When we had started off this morning, we were already on the beach so we decided it would be rather pleasant to continue hiking along the beach as far as possible. Much of the north half of the trail is divided _ you can take the forest trail, or if you prefer, the beach trail. There are regular access trails, so getting back up to the forest trail is not much of a problem.
Hiking along the beach takes a lot of effort, because you're either sinking into the sand with every step or stepping very carefully if you're fed up with walking on the sand and take to the slippery rocks. Just because we were having so much fun, we decided to do lots of both. This area of the west coast of the island is so treacherous for shipping in the winter months that over the years there have been a lot of shipwrecks off the coast. Well, we aren't into SCUBA diving so we had to settle for exploring the one (I think it was a barge or something ... hard to tell) that ended up on the beach.
Eventually of course we had run out of beach. It's one of those things where you turn a corner and it's really clear that you have reached the place on the map that has an arrow pointing to it saying "Impassable Headlands." We found the access trail with little difficulty, and it hadn't actually looked too bad ... from down there. Besides, who wants to backtrack?
I had no rope supporting me, only a very friendly tree whose roots were the very reason I was still alive. I could stay here as long as I needed to, but eventually it was either up or down. Down I had tried, to see if another route might be better, but that had ended up in my gracious appreciation of this tree. Up I had tried three times, despite my better judgement. Not being a very experienced rock climber, I was a little reluctant to abandon the "three-hold" rule, but nevertheless I had attempted this particular"jump" three times (which I'm sure would have been a piece of cake without 50 pounds of gear on my back. Oh to have just a little bit longer arms, and this would be a breeze.
Then out of nowhere (well, okay, from above) comes Spiderman Brian. (Speaking of long arms and legs.) "Lean back against the tree." Okay, no problem. "Can you reach that root with your right hand?" Barely, but I already tried this ... Wait. There's another hand, not mine. I grabbed it. The man has elastic arms, but I didn't complain because that got me unstuck. At the top, it was definitely time for lunch.
The Klanawa River crossing is probably one of the more fun parts of the West Coast Trail. They have a cable car that you sit in with your gear and zip right over the river. If you really want to be a jerk, you can hold the ropes at one end so the guy in the car gets stuck halfway. Brian tried this trick and almost ended up swimming in the river. We camped at the mouth ofthe Klanawa that night. It's kind of fun watching how the river empties out into the surging tide ... it kind of resembles a giant endless tug-of-war,with each side getting a little bit ahead, then a little behind, and so on.
Day 3 was actually quite pleasant. We hiked a very short distance toTsusiat Falls and just spent the day relaxing on the beach, in the sun. Well, it's a bit of a rocky beach but it was still nice. The next day we took a day pack with a little bit of food and decided to take a little trail we had heard about up Tsusiat River to Tsusiat Lake (they ran out of names I guess ...). The trail was not too bad for the first bit, but we ended up doing a lot of bush whacking. We did find a little clearing on the lake, ate lunch and went for a dip in the glacial water. (Which isn't so bad, Brian, once you get in past your toes!)
Then the executive decision for the return trip back to base camp was to create our own path, because the brush was too thick on the "trail." This was not much better, but it was loads of fun even though it was pretty slow going. You'd be walking along a fallen tree, swinging around other trees, branches, and whatever, and you'd look at the ground, but it was often impossible to tell exactly where the ground was. It is of course with good reason that this is called a "temperate rainforest." Boy are they not kidding. Sometimes it was a bit of a maze trying to figure out how to move in the direction you wanted to. So it was with our legs covered in all kinds of scratches and cuts that we returned to our campsite.
On Day 5, we made our way to Nitinat Narrows. Here, the only way across isto hitch a ride with one of the Ditidaht Indians for $5 each. This was in fact our planned end-point. We had only one vehicle, which was at the north end of the trail, and we had heard tales of misery from people who spent three days wading through knee-deep mud on the south half of the trail. Besides, the north half we had heard was by far the most scenic. So we decided to see it all two times for the price of one. We doubled back, and looked for a suitable beach with a stream where we could cook some soup.
We found a beach, but there was no stream, so I figured soup was out. Ask him and he will deny it, but it was in fact Brian who suggested we boil sea-water in which to cook soup. "Well, you put salt in soup anyways, right?" Ahem. The only reason I didn't complain was because I figured he was planning on distilling the water using a clever arrangement of two pots and a lid. Nope. Plain old seawater, boiled to kill bad stuff. Even Ondrej, who is more than "not in the habit" of throwing away food, found himself only able to choke down a few bites. Not great, but better than nothing, my carrots served to keep everyone's stomachs together.
So now we were on our way back home. It took us five days to reach our farthest point, but we had been taking our time. Now we needed to pick things up a little, because we only had a couple of days to get back. We would of course make it with no difficulties (time-wise at least), but somehow we knew that the excitement was far from over ...
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