Kamloops, BC

This update is mostly just photos from my cousin’s wedding in Kamloops.  What a good-looking couple!  Glad my Mom and siblings could all make it too!

One of these is not like the others.  Dev where are your sunnies?

I love this shot of Steph, but I also like the guy with the mohawk in the background.

Just married!

The guests got to try out a few drives since the wedding was at a golf course.  I was pretty terrible; being in a dress didn’t help either though.

My pro-star sister with a good follow-through

My brother swinging in style

Rod giving me a few pointers

Loved having some time to hang out with my family, and to experience their crazy antics.

Aside from the wedding we had a relaxing time wandering around downtown Kamloops including breakfasts at Hello Toast (delish!) and visiting Riverside park.  To access the park we had to go over a bridge with almost comical motivational sayings plastered on each flight.   Having recently conquered the West Coast Trail, the support and encouragement for a few dozen stairs was pretty funny.

Rod and I also checked out Kamloops’ great desert-like disc golf course up on the hill. No water holes meant no lost discs for me! 

West Coast Trail, Part IV: The Sun!

The last 2 ½ days of the trail were enjoyable despite our festering wet clothes and boots and tired muscles. Finally we had a break in the weather and even some sun!  When we reached Camper’s Bay towards the end of our 6^th day we immediately exploded over a huge driftwood log trying to dry our stuff out before packing it away for the night to avoid morning condensation.  Unfortunately even when it’s not raining it’s pretty humid right next to a temperate rainforest and not much drying-out happened.  But it was worth a shot right?

Camper’s Bay at twilight

 Putting on my stinky knee brace on for the 2^nd-to-last time on this trip.  I’m smiling, but man did I hate that thing by the end.  If you’re wondering about the duct tape, I scraped my other knee and duct tape seemed to stay on better than any band-aid.

Sunshine on our way to our last campsite at Thrasher’s Cove

Big grins for our last night, while Rod emulates “the Thinker”.

 Last kilometre sign!  We are so close!

And we finished!  Lots of good opportunities for goofing around while we wait for the others (showing off our championship belts, pretending to be monkeys and then lemmings, etc.) and then waiting for the ferry back to Port Renfrew.  I was so excited to be done I forgot to take off my pack!

  

There were a few casualties, namely Jason’s ankles and trekking poles.  With the blisters I can't help but put some blame on him since he broke in his hiking boots by "sitting around drinking coffee and driving his truck" instead of doing some real hiking!

Unfortunately that week on the West Coast Trail there were a lot of evacuations and injuries.  I believe the count was closer to 40 when we started the trail the week before…  We heard a few rumours of people falling off slippery ladders. This number doesn’t even count the people who decided to pay a lot of $$$ to get taken off the trail by boat at Nitinat Narrows (we talked to at least two groups who lost a member there).

What an adventure!  It will be a while before I attempt that one again, somewhat because of the mud pits, tree roots and rain, but also because there are a lot of other trails to try first.  Let me know if you are looking to do the trail and need any tips!  Or if you have any suggestions for what my next trail should be.

And what trip away from civilization and showers would be complete without a fast food binge at the end?  I was thinking about these A&W onion rings since day 2.

West Coast Trail, Part III: The Flood

Apologies for a much delayed post on the continuing West Coast Trail adventures.  Some knee surgery with complications made it rough to even get to my computer for a while, but thankfully I’m doing much better now and am well on my way to playing ultimate again next year (fingers crossed!).

Back to the trail, the rain continued on and off, and we tackled even taller ladders, a long suspension bridge (I thought that was fun) and a chilly river crossing.   We managed to ride out one particularly nasty horizontal rain spell with burgers and hot cocoa at Chez Monique’s, a welcome food haven on day 4.

Lots of beautiful scenery.

Dev and Jason not impressed by the size of their supposed 2-man tent.

My “it’s not raining!”  smile.

 The toughest part of the trail came the evening of day 4 while camping at Walbran.  We dragged ourselves into camp at close to 7 pm and there were few potential camp sites left.  We made sure we were well above the high tide line and set up our tents just as a major storm rolled in.    As the winds whipped up and the rain fell harder, Dev couldn’t keep the flame going on our little camp stove.   The others still like quoting my cry of “Deeeeeeeev!  Screw dinner!” as we all retreated to our tents sustaining ourselves on trail mix and builder’s bars.   Even worse was the realization that I had forgotten to stow away our food before bed and had to take off my nice warm pajamas, put my stinky wet clothes back on again and struggle through the wind and rain to find the bear cache for our food bags.

We all settled down for a stormy night and I was just about to turn my headlamp off for the night when I noticed my hiking shoes in my tent vestibule were floating.  Apparently the storm sustained 50 mm of rain / hour for a short while which was enough to flood the nearby river and our campsite.  We frantically moved to higher ground in the middle of the night and thankfully managed to avoid completely soaking our down sleeping bags.  That night we played the game of “how much money would you be willing to pay right now to be magically transported to a warm, dry room with a bed?”.

Here I am standing where our tent was the night before.  By  morning the river had already retreated back to its normal banks.

 The day after the storm dawned cloudy but no rain.   Our luck was changing!  Stay tuned for our triumphant, sunny finish.

West Coast Trail, Part II: The Slog

Second installment of the West Coast Trail.  Or should I say the Wet Coast Trail….     Some Germans we met on Day 2 coming from the opposite direction had only this message as what to expect ahead:  “Life will be hard”.    And full of rain, and mud, and endless ladders.  Unfortunately, making life even harder was that 2 out of our 3 stoves malfunctioned on the first day, and the fuel types were not compatible.   But enough complaining for now.

When we last left the merry group they had just started on the 75 km trek from Bamfield to Port Renfrew.  As one savvy blog-reader pointed out, Rod decided to show his independence on Day 1 in the group photo being the only one to leave his gators off (“I don't need no stinkin' gators.  My shins aren't afraid of a little mud, the rest of you are clearly just a bunch of Lagerfeuer-1.Reihe-Sitzer”.  This is a first-class German girly-man insult if I do say so myself Mehmet!  It means people-who-sit-in-the-first-row-around-the-campfire – I am definitely among them.)   Rod decided that gators were a good choice after all from Day 2 onwards.  But I digress.

The first 10 km or so to the Pachena Point Lighthouse were fairly flat and uneventful and we managed a good pace.  Over lunch however the skies clouded over and the first rain drops started falling.  Raincoats and pack covers on!

Dev was battling two severe ear infections and the end of a pink eye infection even on Day 1.  Here he shows off his backpack-pharmacy. 

No one wanted to damage their camera during the ensuing deluge which lasted a constant 4 days save for a 1 hour sunny respite on Day 3.    Here are a few shots which were snuck during short breaks in the rain.    I did enjoy the coast, the rocks, the ocean, and walking along the beach.  The treed sections (unavoidable due to the tides) were painfully slow however and filled with ankle-to-knee-deep mud pits.   I started off as a “Matsch-Vermeider” (mud avoider, another good German girly-man insult), but inevitably stopped caring after stepping around the first few dozen.

Camping on the beach!  Unfortunately the wood was too wet to have a campfire.

Puddles like this one were typical…like every 10 metres!  For anyone looking to buy waterproof hiking boots, based on our combined group experience those with the full-leather boots (including the tongue) fared the best.  Unfortunately I belonged to the 2^nd camp which had leather boots with a Gore-Tex tongue which were pretty much soaked through (despite the gators) on Day 2.

Taking a break on a nice long bench big enough for all 6 of us!  Rod is not impressed.

The forecast posted at Carmanah Pt. Lighthouse on Day 4.  Only more rain in sight…

Buoys were always a welcome sight since it meant we had reached camp.

There were lighter moments of course though!   Everyone feels better with a hot meal in their bellies and Leah enjoys a little air-guitar.     

We also passed the time trash-talking one another, where one of our favourites was the face joke.  E.g. Dev:  “I hate these mud pits”, me: “You’re a mud pit”, Dev:  “Your face is a mud pit”.

Day 3 we took a welcome break out of the rain at the Nitinat Narrows ferry crossing.   I had the best baked potato of my life, smothered in butter and accompanied by fresh, BBQ salmon. 

Later that afternoon we were also rewarded with a short 1 hour of blue sky.  We took the opportunity to do silly poses and ham it up.

The thrill of many ladders, cable cars, and bridges in various stages of disrepair. 

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Getting ready loading into our first cable car

A long way to haul yourself over, but kind of fun too!

I forgot to give photo credits in the last post, but thanks to Kiran and Rod who contributed the vast majority of the West Coast Trail pics!

More adventures and better weather to come in the next post.  Plus I actually change out of that smelly pink shirt which everyone must be sick of by now!