West Coast Trail: Part III of III

by Erik Minty

As I sit down to write this final chapter of the adventures of myself, Brian Dick, and Ondrej Hron as we travelled through Pacific Rim National Park, I've not yet seen the second chapter in print (because the editor guy is a little slow) and I can't find my copy, so I'm not totally sure where I left off.

So we will pick up the adventure at the midpoint of the trail, the southern end of our journey, Nitinat Sound. Having taken our time, we arrived there for lunch on day 5. The plan was to cook soup for lunch, but we noticed an abundance of shellfish and other creatures in the water indicating that the water was not quite fit for consumption. So we said hello to the Indian who ran the shuttle service across the sound, and continued back along the trail, retracing our steps of the past five days, as it were.

We hiked for quite a ways and didn't find any major streams near a convenient beach access, so we found a beach and decided to have lunch anyways. Now I thought that the intention was to eat up some of this canned tuna, but those other guys had other intentions. Soup! I questioned this with a sideways glance. They assured me that they would boil the water first, so I proceeded to take a nap, figuring that they meant they would fix some contraption to boil seawater from the big pot into the smaller one, and thus provide water for soup.

I wasn't really paying attention, and was therefore a little surprised that it was finished so quickly. "You didn't just boil the water in the one pot, did you?"

Now Brian will deny this vehemently until his dying day, but his comment at the time (until he tasted the stuff) was "well, the package says to add salt so it should be okay. Maybe a little salty ..." Obviously we failed to grasp the significance of the volume of salt contained in seawater. I shared my carrots and tuna, and the "soup" was buried in the sand. Brian complained bitterly about the foul taste in his mouth for hours. I laughed silently.

"well, the package says to add salt so it should be okay. Maybe a little salty ..."

For the rest of the journey back, it was mostly uneventful. In a way. Not terribly exciting to talk about, but since we stuck to the beaches as much as possible, we soaked in all of the amazing scenery. Sandstone caves, surge channels, natural bridges, waves pounding craggy bluffs. The kind of stuff they put to classical music on those "mood" videos. Some light sprinkling of rain here and there, but otherwise perfect scenery. We hiked on the beach, along the rocks, over small bluffs, timing the waves through surge channels, and negotiating our way around deep pools in the pitch dark through tunnels.

Now a number of my friends have asked to see all my photos from the trip, and I have to explain rather sheepishly that I only have about a half dozen, and those from the first couple of days. This is because Ondrej brought his camera, and the photos I do have were from the end of the first roll of film. The second roll of film was in the camera, in Ondrej's pack. We were on the beach (still). We had climbed around this small bluff, and were trying to figure out a way to get down. The best way appeared to be about a 10' (3m) drop onto a large but very slippery looking rock. That wasn't too appealing, but neither was the thought of backtracking. We had our packs off, trying to calculate exactly how to accomplish this, when we heard a noise. Splash! We turned around and looked at the packs: One, two, ... three. In the water. It was Ondrej's pack that was haplessly floating in the water. Brian made a deft leap onto a rock (we still don't know how), then to another, and managed to pluck the pack from the surging water. So Ondrej had a lot of really wet clothes, and, well, I've never met a camera that's particularly fond of seawater.

After some drying off, we continued. The weather held nicely for our last couple of days. On day 7, we stopped again at the lighthouse and chatted with the lady who lives and works there. Seems like a really neat job for semi-retirement. A little ways further on, we climbed down as far as the side trail would allow, and watched the sea lions basking in the sun on their big rock. I've heard that orcas will sometimes hurl themselves against these big tanning rocks, so that their waves will dump some sea lions into the water for lunch. Looking at the size of those sea lions (about twice my size) kind of staggered the imagination. But this day there were no hungry orcas.

So we ended up spending our last night on the West Coast Trail on the beach where I had been soaked on day 1. There wasn't any fresh water there, and this time nobody tried to make soup. Instead we had tuna sandwiches, played cards, and had a good time. In the morning we broke camp quickly because it was threatening to rain. We paid our last respects to the open ocean, and with only a single granola bar each in our stomachs, we set out for the trailhead.

This time, the climb up the rope to the main trail seemed a little easier. My pack was a little lighter, my pace a little quicker, and the fallen logs were a little smaller and easier to climb over. Not so much because of anticipation or relief that this excursion was coming to an end (certainly not relief!), but I think that I had left behind some very heavy baggage, somewhere on that trail, and was driven onwards by the experiences that I now carried with me.

Looking back across the water, from the ferry, at the faint glow of a clouded sunset in rose, I was glad for what I had left behind, and thankful for everything I had gained along the way.

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