Juan de Fuca Marine Trail - September 2006

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Day 2 - China Beach Campground to Bear Beach  (8km)

September 8/06 (Friday)

  We woke up at 7:00am but stayed in the tent until 8 or 8:30 this morning. Our breakfast consisted of oatmeal and dark rye bread with jam packets (which we obtained from Whitespot a few days earlier). It all tasted gourmet! We filled up our water bottles at the tap and drove to the trail entrance about 1km up the road. We had visited the trailhead yesterday briefly and saw maybe 8 cars parked there, including one red MGB with it's top down...must have been pretty sure it wouldn't rain! What we saw when we arrived today blew us away, the lot was almost completely full of cars and there were probably 50 people with full packs on standing around getting organized.

  Turned out this was a college from Vancouver Island that was taking this group of foreign exchange students on a 1 day hike to Bear Beach to spend the night there. Two of the guides approached us asking where we were camping tonight, we naturally said Bear Beach as well since it's the only actual site within 20km's of the parking lot. The assured us that "Bear Beach is huge, we'll be at the far end. If you stay near the beginning of it you'll never know we were there". Whew!

  One of the students approached us asking "is that a bell on your pack?", she was wondering if the bell was to ward off bears. We said yes, then asked if she'd take a photo of us. I always have thoughts about bears and the like before starting a hike, are we prepared incase we run into something, are we doing everything we can to make our presence known and avoid an encounter? Today I felt pretty confident considering how many people were doing the trail. They split into 3 or so groups of 10-15 people and started off. We wound up starting between groups 2 and 3, which was just fine for my bear concerns...they'd make enough noise just walking to let anything within a few hundred yards know they were there!

  We were hiking now, starting our 47 kilometer trek! Our packs were heavy...I had tossed in a few last minute things, the heaviest of which was my rain poncho. I had decided to take it and my normal jacket just incase...2 more pounds. Our packs must have been in the 40-45lb range at this point, including the water (2 Nalgene bottles and 2 smaller water bottles full). It took a long time to get the packs adjusted, hiking through beautiful old growth forest, I was getting chaffed by my pack in a few places by the time we hit Mystic Beach, just 2 kilometers down the trail. I concluded I had not packed properly, and would need to unpack everything and repack it just to get the weight in the right place...no way was I going to do this here though, we had 6 kilometers to go and it was already noon.

  So we had some trail mix (with Smarties!) and some landjaeger, photographed the small waterfall that fell on the beach and began a terrible trek upwards. Kathy and I both were thinking the same thing after all the uphill climbing "If this section is rated moderate, what is tomorrow going to be like?" because you see tomorrow is rated "very difficult". Today was no walk in the park...eep!

  Kathy's pack was holding up well today but one of her toes was getting sore, not a blister sore but a bone sore. My hips were chaffing badly, the weight of my pack was pulling it back hard forcing me to tighten it down on my hips and shoulders FAR more than I would normally. It wasn't pleasant and required continual adjustment to just keep hiking.

   The stairs...oh the stairs....were misery, it was like they were made for giants! These were no normal stairs. We stopped for a bite to eat around the 6km mark, our Clif bars giving us a major energy boost right away, they were heaven! 240 calories and 40 carbs packed into a small bar, POW! Very tasty too, we had one per day for each of us, either oatmeal raisin or chocolate walnut. Highly recommended! 

  Threw the packs on again and were passed and re-passed by the third group of students. It seemed they stopped for a break at every kilometer marker where we were going at a slower pace, but stopping less. We established a bit of a rapport with them, one of them asking about Kathy's UBC graduation shirt (which has become her hiking shirt for the trip, as has my new white shirt...what were we thinking?).

  We never gave up, and wound up at Bear Beach around 5pm. It was amazing to walk out of the forest at onto the rocky shores of the ocean, waves were rolling in and there was a good breeze blowing. We had been told by a couple that we met coming from Bear earlier in the day that there was a very nice tent site just before the bear cache and bathrooms, tucked up just above the beach. We found it, and it was a perfect little site! It felt like being in Gilligan's Island, like we should try to create a radio from coconuts or something.

  There was a couple in a small green tent just a bit further down the beach who had setup camp beside a large driftwood bank, right in front of a freshwater stream that emerged from the woods. Their site looked extremely idyllic to me, right on the beach, driftwood to shelter them from the wind, a creek two feet from their tent...I would have taken a picture but didn't want to disturb them too much.

  We pumped a load of fresh water from the little creek, going back a ways to get into a faster flowing section. There was a dark cloudbank coming in from the west that had a very wet look to it, so we choose one of our fast freeze dried meals for dinner, a curry dish with rice and chicken. Slightly concerned as we hadn't had freeze dried meals in a long time and weren't sure how much portion to expect, we threw in a bunch of minute rice, and dried veggies. Turned out to be really good, and very filling! Though we should have stirred it better, it was pretty salty at the bottom. Downside of the meal was the gas it gave us...oh the poor sleeping bags!

  It began to spit rain after dinner, so we washed up our few dishes (again: freeze dried meals are great for this, they cook in the bag they came in), figured we might as well try to get a fire going but the beach had been picked clean of small driftwood. After lighting one match and having the wet leaves I was using as a starter sputter out immediately, we said forget it and got ready for sleep. We are ok with no fire though, as we're both very tired. Too tired to even play Farkel (a dice game we had brought along). As we fell asleep (around 8:30pm) the rain began in earnest...

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