Juan de Fuca Trail Day Two 10 June 2009

This was the day of the hike I had been dreading the most; Bear Beach to Chin Beach. A little over 10 km long, it is rated as “very difficult.” Last September I hiked from Sombrio Beach in to Chin, a distance of 6 km and rated as “difficult,” a hike that had radically changed my perceptions of the JdF and my own fitness levels.

Chin Beach 2009

When I hiked from Sombrio to Chin, I had expected a challenge, but nothing like what I was confronted with. The first kilometre out of Sombrio is brutal, and by the time I made it to the old logging road at the high point of the trail, I'd climbed about 160 metres—much of it more than once. By the time I got to Chin Beach four hours later, I had used up all my energy reserves, and I ended up setting up camp and then sleeping for a couple of hours, quite exhausted from the hike. The next day I was facing either going back the way I'd come (no thank you!) or continuing into a section of trail I didn't know, but that was twice as long and rated as even more difficult. I ended up pulling the pin the next morning, hiking out to the highway some 200 metres above me ( a heavy climb, but the least objectionable alternative at the time).

Over the winter, I was certain that I wanted to hike the JdF, but that rating, “very difficult,” kept raising its head. The 10 km kept growing in difficulty in my head, getting longer, higher, and more wild. I thought about it, and the more I thought about it, the worse it got. So facing it on my second day out, well, I was not happy. In fact, I was very nervous.

When planning the hike, I had set aside 6-8 hours for this section of the trail. My thinking was to hike to the halfway point (or better, if I was lucky/strong enough) and then break for a good lunch and maybe a short nap before taking on the second half. I was looking forward to having finished this section, but I wasn't looking forward to doing the actual hiking. I ate breakfast, refilled my water bottles, and was on the trail just after 8:00 am.—and was on the beach at Chin at 12:30pm.

It's not that the hike wasn't hard, it was. It just wasn't brutal, and nowhere near as hard as I'd built it up to be in my mind. Going back over the map, I see that the trail never gets more than about 100 metres above the beach—only two-thirds the maximum height on the Chin to Sombrio section. I can't really figure out why it's rated as “very difficult,” except that its twice as long as the Chin-Sombrio section.

Beautiful, though. Some points look down on some lovely looking beaches, although there is no land access to them. My timing was apparently off, though. The couple who left 10 minutes behind me kept seeing Grey whales at the lookout points, while I only saw one seal lazing about while hunting the near-shore. The couple figured it was the same whales, moving down the coastline at about the same speed that they were. Mostly I was seeing the slugs, spiders and millipedes along the trail.

Slugs on the end of a log

This actually makes sense; I was more focused on the microcosm rather than the macrocosm (well, maybe not the micro-, but at least the “small-cosm”), just as the outward journey of the hike was reflecting the more inner-directed journey I was on. There was a tremendous amount of inner monologue going on in my head, liberated by the physical demands of the hike. It was very difficult to achieve the state of inner silence, of “just being” while hiking.

I also spotted a couple of red squirrels along the trail. At first I thought they were immature greys, but as I got a better look, I realized my mistake. The Grey squirrels are an imported, invasive species that are driving the red's out of their traditional territory, driving down their numbers until they are a threatened species in Canada.

Red Squirrel

This should actually be a self-limiting problem; the Red squirrels are small (about half the size of the Greys) and are supposed to taste bad. But the Greys are not only larger, but are actually quite tasty. So one could eat local and help re-balance the local environment. But just as with the feral rabbits up at the University of Victoria, there's the Bambi factor at play. People don't want to kill anything cute. And they certainly don't want anyone else to kill anything that's cute. The fact that both the Grey squirrels and the rabbits are massively destructive bits of unharvested protein that would be better in a stew pot than running around loose, doesn't matter. They're cute, and mustn't be killed. Just ask the seal hunters about how that plays out (okay, the seal hunt is based on false reasoning and is pretty stupid, but the opposition isn't based on sense, but the Bambi factor—which is why pictures of big-eyed whitecoats are used by the opposition, even though the whitecoat harvest was banned decades ago).

Camping on Chin Beach isn't the same as it was ten months ago; then I was alone until the morning, when who surfers appeared out of the bush at 7:30am. Now, early June and there are well over a dozen hikers in the campsites tonight. The mountains across the Strait are sheathed in mist all day—a mist that turns out to be smoke drifting down from forest fires hundreds of kilometres north of us. As if to relieve my frustration at being so crowded when I would rather be alone, I spot whales spouting off the point a kilometre or so northwest of the campsite.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Juan de Fuca Trail Day One 09 June 2009

Up at 5:00 am which, sadly, is not that uncommon for me. Wake Paula (who doesn't take to 5:00 am well), toss my backpack in the back of the (borrowed) car (there was no public transit from our place early enough) , and off to breakfast at Tim Horton's and the bus depot. Paula pulled away and ½ an hour later, I was on the West Coast Trail Express.

There were only five of us aboard, and I was the only one bound for the JdF instead of the WCT. Which I was quite happy about. Got dropped at the China Beach trail head about 7:45 am and walked down the drive and onto the trail. No worries,eh? The first stage of the hike is through the trees for 2 km to Mystic Beach. Some gentle climbs and drops, some hints of what is to come, but still an easy hike.

Mystic Beach is gorgeous. Waterfall, and sea caves dug into the sandstone by logs and waves. It's been 2 decades since I was last here—then, ripped to the tits on mushrooms. Now? Hoping that endorphins and Advil® will get me through the next five days.

Waterfall on Mystic Beach

I stopped to fill my water bottle at a creek-fed pool, and as I was pumping water through my filter, there was this ungodly noise, followed by the appearance of 2 mink engaged in a territorial dispute. The one not winning the argument kept right on going, but the other stopped cold and stared at me, clearly wondering if I needed to be taught a similar lesson. Eventually he did back off, but not until after subjecting me to a long measured stare from 2 or 3 metres away. Quite the auspicious start to my first attempt at the whole JdF.

Cave in the sandstone cliff, Mystic Beach

It was easy to cross Mystic—the beach is mostly sand. And it was easy to spot the trail entrance. The next 6 km or so is listed as a “moderate” hike and I would agree. Plenty of up and down, but not too steep or high. Most of the bridges have handrails—although work is still being done to clean up from the winter storms (something that would become more of an issue as the hike continued. Some of the bridges are logs salvaged out of the bush and flattened on one face with a chainsaw, and then cut on opposing diagonals to give at least the semblance of drainage and grip.

Reminder of the origins of the JdF as a lifesaving trail

This use of salvage is a significant one; BC Parks doesn't have the budget to repair, never mind upgrade, the JdF. Originally, the trail improvements were done by a crew of local First Nations youth on an employment program. The improvements (bridges, boardwalks, steps, etc.) were necessary not only for hiker safety (a good thing, as getting in to haul people out is not easily accomplished), but also to protect the trail and wilderness. The rainfall here is measured in metres (most of it occupying in about a four month period) so things like steps built into the slopes don't just help hikers, but help prevent the trail itself from becoming a river and eroding the slope into a new gully or wash. At the north end, between Botanical Beach and the campsite at Payzant, the boardwalk serves to protect a rather fragile temperate rainforest environment from pounding feet.

Bridge over Ivanhoe Creek

But the lack of funds for maintenance and repair means that the two (two!)guys who do all the work on keeping up the 47 kms of trail (including outhouse and campsite maintenance, as well as trail repair) are left scrambling. There are no materials for proper repair, so they are continually salvaging fallen wood to bridge streams or soggy areas, or simply to repair damaged or rotted-out parts of previous improvements. As one said to me, “It's fine for the trail to be a wilderness trail. But where there are improvements, the assumption is that they're safe. It's not good when someone's foot goes through a step that's rotted out.” And there are steps missing in places. And in places, the rebar used to pin landscape ties in place for steps and erosion control is now poking up 15 to 30 mm above the ties, creating tripping and fall hazards. Thankfully, these have all been flagged, making them visible and less of a problem. And between Chin and Sombrio Beaches, one entire slope has pretty much been washed away, and the trail with it. The current fix? Two staged 15 metre ropes to help get you up or down the slope.

The use of salvage has its problems as well. The log bridges, being logs, are subject to the same forces that are continually renewing the forest itself. This means that they get moss and algal growth on them, rotting away the crosscut treads and making the surface slippery. In some places log rounds have been used to make steps across springs and muddy areas. Eventually these go black with mold and become extremely slippery, often being more dangerous to walk on than sinking shin-deep in the mud would be. And yeah, I did wipe out on one.

Dollars were promised for trail repair by the Campbell government last year, and some of it even came through—but nowhere near what was promised. And during the recent election campaign it came out that 50 positions were being cut from Parks—that's about 20% of the workforce. But for some reason, the multi-billion dollar boondoggle that is the Winter 2010 Olympics carries on, unfazed. Not saying that there's a relationship, just saying that the accounting around the Olympics is shrouded and Parks is being cut, while the economy's tattered remains flap forlornly in the breeze. Tourism's down, logging's collapsed (again), and global warming has made it even odds whether there will even be any snow for the Games. I suspect that Gordon Campbell will become B.C.'s “Pregnant Premier,” as Jean Drapeau became Montreal's Pregnant Mayor after saying that “the Olympics can no more have a deficit than a man can have a baby.” Gordon Campbell will have his legacy. The only thing up for discussion is how big a burden it will be on the taxpayers and citizens of the province.

By the time you've hiked from Mystic to Bear Beach, you've ended up climbing quite a bit, so the last few hundred metres of trail exiting onto Bear Beach is quite a drop. The section is improved with stairs and handrails and such, but the idea of climbing it first thing in the morning heading the opposite direction is definitely unappealing. Of course, it's pretty much identical to every morning's departure from a beach—it's always uphill and it's always steep.

Bear Beach is a very long hike from end to end. And it's not necessarily the distance—the beach is a boulder, rock, and pebble beach, making it an awkward, frustrating, and ankle-threatening hike. There are formal camping areas at each end of the beach, each with outhouses and food caches. I couldn't imagine trying to hike the length of the beach first thing in the morning and then taking to the trail.

Hiking the beach itself, I very quickly met a bear—a young black bear apparently trying to transit from trail to trail. He had trouble getting my scent, but he could hear me as I made a very large circle around him, and he eventually headed back up the trail he'd come down.

The beach itself is very interesting. The cliffs facing the ocean are sandstone, and so are carved into beautiful curves and shapes by the ocean and weather. I know that when I think about sandstone, I think of layers of silts and sands being laid down and slowly concretizing. Here it is the opposite; here the sand is being washed out of the cliffs. All the rocks, pebbles, and the sand that are the beach on top of the sandstone shelf that extends out into the ocean come from the cliffs. The sandstone is creating sand, rather than being created by it.

I ended up camping near Ledingham Creek, in front of Rock-On-A-Pillar, which is exactly what it sounds like; a hoodoo similar to those in Southern Alberta.

Rock-On-A-Pillar, Bear Beach

Car-Free--Up-Island and Beyond

So, Paula and I spent last weekend up-Island and over on the mainland. We took the train up to Nanaimo so that Paula could attend a conference on Children's Literature at the Van Island University (it used to be Malaspina College, but apparently this name sounds better for a university). I got a day and a half to explore the downtown/Old Quarter of the city: there's been a lot of money spent over the last decade to restore and reclaim the downtown and it was interesting to see the results.

The shoreline is pretty much parks and marinas and is doing quite well; there are lots of expensive boats and they are being serviced by both the old (the old Nanaimo shipyard is still there and still going) and the new (there's a new boatyard that boasts a 45 tonne hoist that picks your boat up and deposits it in a marked parking stall in the parking lot, where it is then worked on—strange to look at first, as it's all angle parking and way too open and clean to be a proper boatyard, but clearly a huge investment of $$$$$$ that someone expects to pay off). The city has been smart enough to put in a decent walkway down the length of the shore, making it not only accessible, but an enjoyable walk as well. Very smart. And they are (imagine a shocked look on my face...) maintaining the walkway as well! It was clean, well marked, and had a minimum of graffiti and garbage.

The original downtown area, now bypassed by the highway instead of being the target, was obviously suffering. There are a lot of old buildings in the area, but buildings they decided to restore rather than destroy. Hard to think of an equivalent in Edmonton with the exception of Strathcona. Anyway, lots of windy streets, old “vernacular” architecture (means old building styles brought to a new place and modified to suit—think Newfoundland), but no longer any reason for any of them to exist. Except, of course, that they feel better than new designs, they are more human sized, and people just like them better than the corporate glass boxes we're surrounded with these days. Little touches like cornices or brick-framed windows, three or four stories maximum height (because that's all that people are really willing or able to walk up), smaller footprints and quirky styles make these buildings people scaled and people friendly.

So a lot of money was again spent on fixing things up, cleaning up the streets, repairing potholes, upgrading the buildings (painting them....), and just generally doing a decent urban renewal project. Then they made it possible for great little stores to move in—no chains, all local—put up a lot of signage, encouraged restaurants and coffee shops, built a theatre, expanded the library and art gallery, and sat back to await the revitalization of the area.

And are still waiting. It's kinda worked—the shops look great, but there are a number of empty storefronts. Tourists have somewhere to go (witness me...), but an appreciable percentage of the population are still the unwaged and homeless. The mall on the edge of the Old Quarter has numerous empty shops and the “big” department store anchoring it is a Fields (to be fair, they do have a London Drugs as well) and they majority of the people in the food court seemed to be the dazed and confused, rather than the hip young urbanites that were supposed to be attracted to the area.

So what went right with the harbour and wrong with the downtown? Why the difference? Admittedly I was only there a day and a half and didn't really talk to anyone about it, but it seems fairly clear to me. The harbour has no choice—it has to be on the water. Whoever was in charge of the redevelopment recognized that, and didn't allow the waterfront to be completely given over to the blight of high-rise condos (although there is one that's going up—twenty stories or so—that's stealing light and views from a big chunk of its neighbours). By upgrading services like power and water etc. to the harbour and stabilizing its future (no condos), the marine industry was quite willing to do its own upgrades. Knowing that the harbour was going to remain a harbour left money confident enough to invest in the area for what it was—not as an investment into what they might be able to turn it into (condos again. Low to moderate risk, high rate of return—high social and public cost, but that can be fobbed off on anyone but the investors). So a stable environment, the lack of options for relocation (can't exactly move a harbour when the land prices rise too high), and upgraded services to support the industry meant that investors with a good business plan would see a fair return over the long term. As long as the zoning allows only marine-based services in, the market could be trusted to develop a vibrant waterfront.

Why doesn't it seem to have worked in the downtown/Old Quarter? There's a not-awful mix of residential and commercial zoning. The city worked on the service upgrade (upgrading and repairing the public side of things like sidewalks and roads, developing signage, advertising, and imposing some consistency on the area), and clearly modified the taxation and development rules to encourage the restoration and repair of the various buildings. So why the mediocre response?

I think it's because its not a harbour. The city has continued to expand—indeed, encouraged expansion—and allowed the kind of awful commercial development we've seen everywhere in North America over the last fifty years. Larger and larger chain stores, bigger and bigger parking lots, and continued movement into suburban development with its reliance on the car and all that that has implied. You can't restore life to the downtown core while sucking the life out of the city and spreading it out through suburban development. After all, it's called sub-urban for a reason. It is less urban and less than urban development. I'm not yelling about the public and private encouragement for individual home ownership (although that lead to the sub-prime mortgage crisis), I'm just saying that suburban sprawl leads to problems, and the reliance on the car as the primary for of transportation multiplies those problems a thousand-fold.

The trip up and back on the train was really quite nice. The roadbed has been unmaintained for decades, so the train's speed is restricted and it rocks and rolls a lot, so the trip takes about 2½ hours—a good hour longer than it needs to. On the other hand, it is still very small-town: if you're waiting to get picked up at one of the smaller stops, you wait until you see the train coming and then flag it down. Getting on and off is really relaxed—as is the schedule. Late is not a big deal; if you can't afford 15 minutes, don't ride the train. The cars are old, but clean. The lock on the bathroom door is a cotter pin shoved into a hole in the latch to block the handle's movement. There's no services (no coffee or snacks, for instance), but there's also no stress. Exactly my speed. Now if I could only take my bicycle with me, it would be perfect.

After Nanaimo, we took the ferry to Horseshoe Bay at the north end of Vancouver, and then another ferry to Langdale where we were met by friends and driven the 4 km to Gibson's Landing. Donna and Clint were celebrating their birthdays, and we attended day two of the party (okay, it was a brunch, but still part of it all).

Gibson's is where The Beachcombers was filmed for 16 years, and we had brunch at Molly's Reach, the restaurant at the middle of the show. Next to it was Bruno Gerussi's boat from the show, the Persephone, mounted and on display. It was Kind of strange to be looking at the actual Molly's Reach and the Persephone was a lot smaller than I had thought it would be. Was it cheesy? You bet, but it was good Canadian cheddar! Really interesting to visit a place that was pretty much a myth from my childhood. Maybe the Beachcombers is why I felt so at home when I got to the coast....

We did some hiking on one of the smaller islands (Keats Island) which meant taking a water taxi across the strait. Tony, the operator, was a lot of fun, pointing out local landmarks, discussing local history, and generally being a bit of a character.

Tony dropped us on Keats, which is mostly privately owned, with a couple of small areas marked off as provincial parks. We, Paula and I and another couple we've met before, Katie and Joseph, hiked a couple of miles around one end of the island, exploring a mini-beach and clambering over rocks to get to viewpoints. You know, all the basic things you do when exploring a new area.

The island has kept track of its own development, having its own water system in place and a summer bible camp providing a focus. The roads are mostly goat trails, with a few places set up for car traffic (??? it would take less than two hours to walk the perimeter of the island, so I don't get the need for cars. Even one of those four wheel ATVs would be understandable—although horribly noisy, polluting, and unattractive). There were dozens of sailboats—all parked in yards 15 to 25 metres above the ocean for the winter.

After we walked around the one end of the island, we came back to the dock and then walked across the island, following Tony's instructions. We found a really nice bay, all fissured and water-worn rock with no beach. The bay was filled with surf scoters, little black duck-like birds that we'd seen flying along just above the surface of the ocean while we climbed the end of the island. Here, they were clustered in a group on the water, stretching out in a long curved line from near-shore to beyond the headlands at the entrance to the bay. We had a half-hour or so to kill, so we sat in the sun and just watched the action on the water.

We couldn't really figure out what the birds were doing; they just swam about in smaller groups in this long line. The curve seemed to be following something, but it was nothing we could see or even guess at. We chatted away, relaxing, until someone noticed that the scoters were starting to dive. Not all of them, just some of them in the middle of the line. And they didn't all dive at once, but more like an Esther Williams / Busby Berkley musical, they dove in small lines, maybe 10 at a time, sequentially. Like the girls going off the edge of the pool at the beginning of a production number in a movie. One group, bloop. Next group, bloop. Next group, bloop. Until 40 or 50 birds had dove under water.

Now, normally its hard to see the little buggers come back up. They dive, they swim after stuff—or try to escape from the threat they perceive from you—and they come up far from where they started in unexpected directions. This time it was different. This time the first couple of birds came up not far from where they started. Then some more in the middle of them. And unless you watched very closely, you wouldn't see the birds resurfacing. Instead, the group seemed to magically expand over a short period. The scoters that surfaced later tended to come up in the middle of the ones that had already come up. So the early birds masked the return of the later ones, making it look like the density of the birds was magically increasing.

What were they doing? Still don't know for sure, but back at the dock in Gibson's, there were people fishing under the wharf for “shiners”, small fish that are suitable for bait for bigger fish. I think the scoters were feeding off a large school of something similar (probably herring, as there were people fishing them off bridges in Victoria the last couple of weeks). The big curve the birds were floating in seemed to be the edge of an eddy line, where two currents were meeting as the tide moved the water past the bay. It ended up being a fascinating half-hour bird watching.

The trip back was pretty much the same as the trip there, only in reverse. Clint accompanied us back to Horseshoe Bay and then it was another ferry ride , a quick connection to the train, and back to Victoria. We walked a couple of blocks and took a bus home.

The secret? Pack light--we took our Acer Aspires and a few clothes. And extra money. That way if we really needed anything, no worries. There were stores everywhere we went. And without stuff to worry about, we could concentrate on enjoying the trip and the people. And added only minimally to our carbon footprint.