The WCT Trail

I kicked off my 4 months of travel with a hike along the 75 km length of the West Coast Trail (WCT), located on beautiful Vancouver Island. This was my second trip along the trail, the first one being 7 years ago when I hiked it with my family. In comparison to that trip, our time on the WCT was a true vacation. We had wonderful weather and lots of time for relaxing.

We hiked the trail north to south (opposite of what I did the last time), getting the easy stuff done with heavy packs. The highlight of my first day was the huge sea lion colony we stopped to view. These massive male sea lions can be heard before they are seen and were quite entertaining.

Sea lions on the rocks

The following days were spent alternating between hiking on the lovely beaches and hiking in the forests on boardwalks or in the mud. Luckily for us, the sunshine kept the boardwalks almost usable and the mud to a minimum. During our first four days, we watched a pod of whales swim by one evening, basked in glorious sunshine and marveled at the giant trees.

Jenn on the shelf and a very nice looking section of boardwalk

We were pleasantly surprised to find that the trail conditions in the difficult last sections of the trail were no different than the previous days, and we had to spend only a portion of each day slogging through the forest. We were treated to beautiful beach views, interesting forest walks and a family of sea otters playing just offshore at one of the camps.

Beach view and me on the boardwalk

Overall it was an excellent hiking trip, worth the mud and the sometimes monotonous forested sections to see things not possible when hiking in the Rockies. We took several hundred photos, with my favorites being HERE and HERE.