I had planned to do a quick ski tour up Mount Becher but my new skins weren’t in yet at the store.

So I had some time, my hiking boots and an itch to get outside.I eventually settled on the Arrowsmith CPR Trail up Mount Cokely for a good lung buster of a hike and to see where the snowline was at.

McBey Creek | Arrowsmith CPR Trail Trip Report

It’s a bit confusing that it’s called the Arrowsmith CPR Regional Trail when it goes up Mount Cokely but it’s close enough I guess? If you want a massive day hike, go to the top of Arrowsmith using the CPR Trail. Start early!

Della and the snow

The snow starts below 400m with plenty in the streams for great waterfalls to take photos of. Della was having a great time in the snow, still having the traction of the dirt. A light dusting on the hills. It snowed for about 45 minutes while we were hiking through the trees. Near 700 metres where we turned around there was a good 30 cms in many places.

Snow on the hills

Getting deeper

Shoulda brought the snowshoes

Tree art

Sun coming out

The sun coming out as we headed back down to the car. 

Trail details

The little details along the trail that can be so interesting if you stop and have a look. 

Even though I had originally planned to get out for a short ski tour, I still managed to get outside. There are so many obstacles getting in the way of a good day outside these days but if we put our minds to it, there’s always new places to explore, and a way to get out there.

For more stories about trips, see the Trip Reports page.

Slippery snow

The post Arrowsmith CPR Trail Trip Report Dec 20, 2015 first appeared on Pack & Trail.

For now, here’s Christie Falls from September 2013.

Directions to Christie Falls.

Christie Falls is a great little trail to get outside and see a beautiful set of falls on a mostly sunny day. The forecast called for rain and it threatened all day, even going so far as sending a couple drops our way. We never saw more than a few. The warm sun kept them at bay while we explored the falls.

The first gate was open when we went on a Saturday. There weren’t any posted hours aside from the sign on the gate about it being closed during extreme fire risk.

The smaller second gate on the right.  

For a deactivated logging road is was actually pretty nice. I’m assuming it gets maintained because of the Trans Canada trail and the fish hatchery at the end of the road. 

Follow the fish hatchery signs. 

There’s not much signage on the road for the Trans Canada Trail before the bridge. This section connects to the Haslam Creek Suspension Bridge trail.

The fish hatchery. 

Across from the fish hatchery a big clearing leads up to the single track trail leading to the falls. 

Small trails up into the single track on the side or end of the clear area.

It’s not flat any more. The single track leads up into the woods beside the stream. 

The trail sticks close to the stream, you can see out over the stream at a few points. 

You can actually see the stream at a few points. 

Not quite jungle but nice single track to walk through. 

A slippery log bridge. The stream wasn’t flowing through this section so we just walked through the stream bed. The stream must split above Christie Falls because this section was dry but Christie was flowing. 

Christie Falls.  

There was a nice pool below the falls. Not enough to swim in but plenty for a nice picture.

Logs and well placed rock in front of the falls made great stadium seating. **Get directions to Christie Falls.   

The post Wandering to Christie Falls first appeared on Pack & Trail.

It’s broken up by year so that you can start with the most recent trip reports. They will probably be the closest to what you will experience with the trail. Trip reports from 30 years ago probably won’t be as accurate as you need them to be.

If you find a trip report that isn’t on here or want to write a new one, please let us know!

West Coast Trail Trip Reports

2014

Marc Bourdon’s Solo 5-day Trip – Marc Bourdon’s Blog – May 2014

Brad McCartney’s 5-day Trip – BikeHikeSafari – August 2014

2013

Amanda Johnson’s 5-day Trip – UBC Varcity Outdoor Club – September 2013

Rick McCharles 6-day Trip – BestHike – July 2013

2012

Barb’s Trip – August 2012

Chris’s 5-day Trip – Flying Upside Up – July 2012

Wolfgang Greystoke’s 7-day Trip – Trailspace – May 2012

2008

Hank Leukart’s 8-day Trip – Without Baggage – July 2008

2007

Brett’s 5-day Trip – Brett on Stuff – September 2007

Janets 7-day Trip – Western Wilson – September 2007

2006

GuidodJones Trip – Flickr – May 2006

2005

Jason’s Trip – Flickr – August 2005

Information about the West Coast Trail

The West Coast Trail on BestHike.com

The West Coast Trail on Victoria Hiatus

Tours

Sea to Sky Expeditions West Coast Trail

The post West Coast Trail Trip Report Roundup first appeared on Pack & Trail.

I try to keep trip reports around for the Juan de Fuca Trail, it being one of my favourite hikes, so I can keep up to date on what’s happening on the trail. These are the latest ones I’ve found. 

Trip Reports

2018

Crenellated’s 3-day Trip Report – Reddit – May 2018

Treord8’s 3-day Trip Report – ClubTread – May 2018

Michal’s 4-day Trip Report – Hiking is Good – June 2018

Brooke Willson’s 3-day Trip Report – Fresh Air and Freedom – August 30, 2018

2017

Angelica Lauzon’s 3-day Winter Trip Report – Island Mountain Ramblers – February, 2017

Ben Massey’s 4-day Trip Report – BenMassey.ca – July 7, 2017

2016

Backpacks and Bike Racks 3-day Trip Report – Backpacks and Bike Racks – March 2016

Luke’s Trip Report Video – Life of Luke on YouTube – July 2016

2015

Justin’s Trip Report – Eating Snow Around the World – July 2015

2014

Clueless Hiker – CluelessHiker.blogspot.ca – September 2014

2013

Murray Coates 5-day Trip Report – Travelblog.org – April 2013

2012

Jenny Strong’s 4-day Trip Report – Jenny Strong’s Blog – August 2012

2011

Matt and Caroline’s 4-day Trip Report on Matt and Carolines’ Blogspot – July 2011

Henry Armitage’s 3-day Trip Report – hpka.net – June 2011

2009

Lonny Barr’s 3-day Trip Report on SurfingVancouverIsland.com – May 2009

Dan Durston’s Trip Report on the BackpackingLight.com Forums – October 29-23rd 2009

2007

Mark Feenstra’s 4-day Trip Report on MarkFeenstra.com from August 2007

Running Trip Reports

Some of the crazy ones that run the trail actually write trip reports too (oh right…. I ran it in 2010)

Ross Collicutt’s 1-day Run Trip Report (my own) on PackandTrail.com – August 2010

Jeff Hunt’s 1-day Run Trip Report on TrailAdventurer.Blogspot.ca – August 2008 

Other Articles

Hiking the Juan de Fuca Trail on TravelingCanucks.com

Add your report

If you know of other good trip reports or articles about the Juan de Fuca let me know! I’ll add them to the list.

The post Trip Reports: Great stories from the Juan de Fuca Trail first appeared on Pack & Trail.

**

Mud.

Lots of it.

I expected to see a lot of mud on the West Coast Trail but I don’t think anything really prepares you for how much there really is.The photo above is a mud pit not 50 metres in from the start of the trail. We had officially begun the trail and we had officially begun the mud.

Some of the trail is nice and dry. The south end is a lot of mud. If you take beach routes, you’ll be spared the mud. Beach routes have their own … challenges. More on that in another post.

Even knee deep mud is really just what you make of it. It doesn’t have to be that bad. A couple of girls we met on the trail were doing the entire trail in Chaco sandals. Pretty crazy in my opinion!

No matter how bad it can seem, they still managed to get through all the mud fine.       

The post The First Mud Pit of the West Coast Trail first appeared on Pack & Trail.

The post Photo: Bridge 102 on the West Coast Trail first appeared on Pack & Trail.

Here’s another trip report from Roxy from Adder Mountain in May.

**

Adder Mountain May 6 2012

After heading up 5040 Peak the weekend before, our eyes were now set on Adder Mountain which was just down the valley from 5040.  The weather looked great for Sunday so we hoped to get some views of the surrounding peaks which we never got to see the weekend before.  We had spent the week looking up route information, trying to find out if anyone ever accessed the summit from Louise Goetting Lake which seemed like an obvious route.  It seemed most people went up the Northwest Ridge, accessed from Sutton Pass on HWY 4, but the route did not look too appealing.  The other option was to come in from the Nahmint valley and gain the East Ridge, but we knew that the road would be well snowed in at this time of year.  So we made up an approximate Google Earth track which accessed Louise Goetting Lake from Spur MC30 off the Marion Creek Main, crossed the lake and went up onto the East Ridge to the summit.

Similarly to last weekend, we departed Victoria on Saturday night, driving up Spur MC30 only to find a gate at about 300 m elevation.  Even though the elevation was similar to where we were bunked last weekend, the snow line looked to be nowhere near in sight.  We set up our car camp for the night after admiring the nearby micro-hydro operation that was the reason for the gate’s existence.

The next morning we started hiking around 6:15 am, admiring the morning alpenglow on Pogo Mountain and Triple Peak.

It turns out that the road we saw on Google Earth actually goes up much higher than the 12 year old satellite imagery.  We put skis on at about 600 m and the road ends at about 650 m, at a micro-hydro station and spectacular waterfall.  From there flagging for Jack’s Peaks starts and we followed it up to the lake, probably less than an hour from where the road ended.  We had to take our skis off when the ground steepened, but it would probably be skinnable in softer conditions as we kept our skis on for the way out.  Once at the lake, the flagging continues to Jack’s Peaks but we crossed the frozen lake aiming for the bluffy section on the northeast end of the lake.  It looked steep, but we were able to skin up a drainage just to the west of the steep slopes which brought us to beautiful open forested slopes leading to the east ridge proper (Mt. Klitsa on the left, Nahmint Mountain on the right).

There was one slope blocking the east ridge which looked to be a high avalanche hazard, so we carefully ascended it one at a time.  On our way down this slope later we both set off loose wet avalanches, nothing major but still a little scary.

Just below the summit, we ditched our skis and bootpacked around the south to avoid the corniced and steep snow slope leading to the summit.  I had a minor sketch moment traversing the top of the cliff in my clunky ski boots and crampons combination, but we were soon past any difficulties and were on the summit!  Time to head back to some Cheetos and rum back at the truck =)  A “huh” moment when skiing back onto Louise Goetting Lake from the steep drainage was had when I landed on the rapidly melting lake, and had my skis sink in to water. I don’t think we would have been able to get to the shore from that spot had we crossed late in the day!

Turns down were somewhat interesting since the snow was so slushy, and not yet consolidated, resulting in us setting off mini-avalanches whenever we cut a turn in.  We were more just eager to get off the unstable slopes and we saw a couple of large avalanches thunder down Adder’s south face when we were returning across the lake.  I kept thinking of something a colleague had once told me: “Sometimes avalanches onto frozen lakes are large enough to initiate lake ice break-up”.  Those Cheetos and rum will be delicious!

Our GPS track up and down Adder Mountain:

** Roxy Ahmed is a graduate student at UVic who probably spends more time in the mountains than she should. On any given weekend you can find Roxy climbing or skiing the mountains of Vancouver Island and beyond.

The post Roxy’s Adder Mountain Ski Tour Trip Report first appeared on Pack & Trail.

Here’s Roxy with a trip report from 5040 in April.**

5040 Peak April 29 2012

Chris and I were aching to do a ski tour and get into the alpine so we settled on 5040 Peak in the HWY 4 area for the weekend’s adventure. We drove up from Victoria on Saturday night, hoping to drive up the Marion Creek Main until we hit snow line and set up camp for the night. There are two main approaches to 5040’s summit; the Northwest Ridge which starts at about km 6 at the hydrometric station on the Marion Creek Main, and the much nicer looking Cobalt Lake route which starts at about 9.5 km and is the route we wanted to go up. Unfortunately, we hit snow at about 3.5 km and so we had to set up camp there for the night (the snow line was super low on the western side of the pass, down to about 200m!). So this meant that doing the Cobalt Lake route would add an extra 6 kms each way and over 300 m of extra elevation gain. Oh well, at least we had skis so the way out wouldn’t be so bad!

We started skinning up the road before 7 am to help contend with the extra approach. The sun peaked out for a few brief moments but then decided to keep us in a fog for the rest of the day. After a couple of hours, we reached the end of the road and the welcome sight of this huge avalanche runout coming out of the gulley parallel to the one we were about to head up. Good thing we had avalanche gear?

It was a bit tricky finding the flagging for the Cobalt Lake route but we weren’t too concerned since it was pretty much just head up the drainage staying on the south side of the creek.  Chris did locate the flagging however, and soon we were hiking up slash and then steep forest for about an hour before we hit beautiful open old growth forest and we were able to put our skis on.  We didn’t need ice axes or crampons to boot up the steep bits, but if it froze the previous night and the snow was hard I would defnintely recommend having that gear.

Once we got to Cobalt Lake, we stopped for a quick lunch and we were lucky enough to have the fog lift for just long enough to let us see our objective and pick out a route.  It seems that most parties (especially in the summer) head around or across the lake east to a bench which gives easy access to the southern part of the summit ridge.  However there was lots of avalanche activity in the basin and some suspicious cornices so we decided to head north into the trees, staying far left of the cliff band.  This small ridge popped us onto 5040’s west face directly below the summit.

From there Chris decided to cut large switchbacks and skin up to the summit, but it was a little steep for my ready-for-retirement skins so I bootpacked the final 50 m or so to the top.  This photo of me coming up onto the summit gives a good idea of what the conditions were like – no views that day.  Once at the cairn that was apparently the top, we put on jackets, had a quick snack and turned to descend.  Since we had no idea what the runout was like, Chris decided to walk his skis down to where I left mine since he didn’t want to risk a bail on the steep part.  It was very weird and disorienting skiing through the whiteout in terrain you didn’t know!  We stuck close together and didn’t open up until we got back to the relative safety of the trees.  From there on it was fanatastic turns down!  I would definitely go back, but maybe later in the season when the logging road approach wouldn’t be so long 😛

Our approximate route in red, and logging road hike to 5040 Peak:

** Roxy Ahmed is a graduate student at UVic who probably spends more time in the mountains than she should. On any given weekend you can find Roxy climbing or skiing the mountains of Vancouver Island and beyond.

The post Roxy’s 5040 Ski Tour Trip Report first appeared on Pack & Trail.

Here’s Roxy with a trip report from ski touring Mount Brenton, near Chemainus.

**

Mt. Brenton April 14 2012

Resort-ski season had come to an end on Vancouver Island so Chris and I decided to skin up Mt. Brenton in Chemainus to enjoy some sunny ski touring. We had made a half-attempt at trying to get up Mt. Brenton last spring, but as the gates close early (4:30 pm) and we didn’t start until almost 2 pm we only had time to make it to Hollyoak Lake before we had to turn back.

This time we had a better eye on the time. Actually, we left Victoria that morning with hopes of getting up Green Mountain for some turns, but we were turned back by a locked gate just past the second lake so luckily we had a backup plan.

After chatting with the friendly gate-keeper on the Macmillan Bloedel FSR we turned up the Mt. Brenton FSR (just past the Chemainus River provincial park) with fingers crossed on how high we could drive up. Even though we were much earlier in the season we drove to pretty much the exact same spot we drove to on last year’s attempt. I think it was about 700m in elevation.

Mount Brenton Service Road

From there we skinned up the gentle logging roads, following day old bear tracks for part of the way up.  At some point you reach a junction where you can head northeast or northwest.  The northwest road leads to Hollyoak Lake, which was still frozen at this time with evidence of snowmobilers recently driving over the ice.

From there we continued to follow roads to the summit.  Heading west past the lake, you come to a T where you head south for a short bit and then take a spur heading north to the summit.  The roads go right up to a Provincial Emergency Communications tower and it’s just a short walk from there up to the top!  The “turns” down mostly consist of just letting gravity take you down a gentle grade but at least it’s quicker than walking, getting us out with enough daylight left to do some rockclimbing at the Nanaimo Sunny Side bluffs before heading back to Victoria.

 Roxy Ahmed is a graduate student at UVic who probably spends more time in the mountains than she should. On any given weekend you can find Roxy and her partner Chris Jensen climbing or skiing the mountains of Vancouver Island and beyond.

The post Roxy’s Mount Brenton Ski Tour Trip Report first appeared on Pack & Trail.

Our first day we headed upstream from the campsite to do some exploring. There are massive trees everywhere. Particularly were the Three Sisters just feet from each other.

There were some other groups camping along the river. Always a good idea to keep your food in the trees with hungry bears around. Make sure they’re high enough though. I think I could reach one of the bags we saw.

The Three Sisters were huge trees but many of the other trees were as big or bigger. Simon looks tiny standing next to one.

The trail wound its way up and over small ridges along the side of the rover. The scenery was stunning the entire way.

For some reason I’m attracted to the random human things I find in the woods. There was a sandal hanging in one of the trees. Not exactly appropriate hiking footwear. Having only one sandal would be even less appropriate.

The trail was well marked most of the way. We lost it after we crossed the river once. With some wandering and a keen eye we always found the markers. I felt like a scout roaming around ahead of the group trying to find our way.

With beautiful scenery it’s hard not to just sit and take it in. I caught Simon doing his best Survivorman impression.

The only sketchy part of the hike was a very slippery log that we had to use to cross the river.

Most of the hiking was nice open trail under the old-growth trees. Some of the area near the water was quite thick with salmon-berry bushes.

We made it to August Creek and were looking for the falls. These were the first ones we ran into. We dubbed them August Creek Falls, sat down beside them and had lunch.

There was tons of fungi along the trail. I was hungry when I took this photo. I thought it looked like a nice hamburger.

I can’t imagine a place more beautiful with all the different greens. It can be tough to take some of the photos because there is so much green but it was certainly a nice place to be.

The boardwalk was in very good shape. Some of it was wet and very slippery. I had to catch up to my friends when we started and moving quickly on boardwalk with stiff boots on which nearly ended badly in a few spots.

Our second day we headed downstream from the trail intersection to the Heaven Tree and another grove of huge trees.

We passed some beautiful swimming holes in the river. Too bad the water was absolutely freezing.

Another prime piece of junk in the woods. I’m not sure how you get back up the trail without a shoe on your foot.

Our weekend camping at Carmanah Walbran was another great time out in the wilderness.

My only tip here are that you need to pack light as the campsites are a long walk from the parking lot. We were under the impression it would be a car camping, drive-in type of camping and it was much more walking and carrying heavy gear than we had expected. Pack lightly and you’ll be happier.

There are bears in the area. We didn’t see any in the campsite but some campers that were leaving, came back in a hurry to let us know there was a bear heading down the road and then drove off again. Bring bear repellant and cache your food well.

To end the weekend we headed out to Nitinat Lake and stayed one night there. It was another beautiful place to stay, especially since we had the entire campsite to ourselves on the lake (aside from a very cute, furry visitor). More pictures from that location to come soon.

See you out there.

The post Carmanah Walbran Trip Photo Essay first appeared on Pack & Trail.