A FOGHORN BELLOWS a mournful warning to all who brave the perils of the sea this day. A dreary grey mist has rolled into Juan de Fuca Strait concealing Cape Flattery on the American shore. Do we hear the foghorn at Tatoosh Island, off the cape, or is it Carmanah Point Lighthouse, farther up the Canadian coast from our camp at Walbran Creek?
It's mid-May and for two days we have been spared the merciless downpours for which the southwest coast of Vancouver Island is notorious. We have hiked the first 22 kilometres of the West Coast Trail from Port Renfrew under glorious sunny skies.
"Hope we don't need that," says Ann Kingerlee, eyeing the orange tarp rolled up on my pack. The rest of us -- Ann's husband Roy, George Robinson and myself -- share her hope, but we are still 55 kilometres and three days from Pachena Bay, the northwest end of the trail. The waterproof map provided by Pacific Rim National Park staff points out several hazards between here and Pachena.
At least the worst is over. The backbreaking, 180-metre climb to Pandora Peak, the highest point on the trail, is behind us. We are getting used to lugging 18-kilogram packs up endless flights of wooden stairs. Our fears of dangling high above rocky creeks in hand-operated cable cars are dwindling. We have stumbled on twisted roots, skidded over moss-covered logs, slopped across pools of muck, and bathed our aching legs in frigid streams. Each day is a non-stop workout from dawn till dusk.
Hiking is the only way to absorb the incredible coastal scenery: tunnels and sea caves carved into sheer-sided cliffs; tidal pools, two and three metres deep, brimming with life. Huge sand and gravel spits have formed where streams rushing to the sea meet the pounding surf. There are landscapes of bizarre rock formations with boulders moulded into the ground, flakes of shale glued to the bedrock. At the forest's edge spring flowers are in bloom -- morning glory, rose-coloured beach pea, bright yellow sand verbena, and wild strawberry with creamy white petals and yellow pistils.
It is a period of low tides, so much of the hike is along the beaches. Footprints in the sand are quickly erased by the waves as if we'd never been there. Between the beaches are long stretches of smooth sandstone, almost like paved sidewalks. In the distance, tree-topped rock pinnacles stand out as reference points as we tramp along.
From time to time, headlands and stream outlets force us back into the forest. All is quiet and calm here, away from the surf and sea breezes. There is only the occasional chatter of a red squirrel, the hollow call of a raven, or the trickle of creeks. The copious rains have made the forest floor a luxuriant garden, tended by nature since the end of the last ice age 10,000 years ago. Bunchberry, or dwarf dogwood, bloom along the edge of the trail.
Virgin forests line nearly all of the West Coast Trail's 77 kilometres. We are humbled by these ancient monarchs: some cedars near the Cheewhat River, it is said, were seedlings at the time the Norse explored what is now Labrador and Newfoundland 1,000 years ago. Along the seashore, sitka spruce at Walbran Creek, Carmanah Creek and elsewhere are 300 to 500 years old.
Forest preservation has been a lingering spoiler in federal-provincial plans to create Pacific Rim National Park. It has taken more than 20 years of wrangling to resolve disagreements over compensation for the forestland that the British Columbia government took back from two forest companies to create the park. The companies had held the timber rights to the Crown-owned land and demanded, and ultimately received, alternative cutting rights on other parts of Vancouver Island as compensation. The province then turned over 21,000 hectares of land to the federal government for $25 million to allow assembly of the park.
Officially created this fall, Pacific Rim National Park covers an area of 513 square kilometres of land and sea. Apart from the West Coast Trail section, which includes the Nitinat Triangle (a watershed in the northwest part of the trail through which a 17-kilometre canoe route has been established), its boundaries take in the Broken Group islands in Barkley Sound, Long beach and a picnic area on Kennedy Lake.
"Watch your step," warns Ann as we move out of the forest onto the beach. A blob of black tar lies like a cowpat on a sunbeached log, surrounded by flowering pink sand pea. It is a grim reminder of the oil spills that fouled the western shores of Vancouver Island last Christmas. There are blotches on boulders, in the beach grass, on the driftwood. It sticks to our boots as we walk on the sand. We are careful not to set our packs in it when stopping for a rest. Farther along, near Bonilla Point, a dead, oil covered bird lies entangled in weed and driftwood. Although clean-up crews have scoured these beaches, more oil has drifted ashore and winter storms have churned up the sand and gravel, exposing underlying oil.
Pacific Rim Park crews have begun a second clean-up of the shores in advance of summer hikers. We are hiking ahead of these annual crowds; by the end of the second day we have seen only five other people. Last year nearly 6,000 people hiked the West Coast Trail. More than half of them walked the whole trail, as we are doing spending five days or a week in the wilderness. It's a long and arduous walk, but it is also a soul-stirring trek through some of Canada's most spectacular scenery, a challenge that brings a fair reward for the perseverence required.
Back in the early days, walking the West Coast Trail was usually a matter of survival. Some 50 ships foundered on this perilous stretch of coast, appropriately dubbed the "Graveyard of the Pacific". Rusted boilers, anchors and other shipwreck debris still litter the beaches along the trail. The worst disasters happened during violent winter storms: those souls who didn't drown often perished on the surf-battered beaches. Many, however, owe their lives to the "Lifesaving Trail", or the "Shipwrecked Mariner's Trail", much of which followed a telegraph and telephone line from Victoria to Cape Beale, a light station seven kilometres west of the current trail's end at Pachena Bay. In 1889, the line was strung between Victoria and Port Renfrew, and it reached Cape Beale the next year. Carmanah Point Lighthouse also was built at that time.
Soon after the telegraph trail was completed, it became a rescue route for shipwrecked sailors from such vessels as the Michigan, a wooden steam schooner, which grounded on a reef in January 1893. While some crewmen went by lifeboat to Neah Bay, near Cape Flattery, 25 others, who had made it to the B.C. shore, hiked the telegraph trail from what is now called Michigan Creek to Carmanah Point Lighthouse. All but one of the crewmen survived. Two years later, the four-masted barque Janet Cowan ran aground in December, southeast of Michigan Creek. While some of her crew died getting ashore or succumbed later from the bitter cold, 13 survivors were picked up from shore and nine others rescued after hiking to Carmanah Point.
The telegraph trail, however, was crude at best, and in 1906, after one of the worst marine disasters on the West Coast, it was decided to build a trail specifically for saving lives. The Valencia, a 77-metre steamer, had run aground on a bitter January night. The ship, with 164 passengers and crew, struck a rock to the east of Pachena Point. As the ship foundered close to shore, panicking passengers took to the lifeboats, only to be lost in the surf as the boats capsized. A few survivors who made it to shore found a lineman's cabin with a telephone and called to Victoria for help. Meanwhile, a lifeboat party made it to Pachena Bay and hiked the trail to Cape Beale Lighthouse.
A day and a half after the shipwreck, rescuers arrived by trail and ship to find heavy seas crashing over the decks of the grounded steamer and survivors clinging to the rigging. Unable to approach the stricken vessel, rescuers watched helplessly as an enormous wave broke above the ship, turning her over and tossing the remaining passengers into the sea. All told, there were only 38 survivors.
The summer after the tragedy, Indians exploring a cave near the wreck found one of Valencia's lifeboats with eight skeletons in it.
Construction of the lifesaving trail began in 1907 with a corduroy road linking Bamfield, a village near Cape Beale, to Pachena Point where a lighthouse had just been built. The road was nearly four metres wide to allow a horse and cart to haul medical supplies and lifesaving equipment. With aerial trolleys and bosun's chairs across the streams, it reached Carmanah Point in 1912, a year after it was proclaimed a "public highway", officially known as the West Coast Trail. Although the telegraph trail continued from Carmanah to Port Renfrew, that section was not part of the original West Coast Trail.
A number of cabins stocked with supplies for linemen and shipwrecked sailors were built along the trail and patrolmen were stationed along it throughout the winter. Victims of shipwrecks in the following years -- the Santa Rita in 1923, the Varsity in 1940, the Uzbekistan in 1943, and others -- were indebted to those who built the West Coast Trail. The condition of the trail varied over the years -- sections were abandoned, rebuilt, then abandoned again. Finally, in 1966, it was decided that helicopters and radio equipment had rendered the trail obsolete as a means of aiding ships and sailors in trouble. In the meantime, hikers were discovering the trail, and a few years later, the Canadian Parks Service began making improvements to make it safer for them in spite of the fact that it was not officially within parkland. Between 1973 and 1980, the northerly half of the trail from Pachena Bay to Carmanah Point was rebuilt and the southeastern half upgraded. Today, work crews maintain 160 bridges, six cable crossings, 75 sets of ladders and 16 kilometres of boardwalk. Materials are airlifted by helicopter and workers travel by inflatable boat.
Even before trail improvements began, hikers were flocking to this wilderness where they could walk for a week on the beach and watch the Pacific surf roll in. Many seemed oblivious to the hazards and came ill prepared, both physically and psychologically. There were no ferry services to take hikers across the treacherous Nitinat Narrows, northwest of Carmanah Point, or across the Gordon River to the start of the trail at Port Renfrew. Some hitched rides with fishermen; others brought inflatable dinghies. One hiker drowned attempting to cross the Gordon River in a rubber raft.
Without cable cars, some streams had to be forded. While looking for a suitable place to cross Carmanah Creek, one woman and her dog fell to their deaths from a cliff. Another woman, with a full pack, died when she slipped from a bridge over Sandstone Creek and plunged down an embankment. Farther along the trail, near Michigan Creek, a young boy had to be rushed to hospital by helicopter after a cougar attack.
High-speed inflatable boats and helicopters were used on the West Coast Trail last summer in 41 rescues for such medical emergencies as broken ankles and legs, severe hypothermia, and for back and neck injuries. One youngster suffered head injuries when he fell out of a cable car over the Klanawa River. In another incident, a woman slipped and drowned in Adrenaline Surge, one of a number of narrow, deep channels along the trail where wave action sends dangerous surges of water rushing toward shore. Although leader of a group of school children, she had never walked the trail before.
To control the growing number of large groups using the trail, park authorities require all group leaders to obtain a permit (issued at no cost). Talks on the environment and hazards are given, and each group registers at the start and signs off at the end. Groups are limited to eight, with starting times staggered to avoid overcrowding both the trail and the campsites.
We have enjoyed the trail's differing degrees of difficulty and, as we hike towards its end across the sandy shore of Pachena Bay, our map shows we have covered 23 kilometres in six hours -- a far cry from the mere eight kilometres we managed in 10 tiring hours on the second day.
Like the shipwrecked sailors whose footsteps we have followed, we too feel a certain euphoria at having walked out of the wilderness without mishap. The melancholy sigh of the foghorn is long gone now. The sun that greeted us at the start of our journey has returned. We have tasted only a few hours of West Coast rain and the orange tarp on my pack has never been unfurled.
