West Coast Trail: Pachena Bay to Darling River

August 1, 2026July 14, 2026 / Maria / Leave a comment

When I first moved to Vancouver in 2014, I was asked what I was most looking forward to doing and I said the West Coast Trail. I didn’t know anything about the trail at the time. Newfoundland has the East Coast Trail, which is over 300km of coastal hiking that runs along the edge of the avalon peninsula. The trail runs from community to community and the entire thing can be completed as day hikes, with the longest section being ~23km. I thought the West Coast Trail was like the East Coast Trail and I was keen to explore a few sections.

I quickly learned how wrong I was. The West Coast Trail is a 75km coastal hike on Vancouver Island, but unlike the East Coast Trail, it is mostly done in one shot. There is one exit near the mid-point of the trail, but it is a multi-day hiking objective that draws visitors from all over the world. It’s one of the most well known trails in British Columbia and often recognized on world class hiking lists. I hadn’t backpacked at all in 2014 and so I quickly removed the West Coast Trail from my bucket list in favour of some more achievable day hikes. However, when I started backpacking in 2016, I still wasn’t keen on re-adding it to my list.

Because of it’s popularity, it’s a very regulated trail. Everyone on the trail must have a valid permit and the permits sell out very quickly. I started hearing about some other alternatives to the West Coast Trail, and I decided to tackle those instead. The Juan de Fuca Marine Trail is 47km of coastal hiking immediately south of the West Coast Trail. It’s often known as the West Coast Trail Lite and because it doesn’t require permits, a lot of people hike this trail first. I did the Juan de Fuca Trail with Emily in 2017 and I found it so challenging that I was further deterred from completing the West Coast Trail.

Coastal hikes on Vancouver Island are particularly challenging. The coast is often rainy and foggy, which results in a lot of muddy sections through the forest. While there is a lot of beach walking, it’s not possible to stick to the coast all the time, and the trails usually feature challenging muddy detours up and down through the forest. Even when beach walking is possible, it provides its own set of obstacles as walking for hours on cobble, dry sand, or rocky boulders can be very tiring.

As I became a more confident hiker, I decided to hike the Cape Scott and North Coast Trails in 2020. Together, they are similar in length to the West Coast Trail and the North Coast Trail has a reputation for being particularly challenging. Even though I felt more equipped than when I had hiked the Juan de Fuca Trail, the North Coast Trail still proved to be extremely challenging. We completed the trail over 6 days, which was pretty ambitious and we were all exhausted by the end. At times, it can be hard to hike faster than 1km every 45 minutes, which makes for very long days.

After that experience, I turned my attention from the West Coast Trail entirely. I guess because it was so regulated, I figured it was better to do the less popular trails first. The trail wasn’t going anywhere and I didn’t feel in a rush to complete it. Until 2026, when the urge finally struck. I’m not sure why this year over any other year, but as I was making my plans for the summer in early 2026, I suddenly became very aware of the fact that I’ve lived in BC for more than 12 years and still hadn’t completed this iconic trail. I take great pride in this blog and it’s been doing well over the past 2 years. It started to feel like a real gap that I haven’t covered this trail on the blog, and so I decided that this was the year, I was finally going to hike the trail.

I initially debated solo hiking and seeing if I could fast-pack it, but I quickly abandoned the idea. Why rush through one of BC’s most famous hikes? Instead, I decided I wanted to enjoy the experience, and if I was to enjoy it, it would be a lot more fun with a friend. So I invited Adriana to join me, who was also very enthusiastic about hiking the trail. Amazingly, when permits released, she found herself #59 in the queue, which I’ve never heard of, so we got all our preferred dates and direction for permits with no issues. We decided to take advantage of the Canada Day stat holiday and complete the trail in late June / early July.

Now that I’ve covered that fun piece of story telling, let’s actually talk about the West Coast Trail. In short, it’s a logistical nightmare. Actually, that may be unfair, Parks Canada does take care of a lot of the trail logistics for you. There are two boat rides required on the trail, both of which have fees, but they are both included in your permit, so you don’t have to deal with it directly. What’s not included is transportation between trailheads and any additional camping fees on either end of the trail. The hike runs from Pachena Bay to Gordon River, with a Parks Canada office on either end where you can check in and out and complete the mandatory orientation. The main decision you have to make before getting your permit is which direction you’d like to hike the trail.

Here’s a few things to consider:
– Parking is free at Pachena Bay, but not at Gordon River (a whopping $20 per day)
– The trail is easier on the north end (Pachena Bay) and gets more challenging towards Gordon River
– The first campsite on the Pachena Bay side is 12km from the trailhead. The first campsite on the Gordon River side is 6km from the trailhead
– Owen Point is one of the longest and most impressive tidal sections. It starts 6km from Gordon River and is 5km long. I really recommend building your trip around ensuring you’ll have a tidal window in which to hike to Owen Point

The final point was really the only one that I considered when choosing my direction. If I started in Gordon River, it would have added a full day to my trip in order to accommodate the trail orientation, boat schedule, and tidal window for Owen Point. For that reason alone, we decided to start in Pachena Bay. But I don’t regret this decision. I liked that we started with the easier half of the trail, allowing us to gain mileage early and get comfortable with the trail as it got harder. It also meant that while we had heavier bags for the longer distance days, we had eaten through a lot of our food by the time we hit the more challenging sections of trail (which honestly took just as long even though our distance was shorter). There are a lot more ladders on the south end of the trail, so I appreciated having a lighter pack for those as well.

I was not happy about the $20 per day parking fee. I wasn’t aware of this when we made the booking. We took the ferry from Tsawassen to Sidney on Saturday morning. The WCT shuttle between the two trailheads only runs once per day in each direction, leaving Gordon River at 9am and Pachena Bay at 1pm. We didn’t have enough time to catch either shuttle on Saturday, so we planned to stay in Gordon River overnight on Saturday, catch the shuttle on Sunday morning, at start from Pachena Bay in the afternoon. This meant we had no option but to pay for parking.

There’s a campground located on either end of the trail as well, so you can plan to stay overnight at either Gordon River or Pachena Bay. I can’t speak to the campground at Pachena Bay, but I didn’t have the best experience at Pacheedaht, which is located in Gordon River. There’s nothing wrong with the sites, but when we encountered some issues, it became evident the campground was not well managed.

The WCT shuttle company is great and I appreciate that they run the shuttle daily, but oh my goodness, the experience was miserable. Nothing personal against the company, it’s just that the road is mostly gravel and I felt sick the entire time. It’s a 4 hour drive between trailheads and the driver is supposed to provide a direct service, but I really appreciated that he gave us a pee break in Lake Cowichan. Definitely bring gravol or something for motion sickness with you on the bus. I felt terrible the entire ride and it was also freezing. But we did see three elk, so that was cool.

We arrived in Pachena Bay at 1pm. It’s an extremely limited site, it has two outhouses and a garbage bin, but nothing else. The trail orientation is scheduled for 2pm, but the park ranger gave it to us at 1:30pm since we were all there. Even so, it was 2:30pm by the time we departed. It was a real mauzy day, not raining, but overcast and a bit cold. The trail starts with a short tidal section across the beach, but we were outside of the tidal window, so we had to start the trail in the forest. This means we were immediately introduced to the ladders.

For those not familiar with the West Coast Trail, it is very well known for its ladders. There are over 100 ladders on the trail and many of them are quite long. I’m not sure why the West Coast Trail developed this way, there are no ladders on either the Juan de Fuca or North Coast Trails, but when they developed the WCT, the decision was made to go up and down over all of the obstacles rather than find routes around them. This means that most of the elevation gain on the trail is done via ladders. We started with 6 or 7 ladders up and over the headland. The ladders were much taller than I was expecting and so I was a little bit nervous on the first few. Going up wasn’t too bad, but going down really freaked me out. Some ladders are missing rungs and when you go down, your feet are exploring the ladder first rather than your hands, which made me feel like I needed to look down to watch my feet. I got more confident on the ladders as time went on, but the first few are definitely a little scary.

It’s 12km from Pachena Bay to the first campsite, which is Michigan Creek. We hadn’t planned out exactly where we wanted to camp every night, but we were keen to see if we could go 14km on Day 1 to get to Darling River Camp. This is because we had a tidal limitation the following morning and it would be easier to time it right if we were a little bit closer to it. But we didn’t want to overdo it, so we decided to make a decision once we got to Michigan Creek.

It was a bit of a slow start to the trail. It took us some time to adjust to the ladders and figure out what to do with our poles. We didn’t want to secure them to our packs at every ladder, but we didn’t want them loose either, for safety reasons. I ended up collapsing mine every time we did a ladder and tucking them into my waist belt so that I could be hands-free and not have them acting as a hazard. Adriana wasn’t feeling great after the bus ride, so we started off with a pretty slow pace, which wasn’t ideal given our late start. The main thing on our side was that it was very close to solstice, so we had a lot of daylight.

Fortunately, our pace picked up a lot after the first few kilometres. It was originally overcast, but it was quite humid and the sun did make an appearance later in the day, so we ended up changing into shorts and t-shirt and we were able to knock out some distance after that. We ended up doing the first 9km in ~3 hours, arriving at Sea Lion Rock around 5:30pm. It’s the first real view on the trail, looking out at the ocean and all the sea lions basking on the large rock shelf. We were both quite hungry and we still had 3-5km to go, so we decided to stop and have our supper. It resulted in an hour-long break, but it was definitely worth it and we left the viewpoint feeling much more energetic.

We finally exited the forest at Michigan Creek Camp, which is the start of the beach walking. There were several people already camping at Michigan Creek and we were still feeling good from supper and happy to arrive at the beach, so we decided to tackle the last two kilometres to Darling River. It was a good choice and we really enjoyed walking along the beach during golden hour. There were a lot of stragglers heading to Michigan Creek from the opposite direction and Darling River ended up being the least busy campsite we stayed at all week, so it was a good choice.

We arrived at Darling River around 8:30pm and I spotted the waterfall that cascades out of the forest and into Darling River before flowing to the ocean. It’s set back from the beach and no one was there, so like I was possessed, I immediately became fixated on the idea of swimming in the waterfall. Adriana was more concerned with getting to camp, so she kept going to find a site across the river, but I put on my sandals and trekked up through the creek to get to the falls. I ended up having a little skinny dip bath in the pool and arrived at camp 30 minutes later feeling incredibly refreshed!

We’d already eaten, so all we had to do was set up camp on the beach. Adriana found a really nice sandy spot and we took care of our nightly chores and then went straight to bed. It was our first of many nights camping on the beach and it felt really restful to hang out in the sand and watch the sunset before heading to bed. It was a much later arrival at camp than I prefer, but considering our late start, I thought it was a pretty successful first day! Tune in next week for Part 2!

Hiking Raft Cove

May 13, 2025May 9, 2025 / Maria / Leave a comment

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!

San Josef Bay Backpacking Trip

May 7, 2025May 1, 2025 / Maria / 7 Comments

If you’ve been following my blog for awhile, you might be aware that I first attempted to visit San Josef Bay in 2020. I backpacked both the Cape Scott Trail and the North Coast Trail in June 2020, but thanks to a series of misadventures at the start of my trip, I had to cut San Josef Bay from the itinerary. A few years ago I saw San Josef Bay ranked on a list of the “most beautiful beaches in the world” and it’s been haunting me ever since that I still haven’t been there!

So this was a bit of a redemption trip for me. Over the Easter long weekend in April, I decided it was finally time to tackle San Josef Bay. It’s located on the far eastern coast of Vancouver Island and it is a journey to get there. I left Vancouver on Thursday after work with my husband, Seth, and our anxious Australian Shepherd, Sadie. We had a reservation on the 6:30pm ferry, which was absolutely necessary because the ferry sailings were already completely sold for the whole day by the time we arrived at the ferry terminal. Unfortunately, our sailing was delayed by almost 2 hours, meaning we didn’t get to Nanaimo until almost 10pm.

I’m a hyper-planner when it comes to trips, but this was one of the rare times where I didn’t have a booking for the night. I’ve been trying to embrace the unknown a little bit more and take advantage of FCFS and rec sites. We’d been hoping to drive to Campbell River before finding a place to sleep, but given the late hour, we drove ~30 minutes to Little Qualicum Provincial Park in search of a site instead. We were able to secure the second last campsite and quickly put up the tent to catch some sleep before continuing the journey in the morning.

We were up early to finish the 1 hour drive to Campbell River, followed by 2.5 hours to Port Hardy. Our friend Victoria was also joining us with her friends from Victoria, so she walked on the first ferry on Friday morning and they picked her up on their way north. They were a little bit behind us, so we stopped for a nice lunch at Cafe Guido in Port Hardy. It was an excellent choice because they also have a bookstore and artisan craft shop in the same space! So we picked up some souvenirs before finally meeting our friends and their Australian Shepherd, Daisy, to continue the journey.

We already had 4 hours of driving behind us, but we still had the most challenging part of the trip ahead – the Forest Service Road to San Josef Bay. Considering that Port Hardy is on the east coast of Vancouver Island and San Josef Bay is on the west coast, it’s pretty impressive that there’s a 65km gravel road extending the entire width of the island. Despite it being a gravel road, it’s not in terrible condition – you can do the entire drive in any vehicle, you don’t need 4WD or high clearance. That said, the road isn’t in great condition either! If you want to avoid the drive altogether, there is a shuttle that runs from Port Hardy.

The last time I did this road, Brandon was driving way too fast and got a flat tire 30 minutes in. This wouldn’t be the end of the world, but his mechanic had put the wrong lug nuts on his tires, so it left us entirely unable to change the tire. This devolved into a 24 hour expedition involving hitchhiking, sleeping on the FSR, and paying a mechanic to break all the lug nuts off. I really wanted to avoid any flat tires this time around, so we drove pretty slow. The first 30km of the road are in reasonable condition, but the last 35km have a continuous stream of potholes that make gaining any kind of speed risky. I’d say we averaged ~30km/h along the road, so it took us around 2.5 hours to get to the trailhead parking lot – with no flat tires!

From the parking lot, it’s a 3km hike along a well-maintained trail to San Josef Bay. Me and Seth backpacked, but Victoria and her friends had a very special “Swagon Wagon”, which they used to transport some more luxurious camping equipment! The first 1km of the trail is a shared route into the park, after which there is a branch. If you go right, you can hike 23km to the Cape Scott Lighthouse, or 60km to the end of the North Coast Trail. This is the trip I did in 2020. But if you turn left, it’s another 2km along a leisurely trail to San Josef Bay, one of the most beautiful beaches in the world!

The trail itself is gorgeous. We had a pretty late start, around 6:30pm, but it only took us an hour (even with the wagon) to hike through the forest to the beach. Along the trail, I was reminded why the north coast of Vancouver Island is such a special place. Like most of BC, it’s second growth forest, but you can still see lots of old growth trees scattered throughout. Somehow, these trees have withstood the test of time and it’s truly humbling to stand beneath their gigantic trunks, so I really enjoyed the walk to the beach. Although my shoulders were hurting – I also took advantage of the short distance to pack a few of my own luxury items!

The beach was surprisingly busy for mid-April, but not overly crowded. San Josef Bay consists of two beaches that are only connected at low tide (although there is a forest trail connecting them). The first beach is very large, so there were a steady amount of hikers camped along the back of the beach, but everyone was spread out and it didn’t feel too crowded. I can only imagine how much busier it must be in the summertime. When I visited in June, the parking lot was much busier than in April.

We set up on the main beach because we couldn’t get the wagon to the second beach. Most people were camping on the first beach and after visiting the second beach, I will say that there is much more limited camping space on that one. There’s more log jams at the back of the beach and the water comes closer to the forest at high tide, leaving limited space for tents. High tide is quite a way back from the forest on the first beach, so you can feel pretty safe camping there.

We were pretty late getting set up, so we enjoyed the sunset over the mountains while putting up our tents, and spent the rest of the evening enjoying a fire on the beach. We were able to collect firewood around the beach (never cut down live wood), but dead wood is in limited supply and I imagine it gets much harder to find later in the season. It rained earlier in the afternoon, so I definitely had my work cut out for me getting the fire started!

You never really get to sleep in when you go camping with a dog (they get up with the sun), but Sadie was more reserved than usual and let me sleep until our normal weekday wake-up time at least. It rained overnight, so my first order of business upon waking was to get a tarp set up. I put up one tarp and then Miranda put a second, so we had a nice tarp city ready for when the rain really started!

If you’ve ever been to the north coast of Vancouver Island, you know the weather is super unreliable! The fog loves to hang around the coast and it’s normal for the weather to oscillate between sun, grey, and rain multiple times a day, sometimes within the hour! I didn’t get a lot of rain when I hiked the North Coast Trail, but I didn’t get a lot of sun either. While visiting San Jo Bay in April, we got a little bit of everything all at once. It didn’t rain for any extended periods of time, but there was a pretty reliable cycle switching from rain to sun and back again, all day long.

It was dry during breakfast and we got ready to go for a beach walk, but then it started pouring, so we decided to wait it out. Low tide was at noon and the rain let up again around 11:30am, so we quickly got ready to go beachcombing. A lot of day hikers showed up around this time, presumably to explore the tidal areas. There’s a frontcountry rec site close to the parking lot, which I think is popular for campers that want to visit San Jo Bay, but don’t want to backpack.

Exploring the beach during low tide is really the highlight of visiting, so definitely plan your trip around it! When the tide drops, you can walk along the sand to the second beach. The low tide exposes a number of sea stacks and caves along the shoreline and you can walk on several of the islands, looking at sea creatures in the tidepools along the edges. We saw lots of sea anemones, sea stars, and crabs along the tide pools, as well as many other marine organisms that only Seth was able to properly identify. We had a great time exploring and ended up walking the beach for several hours!

Our companions took the wagon to the second beach, where firewood is much more plentiful, and me and Seth went in search of the freshwater source. The main consideration in camping on the first beach is that there’s no fresh water. My Gaia noted a water source on both ends of the second beach, but we opted for the source on the far west side. You do have to hike up into the woods for a few hundred metres and the trail is very muddy, but it’s a reasonably nice source – it’s just a little discoloured from the tannins, which I’m used to from Newfoundland. It was running pretty high because of the rain, so it might not be as nice in the dry season (if such a thing exists in this area).

Overall, it was a pretty low key trip and we mostly relaxed for the rest of the afternoon as the rain continued on and off. The downside of going camping in April is that it was pretty damp and chilly. I spent some time in the tent to warm up, and then later in the afternoon, Seth and I walked down to the opposite end of first beach to the estuary. I’m not sure if you can drink this water when the tide is going out, but based on my experience at other estuaries on the NCT, it’s probably very brackish. Though you could likely drink it if you walked much further upstream.

We had a lot of firewood for night 2, which was good because it rained a lot more. We got the campfire going and kept it pretty big for warmth. It sprinkled on us several times, but it was always short lived, so we never got properly wet. We caught a glimpse of the starts on our first night, but it was completely clouded in on our second night.

The rest of our crew took off pretty early on Sunday morning because they had to drive all the way home. Seth and I had an extra day, so we took our time packing down our tent and were rewarded with a beautiful blue sky view of the beach on the way out. It didn’t last long and was soon raining on us as we trundled through the forest, but the sun made a reappearance near the end of the trail, turning the trees the most beautiful shade of green as the sun peeked through the canopy!

So I finally redeemed myself from my first trip and made it to San Josef Bay! I do think it is worth the hype and would be keen to see what’s it’s like in more reliable weather. But I’m thrilled I can finally check it off my bucket list. Tune in next week to learn what Seth and I did with our last day in the backcountry, because the adventure didn’t end with San Jo Bay!