West Coast Trail Part II

Return to Part 1 of the WCT trip report

DAY 5 (CRIBS CREEK TO TSUSIAT, 8.5h, 15km, rocky beach, flat sandy beach, boardwalks in forest): We woke up early (6:30am) to find that a thick fog had descended upon our beautiful sunny beach! It was very humid, but fortunately not raining. We forced ourselves to get up though, because we had one of our longest days (in terms of distance) ahead of us. We were getting pretty efficient at packing up, and were hiking by 8am. I had a pretty bad start because I managed to slip quite a few times on wet rocks and banged myself up (no cuts, just bruises) pretty good. Falling with a big pack on isn't fun! But the terrain was cool - rocky shelf - and we even saw some starfish. We took a high detour away from the beach (to avoid a surge channel) on a forest trail with incredible views down to the ocean, and then got to walk on some wonderful, flat sandy beach until we got to Cheewhat River.

At Cheewhat we crossed a cool suspension bridge, and then got to walk on an ACTUAL TRAIL, without mud or roots! What a treat! For most of the rest of the day, the trail passed in and out of native reserve land, and large sections of the trail were boardwalk, which made for easy walking and fast progress. We made it to Nitinat Narrows at around noon. There was a shop set up selling crab and salmon, but again, we're students so we had to pass on it. There were lots of hikers waiting to cross - this was the most people we had seen so far in one spot on the trail. We had to wait for a long time to cross, although it only ended up being a 3 minute crossing. After the crossing, I almost wiped out again on a slippery downhill log, but saved myself. We climbed up to a good viewpoint and had lunch.

From our lunch spot, we had a nice mix of well-maintained boardwalks, easy forest walking, and flat pebbly beaches - not a bad afternoon! The sun began to shine once we got to the beach, which was nice too. We arrived at our campsite at Tsuisat at around 4:30pm and found a fantastic sheltered place to pitch our tents. Our dinner was delicious - kraft dinner with sausage and dried veggies, one of the best things I've ever tasted (of course, that's true of almost any hiking meal). Mark and I did another textbook bearhang.

After dinner we wandered over to check out Hole-in-the-wall, a natural rock bridge. We found out that it was actually pretty easy to scramble up onto the top of it, so we headed up to check out the view.

The sunset was the most spectacular thing I have ever seen.

After the sun set, we headed back to camp and had a huge driftwood fire! Our campsite was isolated so we had the whole area to ourselves.

DAY 6 (TSUSIAT TO MICHIGAN CREEK, 7h, 15km, boardwalks, forest, beach): We woke up and were dismayed to hear raindrops on our tent flys. This was the first real rain of the trip. We decided to sleep in and hope it would go away, but no such luck. We eventually dragged ourselves out of our sleeping bags and quickly dragged all of our gear to the cover of thick trees, where we could eat breakfast and pack our bags in relative dryness. We only got going around 10am.

At Tsusiat we saw the waterfall, and then headed up onto a mandatory forest section by climbing some steep ladders into the fog. At the Klanawa River we had a cool cable car crossing and saw some someone hiking the trail in Crocs and jeans - pretty hardcore! The next section was beach. We had lunch at Trestle Creek, returned to the forest, and then pressed on to Tsocowis Creek. After crossing the cool suspension bridge, we dropped down to the beach where we had a forced (but appreciated) break from 3 - 4:15pm to wait for tides. We all had a good rest - by now the rain had fully stopped and it was just overcast.

We wanted to wait for the tides because ahead was our last beach section of the trail (a 5km stretch)! We saw a very cool section of rusting hull from a shipwreck (named Uzbekistan). It was great walking the entire way, and as we got closer to Michigan Creek the sun even came out.

Michigan Creek was BUSY - it was bustling with people going both directions. This is the last campsite before the north trailhead. We found a good site for our tent, and cooked our last dinner. The sunset was great again (nothing like last night, but still good) and we went to bed early, because it was going to be an early final morning tomorrow!

DAY 7 (MICHIGAN CREEK TO PACHENA TRAILHEAD, 4h, 12km, easy easy walking): We were up and out of the tents by 5:30am. We wanted to get an early start because we didn't have reservations on the shuttle bus back to the south trailhead, and we wanted to be sure that we'd get on. The sunrise was incredible - it made me wish we got up earlier on more of the days! We left around 7am.

The walking for the entire 12km was in the forest, and it was easy, easy, easy. The trail was wide, flat, dry and well-maintained. Apparently at one point they tried to put a road through the entire West Coast Trail before they came to their senses, and this trail is a remnant. We passed Pachena Lighthouse around 8am and had a quick look around. We also took a short side trail just after Pachena Lighthouse and saw an INCREDIBLE number of sea lions sitting on a big rock! They were all grunting and the sound of them all together was pretty unique.

When the trail wasn't flat dirt, it was well-maintained boardwalks and short nice ladders. One thing we noticed was that there was a lot more storm damage at this end of the trail than the south end - lots of huge trees down.

At around 11am we knew we were getting close because the bridge numbers were getting smaller and smaller. The final section actually had a pretty steep section of ladders going up and down, but we didn't care because we were so close to the trailhead! Finally it came into sight - Bridge 1! After a celebratory photo, we walked over the bridge and saw the WCT information hut - we were there!

The rest of the morning we just lazed around, ate, and took off all our muddy hiking gear. We phoned the shuttle bus and got a reservation, so that was reassuring. There were lots of people coming off the trail, and lots of clean, nervous-looking hikers starting the trail. We caught the 1:15 shuttle bus from Pachena (actually it was pretty late so we didn't leave until 2pm or so), which took bumpy gravel forest roads all the way back to the Gordon River trailhead. It was direct and fast, but really expensive too. We got there around 5pm, grabbed our car, and made a beeline back to Victoria. We didn't quite make the 7pm ferry, so we had a celebratory beer at the ferry terminal while waiting for the 9pm ferry. On the ferry we had a very satisfying meal of White Spot. From there we drove home, and that was the end of our trip! A fantastic hike, I'll definitely be back to do it again!