West Coast Trail - AWESOME SAUCE on the March

Hey Folks,

So this post is going to be lighter on meal related content and real heavy on my thoughts and experiences on the West Coast Trail. So if you are a hardcore foodie and only want that content I'll front load it and everyone else can read on and enjoy. Sadly, Carla couldn't join so you'll have to put up with just my thoughts of the West Coast Trail. That said, Carla lived in Port Albernie for years, which is real close to the trail, so she is more than aware of how awesome Vancouver Island's coast line is. I also have to give credit to Ester, Peter and Calvin who also took pictures along the trail - the good ones are probably theirs.

Isn't that some damn gorgeous scenery. Who would have thought chicken noodle soup could look so good.

This was our group of intrepid adventurers. From left to right: Peter, Ester, ME!, Chris and Calvin. First off, I have to give a huge heartfelt thank you to my fellow trail mate Ester who planned, coordinated and bought all the meals for the 5 of us. We all flew/drove to Vancouver Island from Hong Kong, Calgary, Saskatoon and Toronto. The first time we all met together was at our shuttle bus from Victoria to Bamfield, where the north end of the trail begins. Therefore, it was much easier for one person to organize the meals for everyone. The problem with this scenario is that Ester, being thorough, also bought snacks for everyone while us freeloaders also brought own snacks too. I guess people are okay leaving the most important part of nutrition to someone else, but when it comes to choosing the right trail goodies and snacks that is just too personal a choice (Cliff bars and trail mix with unsalted almonds, cashews and hazelnuts personally). So we brought wayyyyyyyyyyy too much food.

This might not sound like the worst issue one could have when walking 76km over intense terrain over 6 days with 50lbs packs; however, food weighs a lot! The difference between carrying a 50lbs pack vice a 40lbs pack is HUGE! Besides my footwear choice (more on that later), I think carrying a heavy pack was a big reason I was super slow and taking baby steps due to sore ankles and heels on Day 3 and Day 4.

For breakfast we made a big pot of oatmeal with raisons paired with tea and coffee. We ate that meal every morning and it was perfect for this trip. I personally think this is the way to go in the future.

For lunches we planned to stop somewhere on the trail each day, break out the camping stoves and make a real meal. Great in theory, terrible in practice. When you are 8kms in on a 14km hike for the day you really don't want to stop for 1-1.5hrs and seize up. Much better to stop for 15mins, eat some trail mix, have a protein bar, take some selfies on other peoples phones...

then keep marching on. Saving that hour by not stopping for lunch and getting into your campsite early is much more beneficial.

For Supper, Ester made us some sensational meals. She led off with a soup (chicken noodle, tomato, onion and if I wasn't mistaken stone soup once or twice) and then followed up with a main meal. All our supper meals were dehydrated, but she did pack in some fresh garlic which was much appreciated. We had tuna and Sidekicks pasta, pad thai, and tortellini. The other great thing that Ester did was label and pack our food per day per meal, so as an example, we had a Ziploc bag for Wednesday lunch and a different Ziploc for Wednesday supper. This provided excellent organization for our packs and allowed us to easily divide up how we carried all the food.

Other than bringing way too much snack food and lunches that required preparation, I think we had a pretty good meal plan in general. I was never hungry, it tasted good and I always had energy to keep marching on my merry way.

Now on to the hike itself!

The trail is just gorgeous! Throughout it you switch between hiking in the forest on a cliff

and hiking on the shoreline which is mostly beach.

The cliff face reaches 50-200m in height, which doesn't sound too bad, but the problem is there are numerous rivers, creeks and streams that have cut paths down through those cliffs. There is the occasional suspension bridge that crosses a river

but they are few and far between. Occasionally you have to hike down the steep terrain on a dirt switchback trail, but more often than not you climb up and down a series of very steep wooden ladders.

I can assure you that these ladders made you sweat, and in some cases raised anxiety. Thankfully, we didn't get any rain throughout the entire 6 days we were on the trail so we didn't have to contend with steep ladders, 50lbs packs, AND slippery ladder rungs.

Sadly, we don't have a really good photo to depict some of the crazy 5 platform ladder climbs, alas. Over some especially wide or deep rivers they installed flying miner carts! Yes you read that correctly!

Basically, you use the rope to pull the mining cart over to you; fill it with your gear and yourself, of course; and then go for a carefree joyride to the middle of the span thanks to gravity. After that however you have to pull your cart by hand up to the other tower while you're in the cart (not an easy task by any stretch of the imagination). Thankfully I wasn't solo and we had strong friends to help pull each other's cart up to the tower.

As for the beaches, they also provided some gorgeous scenery. The tricky part is that there are pretty significant tides and you can only traverse certain sections at low tide. If you don't follow the tide tables provided there is a chance you could get caught between a steep cliff and 6ft of water at high tide. Its very easy to avoid that predicament as long as you watch the tide tables and map.

Some of the beaches had picturesque light sand similar to what you would run into in the Caribbean.

This wasn't too bad to walk on if the tide had recently receded because the water made the sand very compacted and we could walk on it without sinking in. We actually made our best time on these beach stretches.

Next type of beach was the gravelly sort. This was the worst to walk on. Every single step we would sink 2-4 inches into the rocks, so every single step took so much energy and it was such slow going. Thankfully there was probably only 3-5kms of this type of beach.

Finally, there are the tide pool rocks and boulders. There is an optional 1km part of the trail where you can climb on and jump between giant boulders on the beach. This was at the end of our journey and there was no way in hell I was going to do this with the way my heels and ankles were feeling. Normally, I would be game for a slightly risky, exciting, but once in a lifetime experience; however, my lower body had failed me enough on this trip and I didn't want to make a bad situation a lot worse. Its not uncommon for people to roll ankles and get minor injuries during that section. Sorry no pictures of the crazy boulders because we obviously avoided them - dahh.

The tide pool rock formations were really cool. As long as you were very careful walking on the very slippery algae the tide pool rocks were really nice to walk on; in fact, I just walked on the barnacles (sorry barnacles) whenever I could because they provided a ton of grip and counteracted the slippery algae. There were ample fish, minnows, crabs, sea cucumbers, mussels and other sea creatures that you would see in the tide pools as you walked among them. Some of the these rock formations looked super alien and could easily stand in for some barren alien landscape.

Regarding equipment, here's what I did right and wrong. I'll start with the bad.

Footwear: Do not wear trail running shoes. Some idiots were actually hiking the trail in sandals or...bare feet - complete idiocy. The reason I wouldn't recommend wearing running shoes on the trail is that I don't think they provide enough cushion for your feet and joints with a 50lbs pack, and in my case, a 193lbs frame (thankfully I'm back down to ~184lbs now). I sincerely believe this lack of cushion in my footwear was the major reason my heel and ankle failed me. They were so sore that on Day 3 and Day 4 I could only take baby steps by the half way point of each day, which slowed down our group progress noticeably. Lets just say my ego was not pleased. I'm, in general, a very competitive person who takes pride in being fit, having completed 7 half marathons; 20-25km legs of Sinister 7 and Death Race which are up and down multiple mountain peaks in Alberta; and the Kusam Klimb on Vancouver Island which is more running up and down a mountain that still has snow in June. These previous exploits were the main reason I thought I would be fine with just my trail runners and no specific training - hubris got me! I would recommend either a very fast drying 'Jungle' boot style hiking boot or a high ankle waterproof boot. If you're hiking when there is a lot of rain then there's a good chance your feet will get wet regardless of your boot due to the numerous creeks that you have to ford. During a dry summer you might get away with dry feet with the waterproof boots. I tried waterproof socks but they were an unmitigated disaster because they scrunched up my toes and caused blisters after only 6kms. I took them off at that point and never used them again.

Gaiters: I would highly recommend wearing gaiters regardless of shoe type. Gaiters cover your boots and leg all the way up to your mid shin or knee, depending on the style, and stay secure by looping under your boot. They essentially help keep mud, dust, dirt, etc. out of your shoes and boots - and maybe even a splash of water, but not a creek or puddle worth of water. Despite BC going through an extreme drought this summer and the trail not getting rain for a number of days, there were still significant mud holes throughout the trail. If there was a lot of rain the trail would be absolutely filled with mud. I didn't have gaiters and I was okay, but I had to be a level 3 Trail Ninja jumping, swinging and dashing around mud holes to stay clean and dry. Use gaiters.

Walking Poles: Only one person in our group had walking poles, and Peter only used them due to a recent knee injury. In my opinion, their greatest utility is for lowering yourself down larger declines where you normally might have to hop; the poles decrease the impact on your knees and ankles on these descents. My recommendation is that if you are worried at all about impact to your knees or ankles bring walking poles. They are a slight pain in the butt when traversing ladders because you need to secure them, but that's not too serious in the grand scheme of things. In hindsight, I should have had a set.

Now for the good.

Backpack: Almost everyone in our group had a roughly 55L backpack and we didn't have any issues with volume, especially since we secured larger items like tents and dry bags on the outside of our packs. For our 6 day hike 55L's was perfect, but you could go smaller. I wouldn't risk going smaller than 40L unless you have really compact gear or you are doing fewer days. Thanks for the loan of the sweet backpack Will!

Camping Stoves: We had two smaller single burner camping stoves that ran on white gas and we brought 4x 1L aluminum bottles to hold the gas. Two stoves were nice for a group of 5 people because you can run a soup and entree or tea/coffee and oatmeal concurrently. If your group is less than 4 people you'll be fine with just one stove.

Tents: We used 1x 2-person tent and 1x 3-person tent. They weren't crazy high end tents and we were fine. Moreover, they are going to get wet, sandy and dirty so be aware of that. I wouldn't bring a tent larger than 4-person; you are setting up tents in tight spaces on the beaches so you won't always have enough room to setup a big honking Fairmont-esque type tent.

Clothing: You will stink - embrace it. After a day you won't even really notice it except when you smell your clothes up close, then you might gag a little. I brought two pairs of hiking shorts and 3 hiking shirts, which allowed me to wash them periodically in a stream. You could easily rough it with one each but I didn't want to. A must is to bring a set of sleep/lounging clothes. Keep these dry in a zip lock bag when you are hiking and only bring them out once you're ready to relax in camp, I would suggest pants and a long sleeve shirt. Also, sandals are a must when you are in camp. They are comfortable and let your feet dry out, which is uber important in order to keep your feet healthy.

Dry Sacks: These are great to keep your clothes dry when you are hiking and it rains, but Ziploc bags also work fine for this purpose. Dry bags also come in super handy when securing your food in the evening. At all the major camp sites there are aluminum storage units for all campers to store their food for the night, and having all your food in a single sack is really handy. These storage lockers keep wild animals from coming into your campsite, the most worrisome being black bears, cougars, raccoons, ect. The most troublesome however are rats and mice, and they are legion at the campsites when its dark. If you leave even a chocolate bar wrapper in your backpack they will eat through the fabric to get it. In a scenario where you camp somewhere on your own and you need to hoist your food into a tree, a dry sack is super handy for this task instead of hoisting up your entire backpack.

Water: There are ample streams, waterfalls, rivers and springs to get fresh water from, but you should still treat it with iodine tablets. There are other better filtration devices out there but we were fine with just the tablets.

Hatchet/Saw: Almost everyone camps on the beach together at campsites, which makes scavenging appropriately sized driftwood for a fire extremely challenging. There will be a plethora of large logs, huge trees and splinters, with not much else. We brought a small hatchet and it came in super handy for making kindling from smaller pieces of driftwood. If you expect to use that same hatchet to cut up anything larger than 2 inches in diameter, you won't have a chance in hell. Driftwood is damn near impossible to chop up with a hatchet because it is rock solid. I saw one set of hikers with a collapsible buck saw that worked really well. If you are adamant about having the perfect campfire every night you might want to consider one for your pack. Notice the long tree we had to burn in half for firewood.

Overall, the trip was spectacular. Yes, I cursed and swore to myself on Day 3 and Day 4 because of my poor choice of footwear and frail body, but seeing this rugged part of BC was something really special. If I had to do it again I would plan 6 or 7 days depending on my group. 5 days and less you are hiking to go fast, and not hiking to enjoy the experience, which is fine too if you just want a workout. We saw some people do the trail individually, but solo hikers normally linked up with other hikers to be in a group. I personally had a great time because we had ample time to chat while hiking. I'm sure we must have solved no less than four of the world's problems, and maybe disagreed on a few too.

I would highly recommend the West Coast Trail to most people, but not everyone. If you are severely out of shape or have a major fear of heights I wouldn't recommend this trail, there is just too much that could go wrong; getting search and rescue to pull you off the trail will leave you with a hefty rescue bill to pay after you leave too. In my opinion, if you can easily do a 15km hike with no pack in challenging terrain where you live, then you can do the West Coast Trail with some pre-training and the right gear.

Lastly, a big thank you to Chris, Ester, Peter and Calvin who were terrific to hike with. I'm blessed to have shared this experience with you all. Thank you so much.

Well thanks for staying with me and please comment on the article as I would love to read what you think.

Cheers,

Jesse