Wife's account:
  Before
you start the trail you must get to Vancouver Island and if
you're like me, your trip might get derailed there. The island
certainly seems like a different land -- to someone coming from
Calgary (by way of Toronto). I'd like to go on about the beautiful
countryside and ocean views, but as I know from talking to everyone
I know here, I have not discovered it. So our plan of hiking
the trail did not get derailed, but I definitely wanted to change
it. Not having done any serious physical activity lately, I
was feeling strong. Instead of the planned five days, I pushed
for a three day hike. What's 47 km?!? On flat that would be
a whole day hike.
We arrived on the island on monday and we camped at French Beach
for the first night. On my trip to the outhouse I saw... I don't
know how to express this adequately on paper, especially since
many of the people on whom I wanted to impress the awe of my
sighting were well acquainted with it already (yes, i know,
I didn't discover it). I came out of the outhouse and I saw
a pretty big gorge just behind our site. The gorge was covered
by huge ferns and sky high evergreens. If you're not impressed
I take it that you've seen the rainforest, but I hadn't. And
I wasn't expecting it all of a sudden. Later (much later, it
seemed) we met a guy who grew up in Victoria and he mentioned
how being there brought back the memories of growing up there.
Running around the beach, fighting with the bull seaweeds, making
craws fight each other. Same planet, 2 different worlds. This
was the first time I had been to the ocean and those bull sea
weeds were pretty awesome.
We set out on Tuesday, around 10:30. We got some coast weather
-- rain. Couldn't feel it so much in the rain forest, but the
moisture was there. The gloom was there too. The original plan
was for five days, broken down roughly, as follows:
1) 8km moderate hike
2) 12 km most difficult
3) 6 km difficult
4) 12 km moderate
5) 6 km easy
Wanting to spend more time exploring the island, I pushed
for us to condense the trip to 4 or even 3 days. That would
require us to do the first two days in one. It would be easier
to do the hike of the first day plus perhaps 4 km of that
scheduled for day 2, but there were no sites between km 8
and 20, so it was all (20 km) or nothing (8km). Well, the
gloom got to me. I felt very overwhelmed during the first
8 km (could it be the backpack and rain? I'd say that i carried
80 lb on my back, but this is my husband's site and he'll
correct it to perhaps 40lb. By the way, I strongly recommend
bringing someone who'll carry a lot more than you. My dear
did, which slowed us down a bit. By the way, this is just
a description, but if allowed a title, i must call this "The
march of the weenie and hubby".
Camping on French Beach is next. |
