NotDrinkingBeer
InTheWarmSummerRainVille
After all the weeping Lotuslandian rain of yesterday, which hopefully will help with the fires to come, it was really nice, and a bit of a relief to be honest, to ride to work under this morning's increasingly sunny skies.
After all the weeping Lotuslandian rain of yesterday, which hopefully will help with the fires to come, it was really nice, and a bit of a relief to be honest, to ride to work under this morning's increasingly sunny skies.
But nothing like the relief that my brothers and I felt back in the summer of 1974 when the skies finally cleared as we slogged our way north on the Westcoast Trail back in the days before the bridges and the cable cars.
It's amazing to look back and see how rudimentary the gear was then, not to mention being reminded how important garbage bags and bungee cords were.
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12 comments:
Did WCT in '97 with two friends. Even back then, equipment was not nearly as good as now. We went North to South, a very memorable trip. I still remember how good that beer and burger tasted at Chez Moniques, and the fun of diving through the water behind Tsusiat Falls.
GarFish--
The advancement in equipment just keeps on keeping' on...Bought an absolutely fantastic bedroll recently that weighs nothing, is about 6 mm thick, and feels like a mattress...My last trip Tsusiat/WCT trip, guiding by then, was 1985, so I never sampled the fare from Chez Monique's, but others have told me it was amazing - especially if you were coming from the south and near the end of your trip.
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Two buddy’s and I did the wc trail in summer of 83 right after our grad party. I borrowed one of their dads never been used army boots and an old backpack.We took no tent. the first night it rained the second night my back pack broke. We stayed in a cave where the tide(we hoped) only went up so high. I fixed the back pack and we went on our merry way! One buddy was a smoker,and he forgot his smokes in the truck, not happy all the way.We still talk about how great the trip was😎
I did the the south half of the trail in 1977 with 3 co-workers. We flew into Brown Bay on Nitinat Lake, hiked down to the WCT and then continued south. You are right the trail was pretty rough back then, but it was an experience I will always remember.
DS - No tent? Were you insane? Or did you have tarps which, come to think of it, we used during the guiding years.
As for those tides and those sandstone shelves down at the Southern end...I really wonder how we got over some of the big crevasses. I think our Dad must have pulled us up. And we, too, were always concerned about become tide trapped - it was just so tempting to take that route given the bad shape of the trail at that time.
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Anon-Above--
Didn't know there was a trail along the Nitinat on down. I agree with the experience of the south half being really memorable back then.
During the guiding days we would canoe down the Nitinat (tough when the wind was brisk from the Southwest) and then do portages first to Hobiton and then to Tsusiat lakes so that we could then hike out to the falls. It was an amazing trip. I read recently that the portages have fallen into disrepair which is too bad (although I guess having crappy trails helps keep those little lakes more pristine)
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Nitinat? the Conservationists, Sierra Club, specifically, Humphrey Davy, Jim Hamilton, Hugh Murray, Karen McNaught, Ric Careless, John Willow and Gordy Price all engineered the West Coast Trail and the hikes around Nitinat Lake in order to promote the area and conserve it.
Hugh Murray! We met, and worked with him, at North Vancouver's Outdoor School (Cheakamus Centre), he convinced us to visit the Nitinat area, but, settled for Cape Scott.
Come to think of it Ross,we did have a tarp that first night when it rained . we spent most of night digging trenches around us to divert the water.The surge channels were so tempting to cross when they had a tree across them, but luckily we decided it was better to go back up into trails even if it meant an hour longer of hiking in some of the bad areas. Were we insane? Or just teenagers. a bit of both I think😉
Good points NVG--
Those folks had excellent foresight, particularly given that the hewers of wood have demonstrated that they would likely have done their best cut down many of the first growth stands inside of those narrow park boundaries if they weren't there. They also protected that canoeing triangle I spoke of.
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DS--
To be clear, we only went down into those channels when the tide was way out and the beach floor was well above the waterline...Up in the forest, along the trail, some of the creek fording, with roped makeshift rafts, was dicey as well...I note with interest that Parks Canada says that ~1-2% of folks that start the trail these days need help getting out for various and sundry reasons - One can only wonder what the percentage was back in the olden times.
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https://sierraclub.bc.ca/50-places-project-west-coast-trail-and-nitinat-triangle/
Thanks NVG - really interesting. I'm ashamed to say that I knew nothing of the history that was made right in my own backyard at the time.
The political things people do really do matter!
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