout, we accidentally took the wrong trail and ended up not even getting the view as a reward. It was a bit disappointing, but neither of us was willing to go back for it.

We arrived at Rieveley’s Pond Hut around 2:30pm, clocking in 17.5km for the day already! We were feeling pretty tired, so we decided to take a proper break and stopped at the hut for an hour. Rieveley’s Hut was similar to Manzanita in that it was partially open. We’d seen a handful of day hikers in the morning and there was a group of Dutch tourists there when we arrived. The pond itself is pretty disappointing and neither of us were interested in swimming in it, so instead we finished our lunch in the shade of the hut and took off our hiking boots for a while. Emily was getting some hot spots and had a blister forming, so she put on some moleskin.

Rieveley’s isn’t the most exciting hut, but it had a nice relaxing vibe. We wouldn’t have minded staying there, but we felt it was too early in the day to quit. We needed to do a big day and if we didn’t push further, we’d just have to get up early again and do it tomorrow. We had 6.5km to Kokanee campsite and decided to go for it.

We departed shortly after 3:30pm. It was about 2km to Appleton Creek Rec Site, which we assumed would be dicey like Homestead, but this was actually a lovely site and I kind of regret not staying there. It’s in the forest, but it’s very bright and has a lovely fast-flowing river going through. There’s lots of room for tents in among the trees and there’s an outhouse and some benches. The only thing missing was a bear cache. From there the trail continues through Appleton Canyon for another 2km and I loved this section of the trail! You follow the river down through the canyon and though it’s all downhill (not our favourite), there are tons of beautiful waterfalls. I would have loved to swim in some of the pools, but it had been a long day and we were anxious to get to our campsite – though Carolyn told me after the water was very cold!

The Canyon ends when you cross Tomkinson Road and the last couple of kilometres to the campsite were pretty brutal. We were really tired and Emily’s feet had started hurting a lot. It was slow going and we were desperate to get there. It is a nice section of trail that goes past some other ponds, but we weren’t in the mood to really appreciate it. We finally rolled into the campsite shortly after 6pm, which is really quite reasonable, but we’d been hiking for 10.5 hours and 24km, so it felt like a very long day.

Unfortunately Emily’s feet had taken a turn for the worse and she got a lot of blisters in the last 6.5km. Kokanee Campsite is located on Big Sliammon Lake at km 40 and it a very spacious site in the trees. It’s a bit dark, but there’s a small creek running through and lake access. We decided a swim would improve our spirits and went for a skinny dip. The water was extremely warm and refreshing and we let all our sweaty clothes dry out while we basked on the rocks.

We hadn’t seen anyone since Rieveley’s and no one else showed up, so we were the only ones at the campsite. It was a little spooky, so we played music for the rest of the night. The site does have an outhouse and several picnic tables, so it was really only missing a bear cache. We tied our bear bags to a tree again and hit the sack pretty early. We only had 15km to do the following day and would be passing through Powell River to pick up our re-supply, so we decided to sleep an extra hour in the morning.

Continue reading Part III.