Day Six Highlights

Our last evening on the trail was spent at Thrasher Cove. As you can see, we had become much more relaxed by this point.... Bryan is sitting reading a novel, and we haven't even set up the tent yet!
















After Owen Point, the rest of the day's hike was spent negotiating our way up, over and around massive boulders on the beach.... Two kilometres of boulders.... It was a blast.... (Is this where people break bones and are evacuated? They say out of 100 hikers, 99 will finish the West Coast Trail and one will be evacuated.)




Here, we could finally see what we had crossed over. As it turns out, we probably could've hopped off the shelf on the other side and hiked through, only getting wet up to our knees or so.


Island in the distance, taken from Owen Point.




When we reached Owen Point, there were still about two hours until the tides would be low enough to safely enter the cave. As we didn't know what to expect and didn't want to wait around, we opted to go up and over the point instead using ropes. This required bush-whacking through thick foliage. The was a bit of a trail, but we couldn't see to either side and didn't realize what the land-bridge we were crossing looked like until we reached the other side and could see it from behind.




Hiking on another planet?


Surge channels can present a challenge during beach hiking. These form naturally and are quite dangerous, as the power of the ocean is increased when the energy from waves enters these channels. We couldn't feel the bottom of this one with our poles. They can be crossed in numerous ways. Some are narrow enough to hop over, others may have a plank laying across, and others may be too wide and require heading to the trees.


Many different colours of fungi were spotted during our trek. This picture must've actually been taken the day before I think, when we were up in the trees.




On Day Six, we woke up to morning fog shining through the trees. This day, we had the choice of taking either the beach route or the forest route. This wasn't the first time we had this choice, but this time the choice was particularly difficult because of the obstacles the beach route presented. Although we were eager to try it, we knew that the tides weren't going to be great that day, and this stretch of the hike required lower tides than any other..... especially to get around Owen Point. The high tides could also make the two-kilometres of scrambling around and over boulders at the end of the day's trek more difficult, as there would be less options. Nonetheless, we wanted to have the best experience possible, and having already spent a day in the trees on Day Five, we decided to give the beach route a go. The first section was relatively easy, with sandstone shelf for the most part.