I’m finally back from the west coast of Vancouver Island, and am currently enjoying the delightful highs (mostly) and lows (very occasionally) of couch-surfing with my nearest and dearest. My internet access is limited to the times when I can find wi-fi and happen to have my laptop, so I’m a bit late in updating the blog.

Since my grey whale videos are taking a bit longer than anticipated to upload on Youtube, I’m posting a little entry about the trials, travails and general fabulousness of the West Coast Trail. I didn’t finish the trail - 48 hours of solid rain in the first 3 days spurred on a heavy wimp-out survival response, so my friend Sue and I stayed put at a couple of campsites to dry out. (And get soaked again…one hiker, a prof from the University of Calgary who has hiked the trail 36 TIMES said it was the worst weather he had ever seen).

The benefits of taking it easy on the WCT (instead of powering through with grim determination) meant that I was able to really enjoy watching the wildlife. A number of grey whales were surface feeding for the first few days of our trip (see the photo below of the whale swimming sideways with half of it’s tail fluke visible). I was able to see my first spyhop! (That’s when the whale lifts it’s head vertically out of the water by “balancing” on their tail in order to look around).

I also saw wolf tracks on the beach, about 70 sea lions on a pullout rock, lots of seabirds, a river otter, a pine marten, some very cool finches that I still have to identify, and lots of wonderful old growth coastal plant life (amabilis fir, sitka spruce, cedar, maidenhair ferns….)

The biggest challenge on the trip was figuring out how to stay dry - it’s been so many years since I was backpacking that I’d really lost my techniques for staying out of the rain. The first day was such a wash out - hiking for 7 hours in ankle-deep mud bogs, scrambling over logs, and feeling cold water squish between my toes all day. When we reached camp, I was wet through and through.

Other hikes were a bit gentler, but not necessarily drier. On the third day, we hiked along the beach (carefully checking tides, of course) and had to cross two streams and a small river that were fairly small flows at the time. After 12 hours of rain, crossing them on the way back a day later was a different story - the tiny creeks had swelled to triple their size, and fording the river meant wading through icy, rushing water past my knees.

Stay tuned for an analysis of my ultralight hiking experiment!