Cape Scott Ruck ‘n Roll (or The Trail That Ate My Boots)

“Is there sleep in my eyes?” Jen says, emerging from the tent to meet the day. Imagine if that construction worked for other occasions … some verb residue lingers on you from the thing you just did. I’ve got a little work on my hands. I’ve got a little play on my feet.

We are in Cape Scott Provincial Park – one of wildest precincts in all of British Columbia. At the very north end of Vancouver Island, the tip of the toenail. You get to the trailhead via a bone-rattling two-hour drive on a pit-filled logging road only an alignment mechanic could love. And then you leave your wheels behind for old-school locomotion.

We’ve decided to do the Cape Scott Trail – the inbound direction, at least – in one go, winding up near the lighthouse at Cape Scott, basically the sexton’s cabin in the Graveyard of the Pacific. It’s only around 23 km, but when you’re rucking a heavy pack, over sometimes boggy ground, that is a big day.

We are three: Jen, me, and Lila on their last little family adventure before they head off to college. Not long ago they were the wild-card element on these hikes – they were into it until they weren’t, and at some point somebody ended up carrying their pack. But now, turning 18, they are a thoroughbred; if anything was going to be the weak link, it was us.

Yesterday, in San Josef Bay, the southern terminus of our route, we got talking to a friendly young park ranger named Tristan, who shared a little of his own story: before pivoting to resource management, doing the people’s business in remote places like this, he was a Red Seal-certified chef.

“You went from The Bear to bears.”

“Something like that,” Tristan said.

“If there’s a souffle emergency out here, we know who to call,” Jen said quietly after we were out of earshot.

But Tristan gave us a great piece of advice. Most Cape Scott trekkers typically aim to get to one of two camping spots – Nels Bight or Nissan Bight – on their first day. “But if you have it in you I’d recommend pushing on to Guise Bay – you won’t regret it.” That sand neck, the closest place to the lighthouse you can overnight, has been described as “one of the most exquisite spots on Planet Earth.” That alone was reason to go for it. That and the fact that if we made it, we’d likely have it almost to ourselves.

And so we shoulder our giant packs and head out.

*

Cape Scott is known for its horrendous weather – it’s one of the wettest places in Canada (it’s not unusual for it to receive 26 metres of rainfall annually). So we’re carrying a heavy tent designed for winter camping. Apart from that, a lot of the weight we’re schlepping is food – the kind of food experienced hikers, with their freeze-dried everything, would be horrified by – oranges, apples, whole bags of carrots and sweet peppers.

“Do you know how to tell the difference between a male and a female bell pepper?” Lila says, spinning one upside-down. “The males have three lobes and the females have four or five.” (Turns out it’s not true. But this is what’s great about a trip like this: you can’t just whip out your phone and check. For the duration of the trip, cool-sounding things can be true. Out in the wild, myth takes on outsized authority.)

A number of hikers have those jingly bear bells attached to their packs. After awhile it’s not so much a Jolly Santa vibe as irritating overreach, a mismatch for the setting – like talk radio in church. “You’d think someone would make … gentler bear bells. Maybe they play Bach. That way, at the very least, you’re eaten by, you know … a better class of bear.”

One of the best things about the Cape Scott Trail is it feels like a living history lesson. Along the way are remnants that tell a story of pluck, perseverance and betrayal.

Around the turn of the century a bunch of Danes tried to establish a community here, invited to do so by the Canadian government. (This was after the British Royal Navy chased the Kwaikutl people off the land in the mid-1700s.) The trail itself is the path those settlers trod, including the original log “corduroy road” they laid down plus sections of boardwalk built more recently by BC Parks.

Without these improvements it would be an impassable morass. Which is what the nearby North Coast Trail, which joins up with the Cape Scott Trail, pretty much is. One group we meet, who’d come westward from Shushartie Bay, recounted slogging through waist-deep mud. “Very, very challenging,” they said. Another group described it as “not really a trail.”

The Danes tried like Vikings to make a go of it. The Canadian government had promised to build them a road so they could get their goods to market. But it reneged after realizing the Danes might pull this off and their dream of a Little Denmark in the middle of the Canadian wilderness. You wonder what went on at the meeting in the town hall.

“Should we hang in here or cut bait?”

“I say we hang in. We are Danes.”

“Lars, have you ever heard of the sunk-cost fallacy?”

In the end the rude weather and impossible logistics proved too much and the Danes bailed – leaving behind everything they could not carry on their backs.

There are telegraph wires strung through the forest between Eric Lake and Fisherman’s River, and we’ve been keeping an eye out for them. We don’t actually see any. But we do see something else: a black bear cub inching up a spruce tree. Uh oh. That means…

Lila, up front, literally spins 180 – a cartoon move – and starts talking, in an even clip: “Hi bear … we see you … whatcha thinking, bear?” This patter a reflex honed by years of Girl Guides. “Bear, you’ll notice we’re backing slowly away from you, and okay, you’re still coming, alrighty then.” Mama bear, cornered on both ends of the trail, eventually coaxes her cub down and together they angle out into the forest.

That hurdle cleared, we promptly face another: my boots are disintegrating.

Thich Nhat Hanh said “Walk as if you are kissing the Earth with your feet.” Sometimes it’s a sloppy kiss. The sole of one of my old Raichles has come almost completely unglued; it’s flapping like a gringo’s tongue in a Yucatan taqueria.

“Fine German engineering!” Then again, these dogs are more than forty years old. Things break down.

We meet a young couple on their way back out to the trailhead who offer us some duct tape. It’s wrapped around a pen, so that is what I offer in return: a pen. So commences a ritual of backcountry bartering: for duct tape, a pen; for a tensor bandage, five matches: for more duct tape, a bag of carrots.

*

At Nels Bight, the Parks Department has put up a sign with a little more poetry in it than you usually see from a government shop.

Welcome Weary Wanderers

You have hiked the settlers highway

and tasted the exhaustion

of a forgotten mode of transportation.

Remove your backpack and relish in your reward.

Stroll the sand beaches

with the scurrying Sandlings.

Taste the salt air.

Listen to the surf’s pounding song…

May you never forget the magic of Cape Scott.

I’m knackered. There’s a foot pedal in the nearby biffy; it drives the belt and rotates your deposit down into the compost pit below; I barely have the strength to depress it. Meanwhile, out of the corner of my eye, I spot Lila jogging toward the beach, where a couple dozen tents dot the foreshore. This is the incentive we need to continue on, and sew this big day up.

A kilometre later my second boot blows. We scavenge some rope and tie the sole back on, tramp-style.

What are shoes? This question becomes my distraction on this last stretch, inland, uphill, through second-growth forest. Just a slab of rubber or leather affixed to your foot. Reminds me of Pema Chodran’s “lousy world” teaching. The lousy world is full of things that can hurt you – the sharp stones underfoot can cut your feet and the mosquitos can bite them. So you might conclude: ‘I will pave the world with leather! Then I will be more comfortable.’ But there’s another way. Maybe just pave your feet in leather. Put on some shoes.

At last we descend through the pines and emerge into the protected crescent of our final destination.

Guise Bay is as majestic as advertised. Misty, secluded, with sand as soft as mica. The Nahwitti people used to drag their canoes across the dunes of the sand neck and out the other side, routing round Cape Scott itself, with its ferocious pounding waves and current running to nine knots. Nearby someone has built a fortress of driftwood just large enough to pitch a tent inside. Momentarily, we will tumble into sleep to the sound of the surf, on a beach we share with a lone patrolling wolf.

Our dreams stay just above the tideline.