Author Note: This trip was taken in 2021, but updated in 2023 with updated details.
I’m not really sure where I get these crazy ideas, but a friend and I booked the West Coast Trail. It is this multi day thru hike in the west coast of Vancouver Island, which is accessible via ferry. Unfortunately in 2020 the hike was canceled, but a friend and I fortunately got in the lotto and booked one of the most coveted start times, July 2nd. July typically is better to go because you want as little precipitation as possible.
I have done a lot of hiking, and cool trips, but never thru-hiking. What this means is you start from one point and end out and another point. You carry everything on your back including your food, tent, and supplies.
To prepare for the trail, there pretty much were two resources to read. This book Blister’s and Bliss and the super valuable Facebook group.
From reading the group, everybody recommended to either buy dehydrated food or make it yourself. The reason being is you don’t want to carry real food for the possibility of spoilage and additional weight.
I bought the book from the backpacking chef, and decided to start experimenting. First thing I bought was a dehydrator.
There is a fan on top of the dehydrator and you set the temperature and time. It runs typically for a long time, and takes about 8-20 hours to dehydrate certain foods. What you do is fully cook whatever you are going to eat, let it cool a bit, then dehydrate it from 120-135 degrees for multiple hours.
After much experimenting I successfully dehydrated:
+ rice
+ beans
+ lentils
+ tofu (you have to freeze it first)
+ kale
+ ratatouille
+ thai curry paste
+ quinoa
I didn’t really like dehydrating meat such as chicken breast because it kind of tasted weird at end of the day.
For the food I would pack one meal in a ziplock bag.
At the end I made 7 meals consisting of
+ japanese curry – tofu, kale, beans, ratatouille mix, textured vegetable protein
+ thai curry – instant rice noodles, thai curry paste, tofu, beans
+ lentils – green lentils, quinoa, salsa macha
For breakfast I packed oatmeal, for lunch tortillas, and PB&J, some parmesan crackers – bars. Total weight – about 9-10 pounds.
Preparation #2: Packing
For the west coast trail, you want to only have a backpack which is about 20-30% of your body weight. The lighter the better. That meant for me about 30-40 pounds.
What a lot of people do for thru-hiking is weigh every item and put it in a website called lighter pack. It basically is a fancy excel spreadsheet online.
https://lighterpack.com/r/sokgof
During the pandemic, all sports gear in Vancouver was in short supply. I spent uhh, a lot of pennies upgrading all of my gear. I bought an ultralight 1.2 lb tent in the states, bought a new jacket, a new sleeping pad, and a gravity filter. I couldn’t find the tent in Canada, so I bought it from REI in the states, and then asked my parents to ship it up.
Visualizing my gear one last time I put everything in my bag for a final weigh in and test
Final weigh in was about 34 lbs. If I count the number of hours I spent dehydrating and packing and thinking about the trip, I for sure spent at least 40 hours planning.
One app which was incredible useful was Avenza Maps. With this you are able to see where you are relative to the trail that Parks Canada provides as a PDF. However be aware that the map is not 100% updated to the latest routes so use Avenza Maps only as a reference and cross-check the physical map given.
Trail Report Day 1: 75km —> 70km – 3.1 miles
AKA – The day I despise ginormous large ladders
For the thru-hike there were two options, south to north or north to south. We opted to go south to north as it starts off super difficult, then slowly gets easier. Logistically, we spent a night in Victoria, and then got dropped off the trailhead in Port Renfrew. After a quick orientation we took a ferry across and this was the first thing we saw:
If there was anything to wake you up, it is a ladder two stories high. At this point I turned off my brain and went up really slowly.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but this trail was actually quite dangerous, because if you fall or slip, consequences could be quite fatal. In hiking, there are some interesting terms such as calling a trail ‘technical’.
When hikers call something technical it refers to the terrain being more difficult where you don’t simply walk on a dirt path. When you walk, on more technical terrain it may refer to scrambling on rocks, uneven trail, roots, etc.
For this portion of the trail it wasn’t too technical, but rather high in elevation. The hiking in this section took about 4.5 hours to get to the campsite.
In this hike, every campsite is by a beach because there are glacial melt from rivers which feed into oceans. This is important because you need to filter water at each site when you are done. Carrying gallons of water for 7 days would be impossible!
At the campsite there were a mix of people finishing the trail and starting the trail. It is pretty typical in any really big hike to inquire about trail conditions. We heard that many people bailed out at the hike half way because of the heat conditions. I’m sure you heard about the ‘heat dome’ in the Pacific Northwest, and temperatures were in Portland/Seattle/Vancouver from 100f and higher! Hiking in 100 degree weather would be brutal.
After we ate dinner, one of the ladies we were talking to came back to me and asked if I was a doctor. She asked if I had hydrogen peroxide and said I looked familiar and asked if I worked at the BC Women’s Hospital.
—— Aside
For some odd reason, people pretty often have asked me pretty weird questions about my occupation. One time I was in Dallas Lovefield Airport flying on Southwest airlines waiting for my gate. Somebody asked me if I was a pilot.
I was kind of just puzzled like, what makes me look like a pilot? Just kind of weird what people assume of you.
Another time I was yet again at the airport (this was pre-covid life where I used to travel twice a month), where someone asked if I was an athlete competing in the Olympics. As flattered as I was, that was again a pretty weird assumption to make. I distinctly recall wearing sweat pants and having a Bose headset on me.
—— End Aside
Knowing I didn’t want to cramp up doing yoga stretches on the beach was near impossible, so I did it on the pl
