Cape Scott!

"In the Western imagination, the North Pacific began and remains a place of great wonder, madness, illusion, and hope."
-Terry Glavin

After hiking more than 17 kilometers just to see this remote part of the ocean, we can assure you that the reputation is well deserved. We spent 5 nights in the wilderness in Cape Scott Provincial Park and hiked over 50 kilometers, and every second of it was absolutely worth it. The trip began shortly after 7AM in Vancouver with a quick trip to the ferry to Nanaimo, followed by 4 hours on well maintained highways then 2 more hours on a rough logging road to get to the main gate. The road was mostly uneventful, except for the fact that we spotted 4 bears foraging on the side of the road. They were small black bears, but still big enough to take a nice chunk out of us if they wanted to.

(Sarah in green again) Remi neglected to mention that we almost got rear-ended by a semi stopping to take pictures of the black bears and I see the near-death experience was all for nought, as he didn't post a picture of them! You're not missing much - they were blurry ;)
The rough road and terrain has claimed many victims over the years, and this is one of the most famous sights along the road. These are big trees and they can break things.

There were actually two cars like this on the road. This was the one with the sign. Every blog of Cape Scott I looked at had this picture, so we followed suit.
We arrived at the trailhead earlier than expected and took off immediately to make good time to our first night at Eric Lake. Except for slippery logs, deep mud puddles, tall trees to clamber over and a misting rain, the trail is relatively easy (that was sarcasm. It really wasn't. The first 7 or 8 kilometers of the trail were the worst, then it got somewhat better.)

It was actually quite awful. My boots were soaked through (despite my re-sealing attempts!) by kilometer 8 on the second day of hiking. It sucked - a lot. We spent a lot of time swinging over puddles, hoping that the trees we were gripping were strong enough to support not only our weight, but the 40 lbs of pack on our backs.
We were too chicken to walk through these. And with good reason, the prospect of hiking 6 hours in wet boots would put anyone off.

As I mentioned above, my boots were wet. I'll repeat: it sucked.
After an easy night's sleep on the wooden platforms at Eric Lake, we had a quick breakfast and were off to Nels Bight by 9AM.

We got a quick start on the day actually. It was beautiful out (the only morning without rain, I think). Only a 7 hour hike ahead! 14 km to Nels Bight.
Despite its difficulty, the trail has some great sights. For the first half we walked through a lush rainforest with thick trees covered in mosses and lichens. The path was lined with the aptly named skunk cabbage that filled the air with a rich earthy (skunky) smell.

This is the most dynamic trail we've ever hiked on, I think. It started out with, as Remi mentioned, lush rainforest, then changed to bog, then as we got closer to the ocean, changed again to oceanside rainforest. There were also a couple meadows we hiked through. That's what brought the first settlers to Cape Scott, actually. Several dutchmen thought the land looked great for farming. It was, but there were no decent transportation routes to get the goods out of the Cape and so no community was ever able to permanently settle there, as they had no means of income.
More puddles. For the most part we managed to work our way around them without too much trouble. A cane would have been useful, but in this portion of the path the trees were too small.

Although this area is wild now, a Dutch colony was formed here in the late 1800s. Although their produce was excellent, the harsh climate, remote location and xenophobic government discouraged continued growth until the last settler left in the mid-fifties. This picture is of the second dike built here (leave it to the Dutch) to create more arable land. The resulting meadow was beautiful and filled with small flowers as far as the eye could see.
Nels Bight! We arrived at last. Towards the end Sarah and I were on the verge of collapse. Pain in the feet, shoulders, back, legs and virtually everywhere else make the final portions of long hikes very difficult. Luckily, we soon saw a break in the tree line and the sound of the surf gave us the momentum we needed to finish the hike.
Nels Bight is a long beach somewhat protected from the elements. The sand slopes off gently into the ocean which allowed us to brave the freezing waters to clean off in the waves.

We both entered what I fondly refer to as "zombie mode" near the end. That's where you walk with your head down, eyes focused only on the path ahead of you, arms barely swinging, if at all, uttering grunts every few minutes or so. It was such a relief to drop pack! And the beach was amazing.
The downside of this beach is that drinking water is limited. There is one largish stream at the very end of the beach, but lazyness dictated that we walk only a few minutes to get to this point to fill our water bottles. In my opinion it didn't make a huge difference. The water was equally brown at the other spot, and we were boiling anyways, so it was safe. The main problem was that boiling over a wood fire gave the water a smoky toilet seat flavour. Luckily we covered that up with orange tang, and in the evenings, with rum and orange tang, the campers beverage of choice.

Oh the water... I can sum it up in one word: ewwwww. It was gross! Gross to look at and gross to taste. Thank GOD for tang! And we're not sick yet, so I guess the boiling was sufficient. We'll be out of the woods tomorrow for sure. One of the bugs takes up to 4 days to manifest symptoms, so by Friday we should know if we're infected or not. Let's hope not, it sounds brutally awful.
Maggie was a good sport and relatively well behaved for the duration of the hike, but tended to fall fast asleep as soon as we stopped back at camp.

I think we have a similar picture of Maggie from after our 9 km Juan De Fuca day last summer ;)
It rained every night on the beach, but that wasn't a big deal because we were sleeping anyway. The first morning the rain persisted until 11 or 12, so we were confined to the tent for longer than absolutely necessary.

The reason we were confined in the tent is because Remi was unable to construct a decent tarp on the day we arrived. It kept blowing down. Which is really funny because everyone else on the beach had a tarp up...

When it finally cleared up we gathered some essentials and took off for the 6km hike to Cape Scott itself. Along the way we came to deserted beaches of beautiful sand. Moments later we gave in to temptation and went for a brief swim before drying in the sun.
The route to Cape Scott. Not very spectacular, but easy to do without a pack.
The Cape itself was something of a dissapointment. High above the water, there are well manicured lawns, a few buildings and this uninspired lighthouse. We're glad we did it, but we wouldn't bother again. A kilometer walk along Nels Bights brought us to quiet and vacant beaches and afforded us all the relaxation we needed.

I don't necessarily regret walking to the Cape, but it was nothing special. I wish we'd had more time on the beach, which was amazing. Next time we spend at least four days there.
The beaches were covered with sea life of many descriptions and it was difficult to proceed without inspecting every little thing that caught our eye.
Back at camp I prepare the fire to boil some water for dinner and drinking.
I have purposely left this picture in a larger format, otherwise you would never believe that we actually saw a whale and got a picture of it. Sarah spotted it first, then we watched it surface and blow and dive a few times before it took off for the evening. With my new binoculars we got some nice close up views of its back and fluke. I couldn't ID it, but I suspect it was probably a grey.

WHALE!!!!!!! I think the capitals and exclamation points about sums up how excited we were! Incredible. Two nights after this we saw some more whales moving through here. Actually, I think this picture is from that second night of sightings. AMAZING. Our first whale sighting in BC :) Besides the beluga at the aquarium, that is.

At the end of the day we had all kinds of swag that piled up on our piece of driftwood. And of course the rum, which livened up our night somewhat.

We brought so many shells back! It's amazing the diversity of life on that one beach. Quite a few of the animals were like nothing we've ever seen before.
We kept a journal. Actually, Sarah did and I scribbled a few notes now and again when she demanded it.

We still haven't written about our last two days in the journal. It was another 14 km hike ending in zombie mode and then a nice relaxed hike out from Eric Lake on the last day. Well, it wasn't really relaxed - it was raining and I fell.
More critters. That's just a crab molt on the right. The rest were found on the beach.
Of course I had to play with some of the manual settings on my camera. This is the only good sunset picture I managed. The clouds usually began rolling in before we could get a good look.

A day of beachcombing! My dream come true. Maggie was only slightly annoying and didn't manage to destroy a single starfish. When the tide was low crabs skittered everywhere, and along the rocks we found lots of anemones, crustaceans, gastropods, seaweeds and other wonders. I could spend hours there.
I liked the look of this little guy. I've yet to ID him, but I will someday soon.
The biologists who would hapilly dig around a corpse are a dying breed, and it's a shame, too. When I found this guy his head was buried and the resident eagle and ravens had poked a hole in his flank that was oozing a dark, putrescent reddish liquid. By the time I had started poking around the head to extract it, Sarah had removed herself to avoid the vomitous stench. Despite her lack of enthusiam, I managed to identify it as a sea lion.

I actually removed myself at first poke. I couldn't handle the mushiness of the corpse. GROSS.
Marine biology-ing. This is posed, but only because I usually poke around with the camera 1cm from whatever critter has my attention. I also have to say that despite Maggie's clumsiness, she has a terrific nose for star fish and frequently leads me to neat finds.

I see he posted this picture instead of the one I have of him with his shorts hiked up to his armpits to avoid the waves. I'll try to remember to post that one later. HILARIOUS.
Our final night at Eric Lake. Everything was soaked, so we spent at least an hour to get a huge roaring fire. But then it started to rain and we had to retreat to y beautifully crafted shelter. It rained all through the night and roughly until the point when we reached the car, but still we were able to remain dry thanks to rain gear.

Roaring fire... Yes, I guess it eventually became that after 2 HOURS of blowing and gathering tiny bundles of wet twigs. I couldn't believe it when it finally lit!! Well, it gave us something to do, I guess.

And so ended our greatest adventure yet. Still the cars driving past our house keep us from sleeping; and we wish we could go back to our tent on the beach listening to the surf. We will go again, but then we will load ourselves with food and remain on the beach as long as our supplies hold out. Soon we'll be back on the Island and amazing places like this will be within our immediate grasp.

Speaking of food, Remi forgot to mention that we carried in too much. Next time we'll only take a few power bars, not 18!! They weigh a tonne!! For dinners we had freeze dried dinners. Now I'll admit when we first set out I was totally worried and grossed out by the idea of freeze dried food, but they were, with the exception of one, quite tasty. Although one night we had watered-down beef stroganoff (Remi's fault - he added double the called for water!)...

Anyway, all in all it was AMAZING. I can't wait to go back, actually, despite reports that the place is crawling with cougars. We didn't actually see one, but after hearing a story about a dog being taken out after being cougar-attacked last year, we kept Maggie on her leash attached to our waists. The scenery was incredible and the experience perfect :)

Remi & Sarah