The West Coast Trail

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A humorous account of five days spent on the West Coast Trail in British Columbia, Canada.

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The West Coast Trail Highway Five passed below the wheels of the Crown Victoria. The car carried the three of us towards Kelowna and finally towards Vancouver Island and the West Coast Trail. The day was clear and warm, the end of a prairie summer. The Crown Victoria was roomy. Roomy enough for each of us to be in close proximity to each other and yet feel as if each was alone in the car. Linda was in the backseat with her feet against one of the side windows, abating her motion sickness and napping. Nicole was driving now, and carefully. The Crown Victoria suited her. Suited her more than it did Linda. Linda liked to drive fast and aggressively. And I was in the front, changing the CDs, a job I hated because I hated having to please everyone. In the end, we drove in silence most of the way. It’s hard to guess what the others were thinking. Personally, I wanted to take a nap and wake up a week later. Linda had already hiked the trail four years before. There was an air of ambivalence about her, and I didn’t mind. I knew Linda well enough not to worry about making sure she was having a good time. Nicole, on the other hand, grew more excited with each passing hour. I had gotten to know her over the past few years, but mainly in group settings. She had just gotten married two months before, and her husband was at this time on a hiking trip of his own. A belated bachelor party. Nicole was not to be outdone, of course, although she had a lot of reservations about coming. Her husband had even more. Jeremy had hiked the trail the same time that Linda had. He remembered every painful ladder, every early morning, and didn't think Nicole was cut out for it. There was a lot of convincing before she agreed to come. “Don't worry, your body will get used to the pack,” we had said. The other two that would round off our party were Linda's brother Brian and his girlfriend Elaine. They were younger by at least four years and were known to be inseparable. I hoped not to get sick of them. Along with Linda and Nicole, the two of them had lived together for the past year, up until Nicole's marriage. You could say this trip was something to commemorate the parting. I was tagging along because the West Coast Trail had loomed in my imagination since I was eighteen years old. The West Coast Trail is a 75-km stretch of boardwalks, inclines, ladders, rivercrossings, beach, and, during the rainy season, mud. Yearly, people from all over the world come to hike it, and reservations are fought for like concert tickets. We started the trail on a beautiful and breezy day. Having repacked our 45 lb-bags once again, sat through an orientation session, and checked the wildlife sightings board (only a dozen bears, cougars, wolves, etc. in the past week) we were off. Despite the shining sun, the humidity was dense, giving the forest a gloomy, enchanted feeling. The trees were as tall as cranes, their thick trunks covered with a heavy layer of fluorescent-green moss. Slugs littered the pathway, leaving gooey trails as they slinked off into the fern-covered undergrowth. Looking around, I knew why I had wanted to come. The air was moist and there was something strangely satisfying about a heavy pack on my back. Muscles I had forgotten came alive. My senses came alive. There was another reason, too. The West Coast Trail is on many “things to do before I die” lists and on mine too, but I never

expected to stand at its trailhead. When my uncle first pointed the trail out to me, I imagined it snaking below the tree line and wondered what kind of people were hiking it at that moment. People with sinewy calves that stretch taut with every step, no doubt. Not people like me who read books late into the night. The West Coast Trail might as well have been Mount Everest. Then a few years later, an opportunity to hike the Juan de Fuca presented itself—a six-day hike. A multitude of fears had roamed in my mind. Would my body hold out? Seems that the body is capable of more than it lets on. At times I thought I would vomit from exhaustion, but somehow it got done. Now, the West Coast Trail was within reach, and I knew that within the next few years, I would go. I just had to wait. The pack felt comfortable on my back, and we hoped to reach the 12-km mark before dusk. But as the day turned to evening, it got cold. We walked out towards the beach and looked on the ocean from the escarpment. A group of twenty sea lions rested on a protruding rock. We admired them as they played in the turbulent waters. I got my first good look at the sky and saw the day was turning for the worse. I’m sure more than one of us wished for an extra layer of blubber. But the sea lions seemed unmoved as the cold surf broke on the rocks and showered them with water. We arrived at the beach campsite at dusk, and after setting up the tents, ate our dinner in darkness. We woke up to rain, ate our porridge breakfast in rain, and took down the camp in rain. Our protection against this wall of water was blue, ten-dollar, plastic Canadian Tire rain suits, which ripped as soon as we put them on. We did, however, have the foresight to bring duct tape. Taping a slippery rain suit in the rain was a difficult task, especially with the added awkwardness of reaching near your friend’s crotch area. The tape didn’t hold against the incessant rain and wind that met us as we walked our kilometers along the beach. Before long the rain was beating on our bare legs, and the wind chilled the rain against our skin. We moved to the trail inside the forest. The path was covered with mud, plenty of mud, and slippery roots, often covered up by mud. At first, we tried to avoid the puddles, but soon my boots had their own, personal puddle, and it didn’t seem to matter. I saw that Nicole was struggling and decided to share the little wisdom I had. “Nicole, when your body starts to complain, you just have to tell it to shut up. Really, your body is capable of a lot more than you think.” “The pack is pretty heavy. I've had to tell myself 'I can do this. I can do this.'” I nodded my head. “One thing Megan told me on the Juan de Fuca is to keep tightening my hip belt. That way you're not carrying the weight on your back. Just tighten it as far as it will go. You might even get bruises, but that's the way it's gotta be.” She looked at me as if I had just suggested she jump off a bridge. A little further down, the muddy path started to slope downhill. Nicole was the first to fall; then a split second later the sludge took me too. I started laughing uncontrollably. Linda called from behind for us to get up quickly. After I pulled Nicole from the mire, it was obvious that her rear had suffered terribly. It was caked in mud. I felt ill. Nicole had brought only one pair of pants, just like we told her. And they were made of cotton. There is no hope for cotton in this environment. Not only does it absorb a

lion’s share of water, it doesn’t like to part with it either. Nicole’s pants would now be wet for the rest of the trip. Throughout the day, I barely looked up from the ground, from watching my step. I was cold and exhausted. We walked back out onto the beach. That unmistakable smell of kelp wafted around us. Like rotting ocean. A boiler sat poking out of the water in the low tide, washed ashore by decades of stormy winds. I thought about the sailors who used to walk this trail to safety when their ships broke on the coast. What did they eat? I bet they were in better shape. Did any of them die of hypothermia? We moved to walk on the shelf. Trudging through the wet sand was difficult work. But navigating the slippery shelf took a lot of care. We fell several times. At one point, Linda walked up behind me. “Did you just see me fall?” she asked. “No, I was probably falling myself.” “Well, I almost hit my head. I even told myself not to pass out if I hit a rock. ‘If you pass out, that would be not good.’” “Oh Linda, this is ridiculous.” As we were getting off the shelf, Linda fell again, this time into the water. “I can’t believe this. I’m getting off now.” I helped her to her feet. The bottom of her pack was soaked, and that’s where my sleeping bag was. With a down filling, probably the second most absorbent material after cotton, the bag sopped up a good part of the ocean, and was now nearly ten times as heavy as before. Again, we arrived at our campsite at dusk, and took stock of the situation. Nicole had developed blisters. Linda’s knees were in pain and her ankle had swollen to twice its size, an old injury resurfacing. She was crying. I had known Linda for over five years, and seeing her cry was so unfamiliar. I knew she must have been in a lot of pain. We wrung out my sleeping bag and let it sit. Linda’s sleeping bag, which I was carrying, was damp from the rain and useless too. Needless to say, the pasta concoction we had for dinner did little to lift our spirits. I barely ate anything. Wearing all my warmest clothes and having borrowed a pair of dry socks from Linda, I climbed into the tent and covered myself with her damp sleeping bag. I curled up into a ball, and tried to fall asleep despite the cold. After half an hour, I finally woke Nicole up and asked her to share her sleeping bag with me. Never mind what this would mean for our friendship. We slept on top of her dry sleeping bag and covered ourselves with Linda’s. I longed for my own warm, down-filled cocoon. The next day it took us nearly five hours to take down camp. The morning was damp, and the mist had gathered on the beach. Linda walked on ahead alone. She was slower now. And I meandered on the beach, waiting as Brian and Elaine helped Nicole with her pack. There were sea gulls everywhere. Otherwise the beach was empty. All the other hikers were long gone. I noticed a sea lion carcass on the beach; it was there the previous night too. The felt exterior was almost gone, and the layer of blubber looked like densely-packed Styrofoam. I looked in Nicole's direction. She had developed a rash from her wet pants, and she had said I kept her up talking nonsense in the night. Great. Delirium is starting to set in.

We were moving slowly and spread out across the beach. Linda limped in front of me like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, and I pushed myself to catch up with her. “How’s your foot?” I asked. “Thank God for Tylenol.” I smiled and shook my head.“Do you think you can do the rest of the trail?” “I don’t know. This morning I felt like I should get off ‘cause I’m just keeping you guys behind.” “I think we’re all going pretty slow.” “I can’t believe us. And the terrain hasn’t even been that hard yet.” “I don’t think Nicole’s doing well. We took some extra weight from you this morning, and I don’t know if we can take even more weight from her.” “I know. She doesn't want any help though. She wants us to stop trying to cheer her up.” We fell silent for a few steps. “How about you? How are you doing? You haven’t been eating much.” “Yeah, I know. It’s hard to eat when you’re stressed. I’m trying, but it’s like launching rocket ships.” “What?” “You know, it takes a lot of energy to overcome the earth’s gravity. That’s what it feels like.” “Okay…Well, when we get to Nitinat Narrows, it’ll be our only chance to get off.” “I know. I’ve been thinking about it.” We continued to walk together until beach turned to forest. We had only two kilometres left before reaching camp. Everyone walked at his own pace. Brian and Elaine ahead. I followed ten minutes behind. Linda walked some time behind me. And Nicole held up the rear. I was very tired. My eyes wandered from the boardwalk to the dense forest around me. Was this the Canadian jungle? The boardwalk seemed to have no end. I only hoped that Linda or Nicole didn’t need any help. After fifteen minutes, I walked out into the daylight which was Nitinat Narrows, a narrow part of the river that at this moment flowed up from the ocean as the tide was coming in. Brian and Elaine were already setting up for dinner. I envied their stamina, and wondered whether they kept to each other because their relationship was still young, or because the rest of us were miserable company. I dumped my bag on the ground and walked the short boardwalk to the dock, which shifted slightly under my step. A lone pinkish jellyfish floated between the dock and the shore, cut off from the ocean by the last receding tide. Its translucent arms undulated in the water. On the other side of the narrows I could see the corner of the ranger’s hut, where the ferryboat had ended its last trip of the evening. I took off my wet boots and put sandals on over my wet socks. After a few minutes Linda and Nicole emerged from the forest. “We’ve got to start setting up. It’s getting dark,” Linda announced. The little scrap of beach was all pebbled rocks at a downhill angle.

“Did you guys look around for a place to sleep?” “This looks like the best spot,” said Brian. We started setting up camp while Nicole filled up our water bottles from the Narrows. Soon we had both tents up and were now trying to figure out how to string a tarp over them. Then Linda stopped. “There are barnacles all over these rocks.” “Do you think the tide will come up this high?” someone asked. “Is it even coming in?” “Nicole, taste the river.” Nicole dipped her fingers into the cold water. “It’s definitely salty. I was wondering why someone moved my shoes so close to the water.” “All right, change of plans. Where do you guys want to sleep?” “I’ll go check in the woods. Maybe there’s an empty spot,” Brian suggested. “What about the water?” “I think there’s a creek a few minutes back up the path.” I said. “I guess I’ll go get it.” I laced up my wet and cold shoes again, and grabbed all the bottles. My thighs had already cooled down and ached as I climbed back up the path into the forest. I felt the night wisping about me, and lying down and sleeping were the only things on my mind. The creek wasn’t far and I squatted underneath the footbridge to catch the running water into the bottles. The water chilled my fingers and I imagined a cougar bowing down to drink in the very same spot. Did I have enough strength to continue? Brian returned shortly after I did. “We’re going to have to sleep on the dock,” he announced. We looked at him and expected more information. “I’ve done it before. What we can do is spread one of the tarps underneath and one over.” We’re going to die of exposure. This is ridiculous. Ridiculous. The dock was five metres by two metres of floating concrete. The girls set up the tarp and unfurled the sleeping bags as Brian went back to starting dinner. We ate dinner in the dark, and finally lay down to sleep. I had been shivering all evening, so Brian gave me his sleeping bag. Then he laid the tarp over the girls and tucked it underneath our feet, after which he laid down at the end next to Linda. The night over us was clear. The trees were tall like giants and the Milky Way spilled across the sky. I wanted it to be peaceful like that always. While the others gazed at the stars, I fell asleep to the sound of water plinking. My eyes opened to Linda and Brian talking. Their flashlight was going on and off, and I was annoyed. After some time, all was quiet again. Then the water started to make noise. Was something swimming by? Maybe a fish. No, it sounds bigger than a fish. A wayward sea lion then. Yeah, that must be it. Or an otter. It sounded close to the dock. But sleep was the only thing on my mind. Then the voices started again. “What the heck is that?” “It’s gotta be a bear.” I held out my ear to the night. It was silent except for the flowing of the tidewater. Then I heard it. On the other side of the Narrows, something was moving in the trees.

Something was lumbering there, cracking the branches. It sounded large. Sometimes it sounded like two. I lifted my head. Nicole woke up and asked what was going on. “Nothing,” I snapped in her direction. “Go back to sleep.” My heart quickened for a moment, but sleep took over, and I was gone before I could imagine a bear pawing me out for a midnight snack. The alarm went off at 6 am. No one made any sound. The mist had come back, and I felt the damp air on my face. Small, uneven waves lapped against the dock. The morning had come too soon, as usual. I closed my eyes, trying to wring out the last bit of sleep from the night. Off in the distance, up the Narrows, the sound of a motorboat could be vaguely heard. Soon there were more, an approaching hum. I sat up. The first boat went by. A number of fishing rods poked out from the stern. The driver looked in our direction, but I couldn’t tell if he was smiling or grimacing. Soon more boats passed and the waves began rocking the dock. We quickly got to our feet. But Nicole stayed sleeping. She was splashed by a big wave. The day had arrived. The contents of our bags were strewn on the boardwalk. Most of it was in varying degrees of wet. I put on my wet socks and braced myself for my wet shoes. The mist was all around us, and the morning might have been mistaken for entirely peaceful except for the thoughts in our heads. “Did you guys hear that last night?” Linda asked. The question was for Nicole and me. “I vaguely remember something,” I said. “You guys kept talking.” “I can’t believe you, yelling at us to be quiet. Meanwhile, there are bears across the river.” I furrowed my brow. “Oh yeah, I remember that. I was so out of it. I heard the bears, but then I just went back to bed.” “We stayed up most of the night.” “Elaine, did you hear it too?” Nicole asked. “I couldn’t sleep after that. I was too freaked out.” “I don’t remember hearing anything,” Nicole continued. “That’s 'cause Jo told you to go back to sleep.” We went back to packing our bags. The morning always brought some fresh energy, no matter how hard the night had been. The day before, I had decided not to go on. My knees and my back were starting to stress, and the hardest part was still ahead of us. But now I wasn't sure again. I walked out onto the dock to stretch my legs. The tide was coming in again, pushing against the narrows flowing into the ocean. This made the tidewater curve like a fiddlehead. In this curve that went round and round in front of the dock, jellyfish were trapped as if in a revolving door. Their long tendrils and delicate bodies reminded me of ballerinas. I went back to packing my bag. The ferry arrived, and Carl’s son took us to the other side. Carl is a sort of tradition on the West Coast Trail. His hut stands on a boardwalk on the south side of the Narrows. We said our hellos to him and heaved our bags out of the ferry. He had already done his daily salmon run, and was now gutting the fish. We dragged our bags over to a bench and looked at each other expectantly.

“Well guys, what do you want to do?” someone asked. The day was bright now and the water was blue and clear. It was 10 o’clock. “Okay, what can we do to make this better? We need to walk faster if we want to get to our campsites each night,” Linda said. “Maybe we don’t have to. Maybe we can take our time. Take a couple of extra days on the trail. I think we have enough food,” I offered. “We don’t have the car rented for that long. There would be a penalty. Could be a couple hundred dollars.” “Okay, well Nicole needs to take less weight. Her ankles are killing her. And you need to take less weight too.” “I think the questions is does everyone still want to go on?” I don’t know who this question was directed to. The decision was impossible to make. My body and mind were committed to the hike. The inertia was powerful. And I didn’t want to let anyone down. If I dropped out, morale would be low. Besides, did I really want to hang out alone for the next few days? “I want to go on,” said Brian. “Yeah, I want to go on too. We can do it,” said Elaine. “Well, we have two wet sleeping bags, Nicole is in a lot of pain, and so is Linda.” “Linda, how’s your ankle?” “I can do it. I don’t care either way. I’m so angry at my body right now. I’ll go if everyone else wants to go.” “Okay. Nicole?” “I don’t want to quit.” Then there was silence again as we fiddled with our packs. Nicole’s feet were raw and every step was pain to her. And so she walked slowly. We knew that her feet would get worse and the pain would not go away. She shouldn’t go on. I walked down the pier to talk to Carl. Crab cages rested at the bottom in the water. Crab would taste pretty good right now, I thought. The water was so clear, and I wished it was scorching and I was swimming. But instead, I was miserable, and my mental energy was focused on putting one foot in front of the other. This is not what I wanted the trip to be. What would I gain if I went on? To say that I did it? That’s what I wanted. But not like this. Is it failure to give up now? Or had we failed already? Had we failed even before we set foot on the trail? Carl told me he could boat a couple of us up the Narrows to the road, and from there we could hitchhike back to our car. Or, if all of us went, he would take us out on the ocean, and all the way back to the trailhead. I returned to the group. “Guys…I’m not going to go.” I must have sighed. “It’s just not worth it. I can come back. I don’t want to do it like this.” “Are you sure?” “Yeah. I can take whatever you guys don’t want.” We were silent again. “What about you, Nicole?” asked Brian. “I don’t want to quit now.” “Are you sure? It’s going to get harder now and you haven’t been doing that well.” “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” she shot back at him.

“Judging by how you’ve been doing….We have to go faster now—how do you expect to do better in harder terrain?” “Thanks a lot.” Nicole had tears in her eyes. “Looks like you’ve already made the decision for me.” She spun around and disappeared behind the trees. Brian looked at us, disappointed. Then he went after her. I felt like my own tears weren’t far behind. But I was tired. And I was ready to get off the trail. She wasn’t. Linda, Elaine, and I looked at each other. Any one of us could start crying. But Linda and Elaine hadn’t given up yet. Soon Brian and Nicole walked back together. Nicole was still crying. “Look guys...I just...I'm never going to get the chance to do this again.” “Why not?” “Well...Jeremy and I are probably going to have kids right away and you know how it is. And besides, when is anybody going to come out here again? I really wanted to do this. For myself, you know. To know I could do it...but I guess I can't.” “No, Nicole, it's not your fault. I mean, look at your feet. Your feet are raw. Do you know how painful it would be to go on?” “Yeah...I know.” She looked at us, half-angry, relinquishing the last bits. “I should get off.” We all nodded, and Elaine gave her a hug. “All right then. We’ll have to repack these bags. You guys will have to take some of this extra food,” said Brian. We dumped the contents of our bags onto the pier and tried to make decisions as fast as possible. It was almost noon. We started repacking. “What about the sleeping bags?” Linda asked. “I think Nicole and I need at least one sleeping bag. We might have to sleep off the road if we can’t get a ride back to the trailhead.” “Okay.” “We need one of the stoves too.” “But what if we need the extra one?” There was so much stuff on the pier now. We just kept sorting. Brian, Linda and Elaine were deciding what they wanted to keep. Then Linda stopped. “You know what, I’m not going.” “What? Why?” We stopped what we were doing. “This is ridiculous. We can’t do this. We can’t split up some of this stuff. It’s already so late, and I don’t want to leave you guys with two wet sleeping bags.” I dropped the dehydrated soup back on the food pile. “I think you guys should still go. I think you can do it,” Linda continued to Brian and Elaine. Brian looked at Elaine. “I don’t know guys,” Elaine said. “I don’t feel good about splitting up like this.” “I want to go,” said Brian. He crammed the pasta into his bag. “I’m worried about the bears,” Elaine started. But she couldn’t hold it any longer and started to cry. “This doesn’t feel right. I don’t want to go if it’s just the two of us.”

All the energy of the day seemed to leave in that moment. Brian must have felt it and known it was over. He too started to cry. Finally, he hugged Elaine. It didn’t feel right. It didn’t feel right either way. But at least it was over. “I’m going to order us lunch,” Nicole said and walked off in Carl’s direction. I grabbed my empty bag and started filling it again. Soon the others were doing the same. More hikers were streaming in now. Two of them, dressed alike, as if they had a corporate sponsor, stopped to talk to us. Their packs couldn’t have been more than twenty pounds each, and sweat dripped from them like it does from marathon runners. “We just ran the last two kilometers,” the guy said. “We’re doing the trail in two days.” He was talking and sweating and drinking from his camel back. “Wow, that’s incredible.” “People do it all the time. I think the record is 10 hours and 40 minutes or something like that. But I think they had to get evacuated from exhaustion.” “How’s the trail?” the girl asked. “It’s pretty muddy up there, but the terrain isn’t hard at all.” “Oh yeah. It’s muddy where we came from too.” “Oh, we’re not going ahead. This is the end for us.” They looked at us with raised eyebrows. “We’ve got some injuries. Carl’s gonna take us back to the trailhead.” “That’s too bad.” “Yeah.” We nodded our heads silently. Soon our salmon and potatoes was ready and for the first time in three days we ate in contentment. Elaine was the first to speak. “What are we going to tell people happened?” “What do you mean? We'll tell them we had some injuries.” “I'm not telling people we didn't finish,” she continued. “Hey, I don't have any problem people knowing. It is what it is,” I said. “Jeremy didn't think we should go. We should have taken more men with us.” “What do you mean 'take more men'? You don't think we could have done this?” “No, I mean, they could have carried more weight.” “Well, maybe, but that's not the point. Forty-five pounds is not a lot.” Carl tried to be encouraging. “Don’t feel so bad. I’ve taken plenty of people back. I remember one girl, her feet were so raw she just sat on the dock with her feet in the water and cried for three hours.” “That sounds awful.” Carl gave us a funny smile. “I haven’t seen many people sleep on that dock though.” He took us out onto the ocean. The wind was blowing hard, and we sat in silence. In an hour, the past three days rushed beside us. I thought about the misery on the beach. The campout at the waterfall. Spotting the sea lions. The emotions of the past three days became vivid again. Carl slowed down as we got closer to shore, and the boat sputtered in the shallow red tide. We paid him $300, and took off towards the Crown Victoria.

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