This was a wonderfully, eerily quiet adventure on the beautiful BC West coast. I got a water taxi to the First Nations village of Ahousat, about 25 minutes on the boat from Tofino on a Monday morning. I got my permit to be on First Nations territory and camp in the marine park and walked through town to the trail, A KM or two in itself. My first backpacking hike of the year! And lots of new gear i’ve been investing in to test.
The 11km hike out to Cow Bay was beautiful, huge empty stretches of beach and forest boardwalks and trails. Buoys marked the entrances to the forest from the beach and were sometimes hard to spot, but with the help of a little map it wasn’t too hard to follow. There is one crossing that you can do more easily at low tide or walk further upstream to a bridge, luckily i hit it at low tide on the way out and it was only ankle deep. I arrived in Cow Bay after about 3.5 hours and set up my campsite at the south end of the bay. I was a little surprised no one else was camping and I had the place totally to myself. The sea mist rolled in and it felt very desolate and wild, especially with wolf prints all over the sand. The mist cleared by about 7pm and the full beauty of the beach revealed itself. I watched the sunset totally alone in this magic land and went to bed early where i was too scared to sleep very well thinking of all the wildlife that could be out there. Saying that, i was very impressed with my new tent and my sleeping bag was really nice and warm.
I woke early and washed in a tidal pool. It was misty again but not too cold. I left camp by about 6.30am and had a slightly more eventful trip back. The low tide crossing was decidedly at high tide, but looked barely waist deep, so i took my trousers off as well as my boots and crossed it anyway. I was very smug that the water only skimmed the bottom of my rucksack but went shy of actually getting my stuff wet. I rested with a coffee on the other side and carried on. I then somehow missed a buoy marking and ended up scaling rocks around a point above the sea, which with a heavy pack on was decidedly stupid and dangerous. I went too far to want to turn back and it got scarier and scarier until at one point the beach was so near i just had to safely decend the rocks (putting my bag precariously on a ledge then climbing down first) and wade for a couple of metres, getting the trousers and boots i’d so carefully kept dry decidedly wet. I was sweating and palpitating by crazy but the time i reached the beach and was glad to have made it without slipping. Lesson learnt about doing risky things on my own!! I changed my clothes and enjoyed a comparatively sedate walk back to the boat and to Tofino. The shorebirds were playing on the beach running around and singing which was cool. When i got back to Tofino I sorted my stuff out, getting sand everywhere, and collapsed on the sofa all afternoon. An amazing little adventure!
#19- walking the wild side
1Year/52Hikes 2019 