Tetrahedron Park Backpacking Trip Part I

December 6, 2023July 11, 2024 / Maria / 5 Comments

I think I fall a little more in love with the Sunshine Coast every time I visit. This was my third trip to the coast for the year and I was really excited to explore a new provincial park. The Sunshine Coast has a pretty extensive network of huts and I was keen to check out some more after having such a great time on the Sunshine Coast Trail last year.

Tetrahedron Park is a year round destination and my friend Eddie proposed that we check out the park in late September, with the goal of doing a bit of reconnaissance to come back in the winter on skis. So I obviously said yes and we were joined on the trip by Brandon (of course) and his friend Adriana. It was a long weekend, so we set off early on Saturday morning to catch the ferry and drive up to the trailhead.

Tetrahedron Park is located on the north part of the lower Sunshine Coast, nestled between Sechelt Inlet and Howe Sound. You have to drive all the way to Sechelt and then continue up past Porpoise Bay Provincial Park towards Tuwanek. From there you get on the Grey Creek Service Road and head up towards the park. The road starts with a pretty steep climb up Suicide Hill, but I don’t think you need 4WD or high clearance for it (though winter is probably a different story).

After a few kilometres on gravel road, you hit a branch, with the left branch going up towards Richardson Lake, and the right branch continuing to the trailhead for Tetrahedron. There’s a lower parking lot, which was empty when we arrived, and then 1.7km further, the upper lot. The upper lot is definitely intended for 4WD, so just stick with the lower lot if you don’t have the right vehicle. There were a few other cars in the upper lot when we arrived, but there’s 4 huts in the Park, so we figured it wouldn’t be too busy.

The huts in Tetrahedron Provincial Park are managed and cared for by the Tetrahedron Outdoor Club. You can visit their website here and you should e-transfer them the fee for the huts before you go. It’s $15 per person to stay overnight in the huts, or $10 per person if you’re a member. Brandon got the membership, but the rest of us just paid $30 for two nights. We didn’t know there’s also a facebook group for the park, but we learned from other campers that it’s common courtesy when visiting the huts to post your details in the facebook group so that the cabins don’t get too crowded.

The park isn’t set up as a thru hike like the Sunshine Coast Trail, but more of a loop of huts extending to different points of interest around the park. We could only stay in 2 huts, but we were keen to visit all 4 and planned our trip accordingly. A few other important things to know before visiting though is that most of the park is located in the watershed. As a result, dogs are not allowed in the park and you’re not allowed to swim in the watershed either. You’re also not supposed to do any tenting in the park and all overnights should be limited to the huts. This is to minimize impacts to the natural environment and preserve the quality of the watershed.

There were some people breaking these rules (we saw some dogs), but we opted to follow them, which for me mostly meant no swimming. However, when I examined the map at McNair Cabin, it looks like McNair Lake is actually outside of the watershed, so potentially you are allowed to swim at this one, but we still refrained because we weren’t certain.

It was a gorgeous sunny day and I really wanted to stay at Mount Steele Hut, so we decided to hightail it up the mountain for our first night. On the way in you have the option to detour to Bachelor Cabin, but we opted to postpone that visit and head straight to Edwards Cabin first instead. The hike starts on an inclined gravel road and then progresses into the forest where it flattens out. It’s approximately 5km to Edwards Cabin, which is the most central hut in the park. If you’re not a fan of backpacking, this would be a great place to camp because from here, you’re ideally situated to day trip to both McNair Cabin and Mount Steele.

It’s a nice enough cabin and we stopped and ate lunch on the front deck. There’s a wasp nest there currently, so definitely exercise caution. From Edwards, we started our ascent up to Mount Steele. It’s another ~3.5km to the Mount Steele Cabin, but it’s all uphill and covers 400m in elevation gain. You pass through some meadows 1km before the top and we stopped again to fill up our water bottles from the creek. We assumed there would be a water source at the top, but I wasn’t sure how stagnant it would be, so I took advantage of the creek (but fortunately the source at the top was also a nice running creek).

In terms of reconnaissance for a winter trip, the climb up through the woods is steep, but it’s all in the trees, so I think I’d be comfortable there in the winter. The only part I didn’t really like is after the meadow there’s a steep edge section at the top of a potential terrain trap. I’m not sure I’d be quite ready to hike up on skis, though it might look different in the winter.

The hut itself is really cool though. Most of the hike is in the forest, but shortly before the top you poke out into the sub alpine and get lovely views of the surrounding mountains. The hut isn’t located at the very top of the mountain, but rather at the base of the peak, so I assume in the winter that skiers run laps up and down the peak. The hut seemed more tailored to winter use than summer use, but I also assume it gets really popular on a nice, snowy weekend.

That said, I still loved the Mount Steele Cabin! It had gorgeous views in all directions and it was totally empty when we arrived. Like most huts, all the cabins in this park had communal kitchen space and tables on the main floor and a sleeping loft above. The huts are advertised as sleeping 12 people and I thought this was very accurate. There’s a wood stove on the main floor, but they have to helicopter in the wood, so it’s only intended for winter use. Mount Steele had a brand new outhouse that was in fantastic condition and one thing I really liked is how they’ve set up the grey water.

There’s a double sink that drains into buckets in the cabin and then another sink in the outhouse that drains into the pit. So you essentially dump all your water in the outhouse, which is a pretty elegant solution to managing food bits and scents.

20230930_144006 — The view from the cabin

We were the first to arrive to the cabin, but we were joined shortly after by a mom and 3 boys. They live in the area and were super friendly and huge fans of the cabin, so it was nice to meet them. Later on in the evening 2 other guys showed up, followed by a trio very late at night. So the total number of people in the cabin was 13. 11 people slept upstairs and the 2 guys slept downstairs because they were planning to leave really early in the morning.

We hung around the cabin in the afternoon and around 5pm packed our bags to hike up to the summit. Me and Brandon have gotten in the habit of hiking up to viewpoints for supper, so we brought all our food with us and figured it would be the optimal spot for sunset. There is a clear path up the to top of the summit, but Eddie and Brandon wanted to try another route and we reluctantly followed them. For the most part it wasn’t too bad, but it did involve a little bit of bushwacking around some steeper sections, so I wouldn’t recommend. Just follow the trail.

The view from the top is incredible though! On one side, you can see the whole park out to Tetrahedron Peak, while on the other side you can see down to Sechelt Inlet. Brandon made us thai curry chicken at the top and we enjoyed the view. It was a bit windy and cold up there, so Eddie and Adriana held out until the sunset and then started to head back. Me and Brandon stayed a bit longer and started to make our way down closer to dusk. We got most of the way without headlamps, but needed them for the last 10 minutes.

Eddie taught us to play Wizard to end the night. It ended up being a lot longer than we expected and we were all very tired, so we didn’t end up finishing, but when we called it quits at 10pm I was comfortably in the lead! One nice thing about the huts is that you don’t have to bring a thermarest if you don’t want to because there are mats in the loft. I brought mine anyways because I wasn’t sure how busy it would be, and I ended up doubling up because the hut mattresses are pretty soft. It wasn’t the best night’s sleep with so many people in the loft, but it was nice and warm with all that body heat!

Check back next week for Part 2!

Kayaking Pender Harbour

September 13, 2023July 11, 2024 / Maria / Leave a comment

Me and Seth frequent the same places over and over on our kayaks, so it’s always a special thrill to visit someplace new. We were heading over to the Sunshine Coast in early August for our friends wedding, so we figured it was a good nice to paddle somewhere different.

The wedding was in Pender Harbour, which I’d never been to before, so I didn’t feel much need to go further for paddling. The Sunshine Coast is an interesting place because it’s a great place to paddle, but it does get pretty windy along the exposed coastline. Every time I drive through Sechelt I’m always surprised by how windy it gets along the main beach. Pender Harbour is a lot more sheltered, so there’s a few more areas to explore.

Our friend’s family manages one of the private marinas, so we were able to put in there, but according to BC Marine Trails, you can also launch from Welbourn Cove (behind the hotel) or Bargain Harbour Drive. If you have the time, there’s a nice roundabout route around the Francis Peninsula (just west of Pender Harbour) to see all of the area, but you have to get your timing right. Francis Peninsula only has 1 small canal that you can pass through to go from the south to north harbour. We were told you can pass through in a kayak, but not when the tide is really low. The tide was super low when we were there, so we didn’t attempt it, but it would be a nice challenge when passable. (our route is shown in red, with the canal circled in blue – but remember you can’t launch where we did, it’s a private marina)

Instead of going around the peninsula, we just explored the harbour. Seth recently took up crabbing, so he was keen to drop his crab pots. It was too shallow near the launch, but if you go out a little way (near Gerrans Bay) we could see several other crab pots. It was about 15-17m in depth, so we dropped his pot and then continued on.

Our goal for the day was to paddle around the point to Francis Point Ecological Reserve, where there’s a short hike. The water was extremely flat in the harbour, but the wind picked up a lot when we rounded the peninsula. It wasn’t too windy to be out, but we could see some white caps around the corner which indicated a more turbulent area, so we decided to abort and stop at Martin’s Cove instead. I’d still like to visit Francis Point though, so I’ll have to return for it another day.

Since it was too windy for a round trip and the tide too low to connect through, we returned the way we’d come. Even though there’s lots of people living along the edge of the harbour, we still saw a fair bit of wildlife. As always, we saw several seals, but we also saw a few herons, a kingfisher, and our personal favourite, black oystercatchers!

We didn’t have high hopes for the crab pot because we’d only dropped it for 90 minutes, but it turned out to be quite lucrative! Before this trip, Seth had only crabbed out of Belcarra, which is a very frequented area. He always catches crabs, but most of them are too small or female and have to be thrown back. In Pender Harbour, he only caught 2 crabs, but they were both male and large enough to take home! So you can really tell the difference when you leave the lower mainland – just make sure you have a license and report your catch.

So overall we were only paddling for a little over 2 hours, but it was really nice to get out and explore somewhere new. There’s so many places to paddle on the Sunshine Coast, I know we’ll be back again!

Desolation Sound Kayak Trip Part III

June 21, 2023August 13, 2024 / Maria / 1 Comment

On day 3 of our paddling trip to Desolation Sound Marine Park, we got up at 6am to get ahead of the wind (as I explained in Part II). We packed up our campsite on East Curme Island and were on the water around 8am. It was flat water at this time, so we had a very leisurely paddle over to Otter Island and along the coast to Bold Head Campground.

I was really curious about Bold Head because I’d read it was a nice site. It’s backed right again the cliffside and there are several tent pads up at the head, but it was empty. I could understand why – as nice as it is, I’d still pick the Curme Islands when given the choice, so I suspect it may act primarily as overflow for the islands.

The campsites in the Park are all first-come-first-serve and according to BC Parks, if the tent pads are all taken, you should move on to another site. Though they do state that if moving on isn’t safe, find the least impactful spot (somewhere with no vegetation that looks like people have camped there before). Fortunately we didn’t have any issues with availability on the May Long weekend, but I could see it being an issue in the height of summer. The problem is, the islands are all very small, and while there’s 3 of them, there’s limited options for overflow camping since most of the sites are set on bedrock. Fortunately there are a lot of tent pads, and I assume that’s why.

But if you do find the islands full, head over to Bold Head – it’s not far and it is nice. The toilet situation is quite different though. The other campsites I visited all had an outhouse (sometimes two), but Bold Head just has a throne toilet and at the time of our visit, it had a wasp nest inside! There are bear caches at all the mainland sites, but none on the island sites. It is also a tricky landing on Bold Head, but manageable.

Unfortunately our simple paddling was short lived as the wind came up suddenly while we were touring around Bold Head. It wasn’t too bad at first, but as soon as we started paddling across Tenedos Bay, it really caught us unaware and started hitting us broadside. It was still manageable, but definitely veering into uncomfortable territory for me as I could see some small white caps forming. It’s ~1km to cross, so we really powered it to the bay on the other side. I had put on my spray skirt, so I had no issue, but Seth didn’t have his on. This wouldn’t have been a problem, but I accidentally bumped him and almost put him in the water… oops! This was the closest anyone came to a capsize on the trip though, so all in all, it was fine.

We continued up through Call Bight to Portage Cove. Seth took a quick break along the rocks to get his skirt on and we powered up to Portage. This turned out to be the most challenging part of the entire trip. It was definitely windy and while the waves weren’t bad along the shore, it was slow moving through the headwind. I was very excited to pull into Portage Cove and take a proper break, but we were disappointed to learn that Portage Cove is private property and not actually in the park (as we were informed by the numerous trespassing signs).

I know these properties long pre-date the park, but it was a low moment for me. There’s not a lot of pull-outs between Bold Head and Hare Point when you’re taking the southern route and I needed a proper break. Fortunately, the tide was coming down, so we pulled out on a tidal beach for a reset. This proved to be a good idea because I was getting a bit upset and stopping to have a snack and talk things through helped a lot.

We decided to get properly suited up in our wetsuits and come up with a plan for the rest of the day. There’s a longer stretch between Portage Cove and Galley Bay with no beaches, so our plan was for me to lead (as the weaker paddler) and Seth to come right behind. This worked really well for us and we stayed close together throughout the paddle.

It was a bit rough coming out of Portage Cove, but then the wind either dropped down or was sheltered by Zephine Head. I think it was actually the former as it was gusting pretty strong at times, but overall, the sustained wind speed wasn’t too bad. We ended up actually having a nice paddle along the cliffside before stopping in Galley Bay for lunch.

Once we hit Galley Bay I felt much better because we would have the wind at our backs when we turned down Okeover Inlet. We’d started the trip from Lund, but we were planning to finish at the public wharf in Okeover instead to switch up the trip. In fact, we ended up not actually repeating any coastline, which made for a more diverse trip.

As soon as we got around Zephine Head, the wind pretty much died and we had a simple paddle down the inlet to Hare Point. There’s a huge campsite at Hare Point and we landed at the main beach to assess. There’s two key areas to the site, with a bunch of tent pads at the back of the beach and a bunch more along Hare Point. We were the only people there, so we decided on a site along the Point and then paddled back to land on the rocks instead. We kept the same strategy of tying the boats on and letting the tide bring them up for us.

We were joined later in the afternoon by another family of kayakers who camped in the other section of the tent pads, otherwise we didn’t see anyone else. I really liked our site at Hare Point, but the wind was unquestionably getting worse. To be fair, we were on a pretty exposed tent pad, but I ended up guy-lining the tent to the rock for peace of mind and it was the only night we used the fly.

The wind was supposed to be even worse the next day, so we had to do a bit of risk management. I was reassured by the fact that it’s a lot calmer in Okeover Inlet than in the Sound, and that the wind would be at our backs. In case you’re wondering, I use both the Windy App and the weather network for wind information. I usually find Windy to be good, but on this trip the Weather Network was more reliable for wind speed (though the Windy app was still accurate for direction). We’d been planning to get weather updates on our marine radio and via inreach message from Carolyn (who had our trip plan), but there was cell service in pretty much the entire park, so I ended up just using my phone.

What arose as more of a concern as we watched the inlet from our campsite, was the currents. Okeover Inlet is huge, with lots of other inlets branching off it, so with up to 5m of difference between high and low tide, that’s a huge amount of water coming up and down the inlet twice daily. We arrived at Hare Point at slack tide, so we had no trouble getting there, but as the tide changed, the current got quicker and quicker, until it was really clipping down the inlet at a fast pace.

We’d already decided to get up at dawn the following morning to try and get ahead of the wind, and this decision became much more important when we realized that the tide would be switching again at 7:30am. It would be working with us until then and we didn’t want to have to battle it the whole morning.

It ended up working out really well. It was hard crawling out of bed so early, but we were on the water by 6:45am and with the wind at our backs and the current with us, we absolutely flew down the inlet! It was super fun! It’s 10km of paddling back to the public wharf, which would usually take us around 3 hours with breaks, but we ended up doing the whole thing in about 90 minutes. The wind looked pretty intense later in the morning when we returned to Powell River, but we managed to get ahead of it and actually had a very enjoyable paddle.

Our ferry reservation out of Langdale wasn’t until 8pm, but since we’d finished so early, we decided to power back to try and get on an earlier ferry. Unfortunately this didn’t really pan out. BC Ferries was so busy over the long weekend that it actually crashed the website, so we couldn’t check the ferry times and ended up being way out of sync with them. We waited for the ferry at Saltery Bay for the better part of 2 hours. Then we rushed down to Langdale for 2pm, only to be told to keep our 8pm reservation because we probably wouldn’t get on any earlier than that anyways. So we ended up burning 6 hours in Gibsons instead. In hindsight, I would have preferred to spend some more time in Powell River, but you can never know that at the start of the day.

We had a nice time in Gibsons. We explored some shops and enjoyed a pint at Tapworks and a really nice meal at Buono Osteria. We finished with a nice walk along the waterfront. Overall it was a fantastic trip. Seth and I used to do a 3 day paddling trip every year, but we missed 2021 and 2022, so this one was long overdue and a good reminder of how much we enjoy the trips. We do lots of day paddles, but overnight trips definitely have a very different feel. I don’t think we’ll have time to do a second trip this summer (mostly because it’s hard finding someone to watch our dog), but I’m really desperate to do another trip, so we’ve already started brainstorming for next year!

There are lots of things to consider when visiting Desolation Sound, but May turned out to be good timing for us. We’re so lucky to live in a place with so many epic places to explore and I can’t wait until the next trip!