On the Juan the Fuca Trail

Juan the Fuca Trail, September 17-19th, 2017

When my friends came over from Germany this year, we decided to hike the Juan the Fuca trail, the little brother of the longer and expensive West Coast Trail.

I think it was a good decision to start with the short 47 km excursion. In my opinion, three to four days of mystic, mellow and moist beach and rain forest hiking is enough. We had an excellent time on the West coast of Vancouver Island, but overall, I prefer the breathtaking views of mountain ranges seen from higher elevation.

We had decided to hike from North to South, camping close to Botanical Beach on Thursday night (Pacheedaht Campground), driving the car over to China beach and taking the 8.05 am shuttle back to Botanical Beach.

Day 0 – Getting there: Thursday evening – my sister Hanna, Christiane, Sebastian and I are getting ready to catch the 7 pm ferry to Swartz Bay. With a usual delay of around 20 min – Seb: “are we still on time?”, me: “no”, Seb: “oh” – we got into their banana-yellow Mustang convertible and were on our way.

The sleek Mustang just barely fit our gear and the legroom for the passengers was questionable, especially because the driver is a 1,95 m beanpole. Due to his reckless driving, we made it on the 6 pm ferry as the last car. We were super psyched about that!

I had miscalculated the time it would take us on the ferry and driving from the ferry terminal to Botanical Beach (~3h 15 min) anyway, so the extra hour was a welcome gift. We even had time to get McDonald’s blueberry crumble icecream in Sooke and went to sleep around 11 pm.

Day 1 – Botanical Beach to Sombrio West (20 km): Nice and early on Friday, I drove the yellow Mustang over to China Beach and met the others at Botanical Beach around 9.30 am again. Very slowly, we started hiking, making sure to check out all tide pools. Botanical Beach was really pretty, every little pool was like an aquarium with green sea anemones and purple sea urchins. I was very tempted to swim in one, but the water temperature prevented me from doing so.

Soon, we left the beach and continued on the trail with a glimpse of the ocean just once in a while. We were not sure how far we wanted to go that day, but when we reached Little Kuitshe Creek Campground at 14 km, we all agreed that the extra 6 -7 km to Sombrio Beach were worth the effort. With tired legs and a small amount of knee pain, we continued to Sombrio West.

The campground was nice and beachy, and we were all looking forward to a large mashed potato dinner during sunset. Hanna and I had packed the two dinners for the trip and we proudly cooked up a mashed potato/gravy/vegetable/cheese one-pot dinner for 4. Turned out that Sebastian and Christiane needed roughly double the amount of food that Hanna and I would usually ingest, so the huge dinner was pretty small in the end. To top it off roughly 1 liter of hot chocolate was consumed :-). More or less satisfied, we all went to sleep.

Day 2 – Sombrio West to Chin Beach (7 km): It rained, so we couldn’t possibly get up early. We had breakfast and packed up under an unattended, seemingly owner-less tarp. Our neighbors, obviously good Canadians, were too friendly to tell us that they would like to use it themselves after they woke up. I felt bad, but they were totally happy. They weren’t doing the whole trail, just a small 1 km hike back to their car, so it was OK for them to get soaked as it seemed.

We were in a fairly good mood, despite the continuous rain and the muddy trail, until we reached the tide dependent beach cut-off to Chin Beach around 3 pm. According to my calculations and the online tide tables, the section wasn’t passable until 4 pm, which sounded fine. Unfortunately, we had to wait until 6 pm, the water levels were somehow really high or I had just screwed up. We spend the time snacking, getting soaked by the misty rain and freezing a little. Christiane’s mood deteriorated, because her jacket was a quite functional sponge not a shell. Luckily jolly Seb and competent Hanna kept the mood up. Then, we were finally able to cross and it also stopped raining. We had a misty sunset at Chin Beach with a delicious one-pot couscous dinner and tea. I think the amount of food was more appropriate that evening 🙂

Day 3 – Chin Beach to China Beach (20 km): We woke up a little earlier that morning to leave by 8 am (we didn’t). When we retrieved our food from the bear box, the crucial bag was missing.

It had the chips! Being a little low on food already, it had to be recovered, so I started walking around. The group camping close to us, slightly high from their evening activities before, had taken it by accident. I know that they were high because they had a great time destroying all the decorative cairns around the beach at sunset. It must have been really fun.

The sun came out just after we had left camp and it felt so good…

Overall, the third day went much smoother than I had expected, the trail was very enjoyable and despite some elevation gain and loss, we made good time. The section was described as the most difficult part, but we all agreed that it was the best part. We had agreed to spend an extra day at Bear Beach or Mystic Beach if we needed too, but we were in such a good mood that we just continued on, finishing the last day at China Beach Parking lot at 7.15 pm. Some extra beach yoga brakes and food stops made us almost miss the 9 pm ferry.

A little bit of running (the last couple of kilometers) while singing children’s songs kept the mood up and we made it to the ferry at 8.52 pm with 10 km worth of gas in the tank… and the worse part, we couldn’t stop for icecream at McDonalds… ah nevermind, there was icecream on the ferry.

And then, we were tired and home by 11.30. I forgot the keys and had to brake into our house… good job group!