The walk to Owen Point
DAY 2
We had been encouraged by some
locals to skip the first half of the trail on day two and walk the beach
to Owen Point to walk atop the continental shelf that Vancouver Island
sits on. That section reportedly was just as nasty as the first six kilometres
we had just endured, but the beach was significantly easier and visually
rewarding. The map provided by the Pacific Rim National Park reserve was
detailed and became an essential element in our daily navigation. As well,
Mimi had taped a tide table to the cover page, which also became vital.
To get past Owen Point, the map told us, we would have to do so when the tide is below 11.8m/6'. The tide tables showed a low tide of 0.5m/1.6' at 9:50 a.m. and a high tide of 3.6m/11.8' at 4:05 p.m. and would thus be going up by a rate of 20"/hr from 10:00 a.m. on. This meant we had to reach and pass Owen Point by 12:30 p.m. Parks Canada calls it a "difficult route" and "recommends that hikers stay on the trail between Thrasher Cove and Owen Point. As neither Norm nor I are the type of guys to read, comprehend or even pay much attention to such vital elements in our day-to-day lives, we were glad to have Gordon Derk (quite possibly the most organised man on earth) with us. Having a guy as smart and orderly as Gord handling navigation and tide tables was like having a paid guide to remove all the stress involved with decision making in the bush.
The 4 km to Owen turned out to be wildly varying terrain from yesterday,
and equally treacherous and difficult. The first kilometre appeared simple-walk
across a bunch of rocks with black stuff on them. Not so simple after
all. The black stuff was kelp, thrown up on the rocks at high tide and
left to rot. The kelp seemed to glue itself to the rounded rocks and offered
hikers the slipperiest surface imaginable. Navigating this field of kelp-covered
rocks was unquestionably the most frightening portion of the hike. We
feared not for our lives, but for our ankles, knees and elbows. To get
an idea of how difficult this was, imagine walking in high heels over
a sloped, icy sidewalk, carrying a 60lbs pack. Considering we are four
fairly seasoned hikers, this time we looked like tentatively tiptoeing
grannies with bad hips.
After a kilometre, the kelp-covered rocks turned into just round rocks that would be much easier to navigate. Further down the beach, the rocks turned to massive boulders that had to be scrambled up, climbed onto and then down again. At Owen Point, we were rewarded with amazing rock formations, smoothed over curvaceous caves that wound underneath the point for 30m. We enjoyed the landscape for a few minutes and at 12:00 p.m. sharp, pressed on.
The crux of this involved climbing out of the smoothed-out caves and onto the continental shelf about 1.5m up. We poked around for a few minutes looking for a route before finding a small levelling that could be tentatively walked up. This route was half-covered by the tide when we reached it and would not be navigable by any of the hikers who were even less than an hour behind us.
Once up on the shelf we were rewarded with comparatively smooth hiking on rippled and pocketed sandstone that was positively surreal-bereft of life and very reminiscent of a moonscape. At last the hiking was beautiful and smooth sailing. Not quite. Surge channels have been, over thousands of years, carved down the seams of the sandstone, breaking long but relatively straight channels into the plate. Furious ocean waves break and funnel down the channel and up to the treeline in a terrific display of force and fury. Some surges could be stepped over, some could be jumped, but the big ones had to be circumnavigated via ropes and bushwhacking through nasty bits of seldom travelled rainforest.
It was at this point that I found out that Norm-who had packed the food for the two of us-had left the seventh (and therefore extra) day's food behind because we would only be sleeping out for six nights. I still don't understand his logic or seeming momentary lapse of reason. Either way, not having the extra day's food made me nervous and crabby. From the shelf, we had a choice of continuing for as long as the tides would allow or exiting the beach to a main trail, just a few hundred meters inland. Still novice WCT'ers at this point, we confused the escape routes around the surge channels with "Beach Accesses" (to the main trail) and bushwhacked through the extraordinarily dense rainforest in search of trail. Here, for the first of countless times, all eyes turned to Gord and asked, "Where are we exactly?"
Momentarily, we found the main
trail and returned hiking the lush swampy rainforest. The rain only stopped
occasionally, for one or two minute breathers. So after 48 hours of pissing
rain, the trail was a deep, puddled, rooted-covered, mud-slop mess. After
eight embarrassingly slow kilometres, we found our planned campsite, Camper
Creek. While we set up camp, prepared and ate dinner, we were blessed
with a couple of hours without rain and in the absence of any wood at
all, Nick crossed a waist-high creek to fetch dry wood from a pile of
driftwood on a lone sandbar. With Nick's great find, Norm built another
worthy fire and we sat for ten glorious minutes relaxing before we were
kicked back into our tents by the rain's return.
© Jim Knutsen 2001
Mudhounds at
Owen Point
Approaching Owen Point
Owen Point
Walking the tide shelf past Owen Point
My favorite shot looking back at Owen point
Just another waterfall near Owen Point
A surge channel
Getting back on the Trail