wct04 - day five

Derek and Greg relax at Michigan Creek.

August 20, 2004

I am lying tonight in my tent listening to the sound of condensation dripping from the inside of my tent fly. A drop of water just trickled down my back. I may be wet in the morning.

Today was by far our laziest day on the trail. We reached the ‘anchor on rocks’ at trestle creek by 9 am and we had our tents pitched at Michigan Creek campsite by 1 pm. We owned the beach for most of the afternoon.


Greg stands alone at Michigan Creek.

I had a nap, as did Derek and, I think, Greg. For Greg, the usual first order of business when stopping for the day was to find a wide flat log suitable for basking on. He spent a fair amount of time with his eyes closed, lost in dreams both awake and not.

Greg talked a lot about his boys. He missed them. I felt bad about my phone not working. There were other hikers able to get reception, but my phone really is a piece of crap. Who knows, it may have been better for him in the end. What an opportunity to be away from everyone and everything for a week. Besides, I don’t think the batteries would have lasted.

Drip, drip, drip. It sounds a familiar refrain from another trip. [I'm not sure what trip I was referring to.]

We’ll be off the trail tomorrow. It will probably be odd to not have the sound of surf to go to sleep to. This whole trip has been a load of fun and I am sorry to see it coming to an end.

We played Yahtzee again this evening and again I rolled a Yahtzee and finished with a stellar score. I lost the 2nd game however. We followed this up with a few games of five-thousand. They caught on fast. Of the two games I think Yahtzee is more fun.

My body doesn’t ache tonight. It is hard to believe that by 1 pmish tomorrow we will have traveled 75 km on foot. Remarkable under the best of conditions, which we were fortunate to have.

I am ready for so many things in life now. I want to tell Meaghan all about them. Right now though, I just want to sleep. I look forward to drifting off to the rhythm of the waves on the beach and the soft pattering of the dew drips inside my tent.

Once my body and mind adjusted to the hike I spent a fair amount of time taking photos. The photo I was taking is here.
photo credit:GregNorthVancouver.

Ah, yes, the last night brought with it heavy fog, followed by really heavy mist, followed by drizzle. It was the kind of precipitation that didn't really fall. It lingered in the air, soaking everything it came in touch with. Lying in my tent that night I realized just how fortunate I was the weather on our trip had been good. My tent was as waterproof as a sieve. I hadn't used it in years, not since Meaghan and I got a larger tent as a wedding gift. Things would have been pretty tight if the three of us had had to share Derek's tent. I cannot imagine how rank the air would have been inside it. On the other hand I likely would have ditched the Tarn and saved some weight in my pack. Hmph. Prior to heading to Yoho last summer I tried to avoid the drip, dripping, by resealing the fly. No luck.

In a previous post I mentioned trail etiquette and the etiquette-deficiency of some of those with whom I shared the trail. But beyond etiquette there are certain rules that back country hikers need to abide by. Etiquette, like burying human waste or packing out trash, eases the burden on the environment. Basic human etiquette allows trail weary campers to get along. A lack of etiquette likely won't kill you, although I can think of a few hikers that came close to dying in their sleep at the hands of other hikers. Rules on the other hand usually save lives; for instance, staying off some of the nastier beaches at high tide, or, say, storing food properly.

We shared Michigan Creek campsite this night with, among others, a group of hikers who were full of bravado, energy and cockiness. It was their first night on the trail, having set out from Bamfield, and one or two of the more boisterous members of the group were 'teaching' the others how to do the back country thing properly. It was scary. I recall one of them pulled out a long-bladed hunting knife at any opportunity, and another guided the group through food prep - how hard can that be? Boil water, add to food, wait, eat.

But the scariest thing was how they stored their food for the night. Like most of the campsites, Michigan Creek had a locker available for food and trash. It was set up away from the camping area, to steer any wayward bears away from campers. But it seems these guys wanted to show off their back-woodsiness by hanging their food from a tree. The night before, this is something we had no choice but to do. There were no food lockers at Klanawa Creek. But it was something we did responsibly. The food was many metres off the ground and away from our tents. Our Michigan Creek neighbors on the other hand hung their food just outside their campsite - three feet off the ground. Yes, it was secure from squirrels and raccoons, safe from sand fleas, but it was left at buffet level for any bear that happened to wander along the beach. Derek, Greg and I, while immersed in a game of Yahtzee, darkly hoped the guys who hung the food bag kept secret stashes of food tucked away in their tents. Better they be meals than us.


Stupidity kills. The red, blurry thing in the background is a bag of food left dangling tantalizingly close to the ground.
photo credit:GregNorthVancouver.

A daily ritual, usually performed both prior to hitting the trail and once we got off it, was water filtration. Using Derek's pump we would take turns gathering potable water. At around 80 pumps per litre and six to eight litres gathered at a time that was a lot of elbow action. On this occasion I was at the creek gathering water with Greg - he was pumping(now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure I did not do my fair share of pumping) - at the same time another man was filling up his own water bottles. His 12-year-old son was with him. They had hit the trail that morning in Bamfield and this was their first night of a bonding journey.

The son was full of energy, bounding around the creek from rock to rock, talking excitedly about the day they had finished, and the days left before them. I looked out at the Pacific Ocean, and the fog, and then at the sky and the heavy cloud and wondered if it wouldn't be wise for the kid to save some of his energy for the rest of the hike. I've thought about them many times since that encounter. Both were full of optimism, but I wonder if the torrential rain that came the following day somehow took an edge off their exuberance.


The loo at Michigan Creek.