Thursday, 24 August 2006. Woohoo! We're off! Myself, Maria, Merewyn and Brenda piled into Brenda's car and headed for the ferry. The traffic was worse than we expected but we got to Horseshoe Bay for about 4.15 pm, in plenty of time for the 5.10 ferry. Except... that it was full already, so we ended up waiting for the 6.40 sailing. Well, that wasn't so bad really: it was a gorgeous sunny afternoon and we had a leisurely dinner (mmm, fish and chips) in the park in Horseshoe Bay. Even better, the weather forecast for the next few days was no worse than cloudy with sunny spells. We couldn't have asked for more.
We boarded the 6.40 ferry and bagged a group of four seats. Now it was time to read all about what we were setting out to do :-) Well it was for me anyway. We had a melodramatic article on the Nootka Trail from a copy of (Beautiful) British Columbia magazine, the descriptions from Tim Leadem's book "Hiking the West Coast of Vancouver Island" and Shannon & Lissa Cowan's book "Hiking Vancouver Island" along with a recent photo-journal article from the Club Tread website. The day before we had been intimidated by the description on another website which insisted that we were endangering our very lives by even thinking about doing the trail. OK so it wasn't that bad, but it did a good job of sowing plenty of doubt. Anyway, in the end we figured that between the four of us we actually did have enough experience to tackle this trail comfortably. (Despite it being only my third ever backpacking trip...)
Now we were getting excited about the trip. The float plane flight, clear skies, the peace and quiet, wildlife (eagles, bears, wolves, sea otters and whales), camp fires, beautiful beaches, amazing rain forest, and last but not least, trying out Mother Nature's washroom facilities... I was really hoping to see (or at least hear) wolves, sea otters and whales. A bear sighting or two wouldn't go amiss either.
Off the boat in Nanaimo at 8.30 or so, we sped off up the Island while watching a perfect sunset turn into a crystal-clear night. We reached the Buttle Lake campground at 10.45 (15 mins before the gate was closed) and claimed a vacant site. We pitched our tents in the dark. I couldn't help but be mesmerized by the night sky. It was the clearest night I've seen in a long time and spotting little nebulous splodges like the Andromeda galaxy and the double cluster in Perseus was easy. The Milky Way filled the sky between the trees above our tents. If only it was the time for the Perseids...
Midnight saw us settling down to sleep, ready to be up bright and early the next day.
Links:
BC Ferries
British Columbia magazine
ClubTread.com (not the same as ClubTread.org)
Strathcona Provincial Park
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