The West Coast Trail


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Published: January 20th 2006
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Quin the Monkey!Quin the Monkey!Quin the Monkey!

Climbing down the ladders
Once again it was sunny so we decided to hike some of the West Coast Trail. The West Coast Trail is in the Pacific Rim National Park. It starts (or ends!) at Bamfield and goes all the way down the coast almost, reaching Victoria which is the capital of British Columbia. The Trail is 75 km long and takes about 8 days to hike (or so the guide book says - it would probably take me 2 weeks!). It was originally an escape route for the survivors of shipwrecks. We hiked in 6km and back, which was tough enough! At the start of the walk (if you can call it that!) there are rock face ladders to climb up and down. The longest one was probably about 10 metres, and this was the one we had to climb down! Most of the trail snaked through wet forest, with bridges over streams and slippery wood surfaces going up hills. Most of the track was very muddy and only Pippi was sensible enough to wear gumboots. Quin and I spent a lot of time carefully climbing around muddy bogs. We saw many interesting animal tracks which led us to believe there was a cougar in the area, but once again they turned out to be dog prints! We got quite a fright when we ran into a couple with two black dogs. We saw the dogs up ahead before the people, our fear being heightened by the fact that we were on the look out for bears.

Along the trail Pippi kept wanting to push ahead because she sure there was an elusive beach just over the next rise. As we were walking parallel to ocean the sounds of the waves were driving her crazy! Eventually however, we had to turn back. Otherwise we would have been in the forest at dusk, when cougars and bears feed. We stopped to eat lunch and then started the walk back. The last 3km felt very long and we were getting quite tired. Pippi thought we may be able to walk the last kilometre along the beach rather than face the ladders again. This however, turned out to be a scary climb along a sheer and slimy rock face, with freezing waves crashing below. Quin found this fun and hopped from rock to rock, while Pippi and I found it terrifying. We sidled along on our bums, clinging to the freezing walls. We both ended up with wet, mossy patches on our pants. We eventually made it back to car but the beach route took much longer than the track of course. However it was much more adventurous and enlivening according to Quin!

We were rather tired and cold by the time we got home and my first task was to take a hot shower. Pippi soldiered on and made pizza for dinner, even taking the time to make yeast-based dough from scratch, which I thought was impressive after hiking all day. The main topping (besides 3 kinds of cheese!) was the mushrooms we had picked a couple of days before. We all slept well that night.


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1st December 2005

Bear Bait!!!
Please note - I don't want to end up reading about you in the Readers Digest - "Night of Hell on the West Coast Trail - saved from the jaws of death" or something to that effect. Sounds awesome though - what a great adventure.
15th December 2005

The West Coast Trail sounds like heaps of fun. Apart from the cougars and bears, that is! Has Sean mentioned that we've booked flights to Tassie in January to do some hiking of our own? We've decided to go the Overland Trek (65kms in 6 days). Should be amazing. I'm hoping to spot a Tasmanian Tiger enroute and earn myself that million dollar bounty being offered by Time Magazine. Wish me luck!!!

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