West Coast Trail Day Four

Friday, 31 July 2015. Carmanah Creek to Camper Bay. 16km or 10 miles

Carmanah Camp Morning

Yes, Carmanah was foggy once again, and this time, I had a bulk of my clothing still damp from laundry the night before, including my one(!) pair of hiking pants.  There were not too many campers at Carmanah that evening – DD and I counted some six groups there, which made the campsite seem relatively uncrowded in comparison with some of the other campsites we’d seen and experienced.

 

Bear Box at Carmanah

The bear box shows how unoccupied the campsite was – not very full. Notice the Starbucks Via packet in the Ziplock baggie – Starbucks Vias are quite popular on the trails.

Basically the things I remember about Day 4 was as follows:

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We should have taken the cable car over Carmanah Creek. Instead, we chose to brave the crossing at low tide at a point where the creek flows into the sea – but these areas were relatively wide, and because of the beach path we decided to take, we had no choice but to traverse the streams flowing down into the sea. Therefore, we hiked with wet socks/ shoes for a bit.  The portion along the beach was about the same as prior days, slogging through sand, occasionally trying to walk on sandstone or pick our way boulders that were not too slippery or overgrown with seaweed.

Changing our wet socks at Walbran Creek/ Camp

DD called a break at Walbrans, where he decided to change his socks, we’d have a snack and use the toilets. We met a group of 4 hailing from Idaho, heading for Cullite, the campsite before Camper. One of them had what looked like a hurt leg; another was nursing some blisters. DD and considered ourselves lucky that we had avoided injury so far.

Mud, mud, mud. 

We found ourselves back on the trail inland around noon, and hiked for 3 more hours. What we had learned the day before was that fueling is key. With full bellies and a short break from our ferry lunch, we were in good spirits throughout the day, where we didn’t seem to get that tired or hungry until about 4pm or so. It also probably helped that the trail on Day 3 had slightly more boardwalks and was the teensiest(?) bit less(?) technical than what we encountered on Day 4.

The bridge where I almost lost my hiking poles.

I nearly lost my hiking poles crossing this bridge! We were hustling to get across, as a Swedish couple who had just crossed over in the opposite direction informed us that we should hurry; there was a large and slow-moving group also approaching from the other side. And so we hurried, and before I could pause to take in the beautiful view of the water, I looked down at my hiking poles to shift them to one arm. There was a heart-stopping moment where I realized that not only one, but two of the bottom segments of each of my poles had fallen out of their bindings! Luckily they were stuck a couple of feet back in the netting that thankfully encapsultated the bridge and I heaved a sigh of highly thankful relief. This was definitely a trip where I did not want to be without poles. I relied on them so heavily during the techincal sections of the trail – that is – some 85% of it! And I also relied on them significantly when my energy flagged and I got super-tired. I would not have been a happy camper had I truly lost them!

Cullite Creek Pause

Though we started an hour earlier than previous days, we didn’t really pause for a proper lunch. And began lagging/ getting cranky/ snapping at one another in the early afternoon. I was glad DD realized this and decided that we would take a proper lunch pause at Cullite Creek, where we would break out the stove and cook ourselves a hearty ramen-and-spam lunch though ramen and spam was intended to be one of our dinners. Because of what Monique had planted in our heads the day before – we also talked about possibly turning our six days into five days by combining our intended last two days into one, skipping a couple of the hardest parts of the trail – Owen Point and Thrasher Cove – and finishing early.

Our Canadian Friends

We ran into our Canadian friends – Eric, Nick, and Brittany at Cullite. They were done for the day, so we took our goodbyes.

Ramen and Spam gave us the energy to push on to Camper Bay, some 4 km away. 4km is not even 3 miles, but, as a hiker who was also lazing by Cullite Creek indicated to us about the next segment we were about to encounter, the trail was filled with “Roots. Lots of roots.”

And rooty is was, and I encountered some narrow log bridges hanging over chasms that still give me nightmares to think about them, and more mud and roots and roots and mud… it took us around 2.5 hours to get to Camper Bay – we were traversing parts of the forest that were significantly shady with lots of tree cover, so it seemed later than it was. DD was silently harbouring a fear that we’d be hiking in the dark, and was very much relieved when I informed him of the true time.

Beautiful new composting toilet at Camper Bay

Finally, at around 6:30pm, we descended some ladders into camp. It was also quite full, but sported a new compost toilet with fancy tiki carved mask on its door.

Our tent at Camper Bay Camp

A nice gentleman waved us to an open campsite, even though it was directly behind theirs.

It seemed that many folks throughout the camp were planning on starting out early the next day, intent on getting the timing of the tides right and heading to Owen Point.

Will, the nice guy who had pointed to our open campsite told us that he and his hiking partner, Nathan, would be going for Owen Point, and then heading up Thrasher Cove immediately and also finishing that same day. We were also committed to finishing on the same day, but we would skip Owen Point and the 2-hourlong descent/ ascent to/ from Thrasher Cove. After a hurried dinner and washing up, we crawled into our tent, and set our alarms for an early wake-up call.

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