Seth and I finished hiking out from San Josef Bay around 11:30am on Easter Sunday (see previous post). Our friends departed earlier in the morning because they had to return to work on Monday. Lucky for us, we had one more day off, so we planned to explore further around the backcountry!
I shared in my previous post that there is 65km of gravel roads connecting Port Hardy and San Josef Bay. The main road to San Jo is really only the tip of the iceberg in this area and there’s an extensive network of forestry roads connecting all around the north part of the island. You do have to be careful driving around though because there is active logging happening. I don’t believe there’s logging on the main road, but if you’re on one of the branch roads on a weekday, you should use a radio.
The town of Holberg is a central location connecting several of these roads. It’s really just a small community that I’m assuming is mostly loggers and truckers, but they do have a small restaurant called the Scarlet Ibis that is worth checking out along the way! Other options are taking the FSR’s down to Winter Harbour or Grant Bay, which I haven’t had the opportunity of visiting.
Our route was a little bit different. In exploring other options for backpacking in the area, I discovered Raft Cove. It’s another beautiful golden sand beach that’s located down Ronning Main, which branches off San Jo Main a few kilometres before you get to the trailhead. It’s about a 30-45 minute drive from the San Jo parking lot, depending how fast you drive on the sketchy roads. We did the drive to San Jo Bay as a convoy of two vehicles, which I prefer in case you have car troubles. But our friends had left, so I was a little bit nervous about driving down Ronning Main on our own.
Fortunately, our experience was that Ronning Main was actually in better condition than San Jo Main and we drove slow with no issues. We even saw a black bear on the road along the way! Ronning Main continues to Cape Palmerston, which we didn’t visit, but a few kilometres before the end of the road, there’s a small parking lot for Raft Cove. There were only 3 other cars when we visited, so it’s not a very popular location.
The trail to Raft Cove is 2km through the woods and then 1km along the beach to the campsite. So it’s a similar distance to the trail at San Jo Bay, but it’s in very different condition. The 2km through the forest are much more emblematic of what I experienced on the North Coast Trail. It’s a muddy trail through the woods, with lots of technical sections. Some of the reviews online are pretty intense – I didn’t find the trail all that bad, but maybe I was just prepared for a rough trail and it met my expectations. It took us ~45 minutes to reach the beach on the way in and closer to an hour on the way back.
Dogs are permitted at San Jo Beach and Raft Cove, but definitely exercise caution. Both beaches are in bear, wolf, and cougar territory, so always keep them leashed. We did let Sadie run a little bit on the wide open empty beach, but we kept her very close to us (and leashed) on the trail. The trail hikes up and over and small headland, so be prepared for a little bit of elevation gain. Sadie loves technical trails, the muddier the better, so she had a blast!
Raft Cove is breathtaking. I’ve heard it described as “San Jo Bay without the tourists” and that was pretty accurate to our experience. The beach is over a kilometre long and it was completely empty when we arrived. We lucked out and it was low tide, so we checked out the tide pools and sea arches along the coast before walking down the beach. There’s a campsite at the end of the beach where the Macjack River meets the ocean. We encountered a few other people and learned that a slightly more popular way to visit Raft Cove is to paddle ~5km along the Macjack River to the campsite. Accessing the put-in seems slightly more challenging though. I did some research and it looks like you have to take the road to Winter Harbour out of Holberg instead, and then drive up along Topknot Main to the parking lot. I don’t know anything about the condition of the road, but it looks to be a bit of a longer drive.
In my original itinerary for the trip, I planned for us to spend our last night camping at Raft Cove. I’m sad we never ended up doing it because it’s a beautiful place to stay, but we changed our visit to a day trip instead. Our ferry reservation had gotten moved earlier, to 3pm, and it would be way too exhausting to have to hike out 3km in the morning, drive 2.5 hours on gravel road, and then still have to drive 4 hours from Port Hardy back to Nanaimo. So we made the most of the visit as a day trip and really enjoyed the solitude along the beach. Always leave something to come back for right?
Instead, we hiked back to the parking lot, returning to our car around 4pm. We wanted to get most of the gravel road done to save ourselves the trouble on Monday morning. Seth drove all weekend and did a great job navigating all the potholes. I have to conclude that he is a better driver than Brandon, because we didn’t get any flat tires on our trip!
It was over 2 hours to drive back and ~5km before exiting the gravel road, we turned off on Georgie Main to drive 6km down to Georgie Lake Rec Site. I slept at Nahwitti Lake Rec Site for a night when we had the flat tire, but that campsite is now listed online as closed due to dangerous trees. It didn’t appear closed from the road, so I’m not sure how recent that information is. In any case, I wanted to try a new rec site and we decided to try for a site at Georgie Lake instead. Georgie Main is in worse condition than the main road, but still doable in any vehicle, there’s just a lot of potholes.
There are currently two old campers taking up the two large spots at the back of the site. Neither is occupied, so I’m not sure if someone is just storing them there or if they’re abandoned. Fortunately, there’s 5 much nicer sites down by the lake and only one was occupied when we arrived. Shortly after us, 3 more vehicles arrived and we thought all the sites were taken, but two of the vehicles were just using the rec site for day use and had a fire down by the lake. So in total, 3 sites were occupied on Easter Sunday of the long weekend, so I think it’s reasonably reliable that you could get an impromptu site here. We weren’t there for a long time, only for one night, but we enjoyed a beautiful sunset over the lake before heading to bed.
We were up early again on our final day to drive back to Nanaimo. It didn’t take us too long to exit the gravel road and then it was smooth pavement all the way to Nanaimo! We stopped briefly in Port MacNeil for a sink bath and then had a delicious meal at The Fork and Arrow in Campbell River. It was a great trip and I’m glad I got to visit two beautiful beaches. There’s still a lot more to do in this area, but I’ll probably give it another 5 years before I return to tackle more attractions. There’s always something exciting to explore in BC!
The Road Goes Ever On 