Tertils Outdoors

2002-06-23 till 30 West Coast Trail

• Posted on June 23, 2002 at 8:02 PM
• Previous
• Next

one of very many slippery ladders

 zoom  zoom out

“02_06_23 till 30 West Coast Trail, BC”

West Coast Trail, some believe it is one of the top 10 hikes on Earth. I am not sure how one would place it in this classification but let me tell you it is not your ordinary hike for “weekend warrior”. It is extremely beautiful but also extremely hard. There are segments of it so hard to negotiate that in 8 hours of hiking we were able to cover barely 4 km on one of those “killer” stretches. How would you like the average speed of – 500m / hour walking in mud paddles up to your knees? The trail is about 75 km long and usually takes a week to complete. One can do it from Bamfield to Port Renfrew or the other way around. We figured that going from Banfield to Port Renfrew would keep the sun on our backs and that was better than constantly looking right into it – providing that you get to see the sun at all (lol). But I do not want to write about West Coast Trail, there are all kinds of literature and internet is full of other people accounts. We have been talking about doing IT for years. Finally in year 2000 we were pretty much ready when all of the sudden our friend got sick, it was very serious and we decided to postpone. In June 2002 all was good again, he had gotten better, we all managed to get some time off from work at the same time etc. On June 23 we left Calgary with one goal only – regardless of weather had in store for us we were going to do West Coast Trail. Initially we had great weather all was great but after about three days we woke up to pouring rain. It was simply miserable. That day it rained constantly till evening, it abated a bit we managed to dry our hiking boots and next day woke up to even greater downpour. This time it rained nonstop all day and night. Next morning all of the sudden we saw precious sun again. We finished the trail tired, wet but happy. If you have not done West Coast Trail and are looking for an adventure of your life do not look no further. It waits for you on beautiful Vancouver Island and is called WCT or West Coast Trail. If you want to see all pictures click here.