The Cape

Sarah and I finally completed a rite of passage for Vancouver Islanders, hiking the trail to the northern tip of the island at Cape Scott. We timed our trip for the summer solstice, and had long days, short nights and late dinners as a result. The hike is renowned for its muddiness. I was visualizing a sea of knee-deep mud before we started, but the trail was in relatively good shape in spite of heavy rain the previous weekend. Gaiters still proved their worth, as did hiking poles. This was the most significant hike I've used poles for, and my knees thanked me. I was a four-legged spider by the end. 

On Experiment Bight, with Cape Scott and Cox Island in the background.

First day we alternately rambled and trudged to Nels Bight, seventeen kilometres through a mixture of forest types. Sarah and I had played our spring league final the night before, and we were feeling the effects of the game during the latter stages of the hike. The trail had few changes in elevation, with long, level sections, predominately through cedar, hemlock and spruce. There were boardwalks in places, and plenty of boggy patches and mud pools. The hiking poles were great guides, testing the depths for us. Often the worst-looking mud was deceptively shallow, yet the pole-, staff- and stick-less had elected to go around. Crossing Fisherman's River was a welcome break, a torrent of cedar-stained water rushing through the forest. We passed through a nutrient-poor zone of puffy-headed lodgepole pine and spindly cedars, before hitting the open meadows of Hansen's Lagoon. Here was the heart of the historic Danish settlement, the dyke that failed on the day of its completion as a storm-driven surge tide came in, and the second dyke, in itself a tribute to the tenacity of these settlers, even if their venture ultimately failed. As we walked the cape over the following days, we understood why they had made the attempt.

Meadows at Hansen's Lagoon.

Approaching the coast, we found wolf scat and sign on the trail. There was a wolf pack roaming Cape Scott, and we came upon scat and sign multiple times throughout our time there without a sighting. One of the rangers told us about her recent encounter, bumping into several in the meadows and being approached (and checked out) by the alpha. My calves tightened up over the latter stages, and we were both pretty bushed by the time we hit the beach at Nels Bight, the clock approaching 7.00 pm. Nels was a wide, sandy bay, book-ended by rocky points and backed by forest, about five kilometres short of the lighthouse at the cape. There were a handful of tents on the beach, but sand + camping drives me a bit crazy so I scouted a sylvan little spot by a burbling stream under the cedars. The day finished with a cuppa on the beach in the light of a spreading sunset.

Hitting Nels Bight.

 

Next day we left our campsite and continued to Cape Scott, travelling along stretches of sand at Experiment Bight and Guise Bay. There was a scattered quantity of garbage on the beaches, mostly plastic and styrofoam products, driven by wind and currents. A sign at the trailhead had informed us to keep and pass on any personal items thought to be from the Japanese tsunami, but we didn't find anything significant: a small refrigerator, plastic sandals, industrial flotsam. Definitely no Harley. We followed a decaying cedar-plank road dating from the Second World War up to the Cape Scott lighthouse complex. The lighthouse keepers were an older couple, husband and wife, stationed on the cape for a week or so in relief of the regular keepers. The man was a torrent of anecdotes and yarns, rapidly moving from one tale to the next with nary a pause. He regaled us with stories of his youth, his plans to enlist in the Vietnam War effort, before his new hippy friends convinced him otherwise. He railed against the oil industry in Canada and monster multinational fishing trawlers off the coast of New Zealand. His oblique, rambling story of a campfire meeting to debate protesting the atomic bomb was, in hindsight, the foundational story of Greenpeace, and their first anti-nuclear protest of the Amchitka tests. His wife had wild, windswept hair and grey, knowing eyes. The pair were the kind of unique characters you'd imagine light-keepers to be.

Cedar-plank road to the lighthouse station.

On the lighthouse, looking south-west over part of the station complex.

Sarah and I explored the pocket bays on the exposed west side of the cape, finding a series of sea stacks, basalt rock formations shaped by wind and water erosion. The stacks were covered in flourishing native strawberries, with a heavy green crop of unripe fruit. As we ate lunch we watched a sea otter harvesting in the bay, paddling and diving amongst the kelp beds. We filled a sack with garbage from the beach, found a small window of opportunity to escape the attentions of the light-keeper who'd come down to the bay, and rambled along the coastline.

Pocket bay lunch spot.

Basalt sea stacks.

Western end of Experiment Bight.

On the exposed rocky shore we found plentiful clusters of gooseneck barnacles, which are an expensive delicacy in Portugal and Spain. We surreptitiously harvested a meal's worth and enjoyed them later that night, a salty, tender bite. Our return to Nels was along Experiment Bight, crossing from beach to beach via a tight trail over the bluffs. We celebrated the solstice with a drop or two of Bowmore 12 Year Old and a campfire.

Gooseneck barnacles, known to the Iberians as percebes.

Our last full day was spent on a secluded corner of a stretch of beach on Experiment Bight, with a rocky bluff on one side and a long stretch of sand to our west. On the walk out along the bluff trail I found a small green glass globe - an old Japanese fishing float - almost completely buried in the trail. We lit a small fire on the sand - thanks to Mark for the flint, the tides for the yellow cedar shavings, and Leslie for the idea of packing an egg carton cup with dryer lint as a fire-starter. We had a quick dip and rinse in the ocean (cold, but refreshing) and enjoyed the first day of summer sun. Sarah continued with Malcolm X's autobiography and I made my way through Herman Hesse's Siddhartha. After the mileage of the previous two days the rest was welcome. As evening approached, a Coast Guard vessel, CCGS Tanu, came into the bay and anchored for the night. We completed our day with a feast of chili con carne and polenta.

Tanu at anchor.

The weather shifted on our last day, with light drizzle in the early morning and more rain threatening. We breakfasted and broke camp, sauntered down Nels to the trail and made the return journey to the trailhead, stopping at Fisherman's River for lunch, and breaking at Eric Lake. Sarah tested me on species identification after our break - her cunning method of slowing my pace - and I worked on naming the flora mix around us. Our hike coincided with the spring blooming of forest flowers, including bunchberry, red columbine, three-leaved foamflower, Hooker's fairy bells, Indian paintbrush, fawn lily, lily of the valley, rice root and vanilla leaf. Ferns were lush. BC, like NZ, has a broad variety of fern types, including deer, lady, licorice, maidenhair and sword ferns. No pongas but.

Indian paintbrush.

Maidenhair ferns.

Still glam, nearing the end.

We reached the trailhead with around fifty kilometres under our belts, rinsed our boots and gaiters, loaded the car and set off. Soon after we were engulfed in rain. Our trip couldn't have been better timed. We returned to CR with a sense of peace engendered by the sound, scent and sight of waves curling onto a sandy shore.