Aug. 14th, WCT Day 5: Walbran Creek to Camper Creek

Day 5: Walbran Creek to Camper Creek: 9km

A much tougher day but we still managed it. It began again with a lot of fog/moisture in the air like at Cribbs Creek. However this moisture did not vanish and instead it rained intermittent at times and it rained consistently when we arrived at Camper Creek. The whole day felt cool to coldish and I recall feeling a bit misery during our evening at Camper Creek. Most of my misery was self inflicted because I did not immediately put on my rain coat when heading out from Walbran Creek because I thought the day would develop similar to the day before. By the time I recognized my mistake my fleece was ultra heavy and cold/soaked with all the water and I had to carry it for the rest of the day on top of that and also could not use it at Camper Creek. All of us felt a bit down at Camper Creek but for sure Uta, Margaret, Barbara and Toby managed the day much better compared to me (and probably Hansi and Anna).

Aside from the moisture this portion of the trail went entirely through the forest. And the way wasn't a nice one. During the whole day I had the feeling that the tree roots were against me: Slippery, filled with mud and simply everywhere in the way of moving forward. You had to watch every step and worry about your balance. Obviously I managed a second time to end up laying flat in the mud. I wasn't the only one today. It happened to Hansi as well. Not that that made me feel better! Lengthier sections also went over board-walks. However again at times I decided to walk beside the board-walk because I felt it was safer: They appeared to be in a rotten state close to cracking (for sure I belonged into the top weight category of combined body and backpack weight). Other board-walks weren't rotten but tilted to one side or the other and moist. It just wasn't fun to walk over such tilted boards and again you ended up watching every step. Balancing over moist/slippery tree trunks for 10 or 15 meters was also part of the package. At least I did not fall down one of these despite thinking about that when walking over them. The final insult was that this section of the trail crossed over 5 or 6 creeks. And every time you had to go down a lengthy series of ladders and then up again at the other side.

There were only 2 good things I recall about this day: It was "only 9km long" and Barbara at some point of time during the last third of the way offered to take the outer small backpack from my big backpack and moved it into hers (her backpack had at that time already emptied a bit because she carried a good portion of our food). Relief!

On our way, up from Walbran into the forest

The way was moist and slippery

What a lovely board-walk: Slippery, tilted to the left, going first downwards and then upwards and its boards close to cracking under my weight

Lovely slippery roots everywhere

And more roots

And the same roots viewed backward

Very misty and wet, this time with good board-walks

And now with deteriorating board-walks

And over a longer wet and slippery tree trunk

Little me getting up there

Balancing my way forward

Barbara dancing over the same trunk

Same for Uta: simply moving along

Down into another valley

Margarets feet going over a bridge

View from the bridge out towards the ocean

Toby going down a ladder

And on the other side it went up again

The kids dancing over another tree trunk

Little me slowly inching forward: That was one place where I contemplated what would happen if I slipped down 1.5 meters

Another winding section in the forest. All shades of green around us.

A superb board-walk for a change

And now it is deteriorating. Not so much fun to walk here

And a cable car sprinkled in for a change

View from a bridge down a river bed. It looked interesting

Me over the same bridge

A break when we were back up from the valley again via the ladders

Mud and roots. I did not use the board-walks here

Another section in the same area. Plenty of roots

Hansi has surplus energy to burn ...

The way deteriorated a bit here

Hansi ended up in the mud here.

More muddy and rooty areas

And for the fun of it another root and mud picture

And a lovely long and wet tree trunk for a change

 

Finally we arrived a Camper Creek campground after a lengthy way down partially via ladders

Dinner at Camper Creek campground with one of our tents in the foreground. We used the tarp a second time on the trip and this time it provided full value: We had a semi-dry place!

Dinner at Camper Creek campground. The campground is relatively small and all tents and people are crowded into a narrow space. We weren't the only ones with tarps. But ours was probably the largest.

Rain is in the air.! Feeling cold at dinner. My fleece was wet and no longer useful. But life underneath the tarp was manageable. The long johns helped as well.

Hmmh. Just reading above again 8 hours later. For sure I had plenty to complain about. But in the grand scheme of things this was the only day with some cold, rain and lots of moisture in the air. It could have been like that the whole trip. I have no illusions about that. And we did manage and arrive in reasonable shape at Camper Creek despite all the slippery stuff and the moisture. Also to be truthful the forest area was again very diverse and interesting in itself. However to appreciate it one had to stop and stand still in most places. It simply wasn't possible to walk along with the eyes appreciating the forest.

Camper Creek campground is just a campground. There is nothing special about it. Lots of people coming from the south and north use it. All parties are perched closely together at the edge of a forest and a beach in a very narrow valley.

We had some reason to be optimistic. All people coming from the south with 2 day old weather forecasts told us that the weather was supposed to be better for the next 3 days. Hurray! Also it was clear that even if things continued to be not so good weather-wise that it was maximum one additional night on the trail.

A lot of discussions on that evening chewed around the point if we should go around Owen Point or take the trail through the forest. Me myself, I was done with the forest. I definitely wanted to go along as many beaches as possible and that meant Owen Point. But it was also clear that we could only do that if it wasn't rainy or moist. There were simply too many trip reports about people breaking legs and ankles in the Owen Point area. And that we would do things together. We briefly discussed a split but it simply wasn't an option. The Edmonton group told us they would take the forest path, Owen Point was not for them. The Langley group also told they were leaning towards taking the forest path. Other groups on Camper Creek were clearly committed going around Owen Point. The second debate was centered around the topic, if Owen Point, when would we actually go around it. The map showed the need for less than 6ft tide. That meant we either had to be through Owen Point by 11am the very latest with a rising tide or try it at around 5 or 6pm in the afternoon with a falling tide. We also had no good idea how we would do after Owen Point towards Thrasher Cove in a rising tide which had to be less than 8ft: Going around 11am was a bit of race against time afterwards to Thrasher Cove. 11am was also tricky because with all the wetness it was unlikely that we would get up, have breakfast and pack everything up in time. In the past days we managed rarely to get going well before 9am and mostly left the campgrounds around 10'ish under much better weather conditions. So I ended up talking in plenty of detail to our camp neighbors who arrived this day from the south and had gone around Owen Point. I was interested to understand what Owen Point actually looked like and if there was an opportunity to get relatively close to the point, have a break there and sit out the high tide. Initially my inquiries received a thumbs down but when I asked more detailed questions about how the area looked like it appeared to be not impossible: None of the folks rounding Owen Point from Thrasher Cove had given much thought about the area. For them the idea of a break near Owen Point was absurd because they were in a race to get over all the surge channels and the tidal rock once they were round Owen Point towards Camper Creek. But once I asked if the landscape looked like the usual flat rock areas and so on and asked for a description how the rock ended and the forest started it became clear that there was a transition area without a jungle of tree trunks and stones that was probably large enough for a break spot and it also was high enough to sit out a high tide safely (at prior beaches you could always clearly see how far the tide went if you actually looked). So at least there was an option/possibility to sit out a high tide close to Owen Point. It was really a matter of how good the weather was! So things were decided for us. A number of groups (with mostly people in their twenties) headed out early in the morning to round Owen Point before 11am. We all met them again in Thrasher Cove in the evening. The night before we seemed to be the only ones entertaining a late afternoon crossing. More in the next blog.