We set our alarms for 5:30am since we wanted to get on the first ferry out of Vancouver, but we were both up before that and hit the road in the dark. (sleep is hard when excitement is high)

Playing the ferry game was going to be one of the more challenging aspects of getting to the start of a trail. Nemo had been able to reserve us a spot on a noon ferry, but we were hoping to switch that to the 7:30am boat…. We had another one to catch after this one! We lucked out and parked our car at the end of the line at the terminal (an impressive feat of logistics and crowd management) . Coffee shops and bathrooms were all over the place for the hundreds of people waiting to cross. We killed about an hour outside my car, oooing and awing as the day lightened up enough to see the water and mountains around us.

We drove onto the first ferry (Horseshoe Bay to Langdale), parked, and proceeded to explore… A gift shop! Cafe! Sundeck! We were totally the tourists with the dinner plate eyes walking around in glee.

We got in line for breakfast and by the time we were sitting down with our eggs and bacon, the ferry was docking. Throwing the leftovers in a take-out box, we got back in the car and drive off the first boat. We then had to drive about an hour to our next ferry at Earl’s Bay.

We cruised in a long line of cars that were loaded up with bikes and boats and coolers…. August on the Sunshine Coast was high tourist season and we were in the middle of it. The day was cool and overcast, which was a great relief to everyone we had met so far. The summer had been hot, much hotter than usual, and fires were all around up here too. Climate change was changing things rapidly, even on the cool and watery coast of BC.

We saw a man hitching, so pulled over and offered him a ride to the next town. He was a first nation’s member and explained he was on the way to pick up his fish. The tribes have fishing rights off the coast, but the runs had been low or non-existent for the past few years. This year was different, and the salmon had come back. There were enough fish from the tribe’s catch this year to allocate each family 50 large fish…a true bounty that would fill their freezers and bellies for months to come.

After dropping off our new friend we continued on the windy road to the next ferry at Earl’s Landing. We were toward the end of the line and crossed our fingers that we’d make it on the boat and not have to wait another 2 hours for the next one. Lucky girls! We were one of the last ones to drive onto the ferry and high fived each other…. Almost there! For this ferry ride we sat at the front of the boat on the sun deck and watched the world go by as we floated to Saltery Bay.

We passed parts of the Sunshine Coast Trail that clung to the side of the steep coastal mountains, and now knew why there were 22,000’ of elevation gain…. It was rugged and achingly beautiful, and it was obvious that there wasn’t much flat ground on these mountains.

We finally drove into Powell River about 30 minutes later, and found Nemo’s friend Courtney’s place. Turns out Courtney lives a short walk from the trail! We figured we’d walk into her place on the evening of day 2, and could leave our resupply with her. So fantastic!

The rest of the day the two old friends caught up, we packed up our food, bought some last minute items, wolfed down an excellent fish dinner at her friend’s food truck, and walked the beach at nearby Tee sho som. Courtney worked as a volunteer firefighter in the community and also taught preschool there. We visited the firehouse and Nemo explored another career path.

We pitched our tent in her yard and before going to sleep had a bear walk through the yard. Hello nature!! We would need to be careful of bears on this trip, but it is prime berry season, so we hope the main tenants of this peninsula will be otherwise occupied and not interested in some dirty smelly she-hikers.

Tomorrow, the trail.

Nothing gobbled us up during the night, and I woke early to go inside and make coffee.

By 9am we were in Courtney’s car and heading toward Lund and the bakery. We’ve been hearing about the bakery and both of us try not to pass up pastries if we can help it.

We were meeting Erik, Courtney’s friend, who has a boat and had agreed to take us to the start of the trail at Sarah Point. Turns out the logistical challenges don’t just include timing the multiple ferries to get here, but you have to figure out how to get to the start of the trail. A jeep road goes out there, but it’s not well traveled and can be knarly. One option we considered was walking the road (one hiker we met did this). There are water taxis you can hire, and when Nemo inquired and a price of $150 was quoted, we decided to pass on that.

Erik owns a tour boat (and is also part owner in the food cart and fishing boat we visited last night) he is part of the Tla’amin nation and serves on the volunteer fire department with Courtney. The boat ride is short, so we were grateful for the help…and we could save our $$ for things like pizza and pastries. We bought Erik a few goodies from the bakery and then hopped on the boat and we were on the way!

Starting a trail by water is pretty darn cool, but it gets cooler. Erik is a Cultural Resource Manager for the area and has done extensive archeological surveys of the islands we were passing. He showed us a petroglyph of a porpoise which historically indicated good hunting grounds, and pointed out spots where they found burial spots from thousands of years ago.

30 minutes later we were at Sarah Point and Erik explained with the low tide we would have to walk to the front of the boat, climb on the other side of the rail, and jump onto the rocks. What?? Come again??? Jump off the boat?? Hell yes! Again, coolest start to a trail ever!!!! We carefully held onto the side of the boat and had to make it onto some wet rocks covered with sharp razor clams… No blood was lost and we didn’t fall into the water. Success!!

We watched Courtney and Erik motor away and we climbed up the rocks looking for the trail. He brought us right to it, and we found a sign that marked the start of our 110 mile trail.

We watched Courtney and Erik motor away and we climbed up the rocks looking for the trail. He brought us right to it, and we found a sign that marked the start of our 110 mile trail.

Bring it on!!

After photos and shots of tequila (we don’t mess around), we started walking.

The trail went up, and down. The grades were short and steep and was primarily tree bound. The terrain was lush and covered in mosses and ferns. It reminded me of hiking in the Oregon coastal range.

We hiked and took breaks. The best break came at Wednesday Lake where we stripped down and jumped into a cool and refreshing lake. It was perfect. The air was much more humid than I usually experience, and had been sweating up a storm. The water felt devine.

We went on a few more miles and decided to call it a day at the Manzanita Hut with vast views over to Vancouver Island all the islands and water in between. So beautiful.

There was a hiker here who had started a few days before us. Riar, had walked the jeep road to the start, and we talked around the picnic tables. This was his first solo trip and first time sleeping out alone, so seems stoked to have others around. Interesting guy, from Sesquatchawan, was from India and served in the Indian Army, but had been living in Canada for four years and was heading to engineering school in the fall.

The horizon looks hazy and may be a little smoky, but the sky above us looks clearer, maybe clear enough to see some of the percid meteor shower tonight! But my eyes feel so heavy…

We set our alarms for 5:30am since we wanted to get on the first ferry out of Vancouver, but we were both up before that and hit the road in the dark. (sleep is hard when excitement is high)

Playing the ferry game was going to be one of the more challenging aspects of getting to the start of a trail. Nemo had been able to reserve us a spot on a noon ferry, but we were hoping to switch that to the 7:30am boat…. We had another one to catch after this one! We lucked out and parked our car at the end of the line at the terminal (an impressive feat of logistics and crowd management) . Coffee shops and bathrooms were all over the place for the hundreds of people waiting to cross. We killed about an hour outside my car, oooing and awing as the day lightened up enough to see the water and mountains around us.

We drove onto the first ferry (Horseshoe Bay to Langdale), parked, and proceeded to explore… A gift shop! Cafe! Sundeck! We were totally the tourists with the dinner plate eyes walking around in glee.

We got in line for breakfast and by the time we were sitting down with our eggs and bacon, the ferry was docking. Throwing the leftovers in a take-out box, we got back in the car and drive off the first boat. We then had to drive about an hour to our next ferry at Earl’s Bay.

We cruised in a long line of cars that were loaded up with bikes and boats and coolers…. August on the Sunshine Coast was high tourist season and we were in the middle of it. The day was cool and overcast, which was a great relief to everyone we had met so far. The summer had been hot, much hotter than usual, and fires were all around up here too. Climate change was changing things rapidly, even on the cool and watery coast of BC.

We saw a man hitching, so pulled over and offered him a ride to the next town. He was a first nation’s member and explained he was on the way to pick up his fish. The tribes have fishing rights off the coast, but the runs had been low or non-existent for the past few years. This year was different, and the salmon had come back. There were enough fish from the tribe’s catch this year to allocate each family 50 large fish…a true bounty that would fill their freezers and bellies for months to come.

After dropping off our new friend we continued on the windy road to the next ferry at Earl’s Landing. We were toward the end of the line and crossed our fingers that we’d make it on the boat and not have to wait another 2 hours for the next one. Lucky girls! We were one of the last ones to drive onto the ferry and high fived each other…. Almost there! For this ferry ride we sat at the front of the boat on the sun deck and watched the world go by as we floated to Saltery Bay.

We passed parts of the Sunshine Coast Trail that clung to the side of the steep coastal mountains, and now knew why there were 22,000’ of elevation gain…. It was rugged and achingly beautiful, and it was obvious that there wasn’t much flat ground on these mountains.

We finally drove into Powell River about 30 minutes later, and found Nemo’s friend Courtney’s place. Turns out Courtney lives a short walk from the trail! We figured we’d walk into her place on the evening of day 2, and could leave our resupply with her. So fantastic!

The rest of the day the two old friends caught up, we packed up our food, bought some last minute items, wolfed down an excellent fish dinner at her friend’s food truck, and walked the beach at nearby Tee sho som. Courtney worked as a volunteer firefighter in the community and also taught preschool there. We visited the firehouse and Nemo explored another career path.

We pitched our tent in her yard and before going to sleep had a bear walk through the yard. Hello nature!! We would need to be careful of bears on this trip, but it is prime berry season, so we hope the main tenants of this peninsula will be otherwise occupied and not interested in some dirty smelly she-hikers.

Tomorrow, the trail.

I was up at 5am for some last minute packing. Nemo was flying into the Portland Airport at 10am…a 3+ hour drive from home in Bend. We had been sending an increasing number of messages to the effect: “almost back together again!!!!”

Nemo and I met while hiking the PCT 12 years ago, and we got along so fabulously that we hiked well over half of that trail together, and have continued to hike every few years: the Northville Placid Trail, a few hundred miles of the Arizona Trail, and many trips to her local mountains in NY’s Adirondacks. We had been planning a hike together for over a year…and the day was here!!

Originally we had talked about going back to the Wind River Range which had featured prominently in both of our CDT thru-hikes (Nemo is a triple crown hiker too), but then she came up with the idea to hike the Sunshine Coast Trail. It just so happened that her high-school friend lived in Powell River, a stop along the trail, in a very hard to reach spot on the watery and rugged British Columbia coast. So we looked into it more: 180 kilometers or 110 miles, several ferry rides and/or water taxi rides to the start, Canada’s longest hut to hut trail, and 22,000’ of elevation gain. What!?!?? It sounded AWESOME.

I ordered a guidebook and soon put together one of the most useful documents of any long trail: a data book. There was one of sorts in the back of the guidebook, but it was all in kilometers and I wanted miles for my feeble American brain.

Nemo worked on logistics, figuring out the ferries and things. It turned out we would be passing through Vancouver BC and right by the place of another friend of ours from the PCT: Peppie. Peppie had married another thru-hiker from 2006, Ben, and they now had 2 children. They had just moved to Vancouver from Seattle and were currently at her folk’s house in North Vancouver.

On my way over Mt Hood to Portland this morning I saw a woman hitching at Frog Lake where the PCT crosses the highway. I pulled over and offered her a ride to Government Camp, a resupply stop 15 miles down the road. “Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego” (or Carmen for short… that’s one of the longer trail names I’ve heard of) was thru-hiking and in fact had tried to hike the Sunshine Coast Trail in the past! She was from Ontario, Canada and had to get off when she stepped on a hornets nest and was badly stung. I shivered when she told me… I was very allergic to wasps. Regardless I thought it was a good sign as most people I had been talking to about the trail had never heard of it.

I made it to the Portland Airport just as her flight was arriving, and we jumped in the car for a LONG day of driving. I5 through Seattle was stop and go traffic even though it was the middle of the day. The drive took longer than we expected, and we made it through the border crossing about 5pm. The border agent asked us how we knew each other, and I thought: “do you want the long version or the short version?” We gave him just the bare minimum and passed through with flying colors. We got to Peppie’s folks place just as dinner was ready and proceeded to spend the evening drinking good wine and catching up under the Vancouver skyline (it was an amazing house with an incredible view).

Sleep was sweet.