A journal of Sheri and myself hiking the Cape Beale trail out to Keeha Beach, on the Long weekend July 30th to August 1st 2005 and attempting to make it to the Cape Beale Lighthouse.
July 30th, 2005
Sheri and I leave my place late, 11 AM - we are in no hurry to get to Bamfield. From Nanaimo we drive out to Bamfield via Port Alberni. We arrive at the parking lot around 2 PM and find that one group of hikers is already at Keeha Beach via the trail (a guy has run back up the 3.5 km trail to retrieve his wallet from his truck.) And 2 other hikers, who look very ill prepared are getting ready to set out. These hikers have older gear which is not bad in and of itself. It is the older gear combined with an apparent lack of outdoor expertise that is not the best. They ask us how we plan to obtain water, at the beach, and we mention that we have a water filter, and that we can boil water to purify it as well if required. They mention how they have nothing to boil water in! They are going for an overnight camping trip and they don’t even have anything to cook with!
We decided to hurry on out, it was strange given that we thought we were being lazy leaving to hike so late and yet, these hikers had just thrown their gear into their car, and not packed it before leaving. We walked down the road to the start of the trail to Keeha Beach and Cape Beale. The parking lot is about 500M away from the start of the trail as residential properties are along much of the road.
I grabbed a few pictures of Sheri posing beside the sign at the star of the trail, and then we were off. As you can see the short hike along the tidal flats is easy if it is not flooded, but the boardwalk in the forest (which we did not take on the way in) was just as simple. Once you cross the footbridge over a small creek (and coming off the tidal flats you can see a sign to Topaltos beach or Cape Beale) the trail really starts.
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At this point it was still fairly easy, with a few lightly muddy patches. Shortly afterwards we came upon a new logging road. This road cut wide across the trail. In fact, you could walk down the logging road from the parking lot and take the trail from there if you wanted. It would be a little faster than taking the traditional route.
Beyond the logging road the trail dipped down, and as you can see the mud began. Sheri said that the mud here was worse than the Cape Scott Trail. This only makes sense when you are hiking close to a lake and the surrounding lowlands. I have seen reviews recommending rubber boots. You can see my boots with gaiters got incredibly muddy, and this was during the dry season.
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After some light hiking (by our standards) through mud and around logs we arrived at the trail junction where the trail separates into Keeha Beach to the left of Sheri, and to Cape Beale to her right.
We took the left junction to Keeha Beach, planning to come back here and hike the Cape Beale trail on Sunday… (As it turned out that did not happen, and we ended up on a much more… interesting “trail”…
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We encountered a number of people coming back from the beach, almost everyone was wearing running shoes, and only Sheri and I had hikers and gaiters. You could wear running shoes if you did not mind the excessive mud, but roots on the trail and other hazards could risk twisting an ankle in running shoes - especially if you have a heavy pack! The trail opened up near the lake, although it was hard to get a good view. And again, the trail turned into a nice assortment of mud. Brief glimpses of the lake were possible, and we did see a ton of gulls flying about the lake making a horrible racket for some unknown reason. Sheri also caught a nice picture of a frog that she nearly squashed by accident.
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At last we came to the floating bridge across the creek. The water was nearly blood red from the cedar branches in the water. If you need water on the trail, and you have a filter, this is the place to get it. The water by the bridge is not of great quality, but it is far superior to what you will find by the time that the creek reaches the ocean.
The old forest started up again after the bridge, with a few large cedars and fallen trees. Then the “hill” that is written about in many of the descriptions appeared. It does not show up on the map, so that would either make it less than 29 meters in total height, or the map is inaccurate. I would venture to say that the map is not terribly accurate, but we found that out later. Cape Beale Map. It is not hard to climb this hill, and we were amused at all the ropes that came from flotsam and jetsam that were anchored along this route. If the trail had been extremely muddy (which is possible) they may have been handy. On this day they were just comical. I estimated that this “giant hill” was probably 40 meters at the very most. Reaching the summit, you can see the ocean and the thinner coastal trees below. Keeha Beach beckoned!
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Just before we reached the beach we passed the Bear Cache - which no one was using, except for garbage. And from the time there it looked like some idiots permanently left their garbage there. Also, many of the people camping along the beach neglected to use it as well. Sheri and I were pretty annoyed at this as this lack of bear awareness causes many problems for bears and the incredible park areas that we like to use. The trail exit was decorated with a ton of fishing floats - floats that we found along almost every little remote cove in the area when we later went on our epic “Cape Beale” hike… These floats are ubiquitous in the area.
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Popping out onto the beach, 3.5 km in we were confronted with an incredible view, and two guys hurrying out of the ocean naked, trying to walk back to their campsite nonchalantly with towels in hand. Not that this bothered us at all. It is to be expected in wilderness areas of this type, still, their embarrassed actions were amusing.
While looking for a good campsite, Sheri the computer technician realized that she could not stay away from her work, and she had to work on this Hewlett Packard that seemed to be having problems for some strange reason…
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Keeha Beach is littered with tons of wood, as well as flotsam and jetsam. You can burn wood as long as it is below the high tide line, and the wood is not thicker than your arm.
We ran around the beach a bit, then decided to get ready for camp and cooked our dinner. It was a simple meal that Sheri had prepared before hand, instant potatoes, cheese powder, spices and a few other things. It sounds bad, but it was actually very tasty. The main advantage of this type of meal is that you only need to boil water, and then add it to your Tupperware container. You end up with fewer dishes to do, and your main pot is still clean. You also save a ton of stove fuel. We will use this cooking technique on the West Coast Trail soon.
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With the tent set up (no fly, it was far too hot at this point) we lit a small fire and lazed around the beach. I fooled around with some beach garbage (that gas can was actually really old) and we sat by the fire as night fell. Other campfires much larger than ours started poking out of the darkness. I put the fly over our tent, and Sheri and I headed to bed.
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July 31st, 2005
The next morning is was a standard “Wet Coast” rain. The fire still had embers, so we moved it to a better location and setup our tarp.
I was pretty cranky until I had a can of “Beaver Buzz” energy drink. I brought 2 cans along for the caffeine that I am addicted to. That stuff tastes pretty good - best of any of the energy drinks I have tried, and it is very high in caffeine, which I like.
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The rain showed no sign of abating, so we sat under the tarp and collected the rain into our MSR water bag. It did not take long to fill the 10 liter bag.
We still boiled the water that came out of it because there were some worries of contamination of the water that we had got the day before. It turned out to be a good thing as with all the gulls around there were bird droppings on the tarp. Yet, even with this the water from the tarp was far cleaner than what could be had out of the foul creek. We opted to spend the day under the tarp and just relax. Eating Black Bean and Rice, I added broccoli cheese soup, and Sheri added chicken soup to hers. To make the basic dish, mix equal parts instant black bean soup flakes and instant rice. Add extra flavours you may like, lemon is good to start with. Then, add boiling water in a Tupperware container, cover, and let stand 5 min. Later into the night, our campfire was small, but the tarp and the wood we had laid out made a nice shelter, so, in fact it was actually warmer with a smaller fire because we could sit closer to it. The other campsites again had massive campfires. Towards the end of the night I remembered that I had some “campfire colors” to add to the campfire. The package was wet, and when I put it in my mouth for a second to use both my hands, some of the copper sulfate and other compounds leaked into my mouth. I used a whole liter of water to wash that out. The campfire colors lasted a long time, longer than I was willing to sit and watch them. Down at the beach I noticed that if I shuffled my feet the little creatures in the sand would phosphoresce. Quite amazing.
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August 1st, 2005
The next day - Monday - the sun was up and in full force. We ran down to the little islands near our campground and found that the tidal pools were far more impressive than botanical beach. This is because there was so little human interference. They looked as tidal pools should have. While we were slowly packing up, I saw what I thought was a spout in the distance… I looked again, and yes, something was out there. Whales? Dolphins? We did not know. I took a many pictures, but it was hard to capture. Then, there was something close to shore - very close. It was dark. We were not certain if it was an Orca or a dolphin. It only surfaced for a second… but then there was no dorsal fin… We suddenly realized that it was a humpback Whale swimming just offshore! (Update: We later learned that they were Grey Whales, not Humpbacks.)
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At times it was less than 30 feet off of the surf - Keeha Beach is steep so it was easy for the Whale to swim that close. I took off down the beach to follow it with the camera. Much to my chagrin it turned around and went in the other direction without my noticing. I missed a large amount of photo opportunities. Finally, at around 11 or 11:30 we had packed up. The tide was low and we decided to hike around the beaches directly to Cape Beale.
The map we had for the West Coast trail had icons on it where a section beach had an impassable cliff wall - and between Keeha Beach and Cape Beale no such icons were shown. This meant then that we could hike along the shore all the way to the lighthouse, and then from the lighthouse trail back out. The plan we had was good… Just as good as the plan Curtis and I had once to hike a forbidden trail in Carmanah… (It was a bad plan, but we did not know that yet.)
We figured that hiking across the beaches (as the map seemed to show it was possible) would have been faster than taking the trail, and offer better scenery. Immediately after arriving at the south end of the beach, we had to climb over some rocks, and a few surge channels. The tide was low, otherwise these would have been impassable. There were a number of impressive sea caves in the surge areas, and the sand was made of white clamshell. Quite nice to look at and explore.
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The Tide Tables for this day:
2005-08-01 02:00 PDT Moonrise
2005-08-01 05:19 PDT 2.65 feet Low Tide
2005-08-01 05:54 PDT Sunrise
2005-08-01 12:00 PDT 8.99 feet High Tide
2005-08-01 16:57 PDT 6.57 feet Low Tide
2005-08-01 19:39 PDT Moonset
2005-08-01 20:58 PDT Sunset
2005-08-01 22:52 PDT 10.72 feet High Tide
Continuing on, we hit the point, which we belived lead into Deadman Cove. We carried on with much easier hiking with the low tide and now beach walk instead of scrambling over the rocks at the start. After an hour, we paused for a break and I found an interesting piece of an old blue Noxema bottle. The weathered blue glass was quite attractive. I considered putting it in my pack to take out - it was garbage after all. But it was very nice looking, and seemed to fit the scene in some way. I tossed it back among the rocks that I had found it in - and it shattered into about 20 pieces… I probably should have packed it out…
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Where we took our break, there was a little climbing across rocks again, but nothing too concerning… Then we realized we were standing at the corner of an impassable headland. It probably would have been passable at a slightly lower tide than we had, but as it was there was about 3 feet of water blocking our path, more if you misplaced your footing. We got ready to head back, but I wanted to explore a narrow sea cave that was in the side of the cliff as I thought it was shaped like a “V” and might lead a way around the impassable headland.
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It turned out with some exploration that I was correct. Climbing down the narrow slot I found that we could indeed pass the headland, and that the cave itself was impressive. I did not find the climb down hard, but Sheri was worried as she did not have experience free climbing. What the pictures do not show is that the fall down the slot was about 40 feet, not 10 as it appears in the picture. This is because the cave was jammed with logs, and I was standing on the log jam when I took the picture of her climbing down, so the drop is larger than it looks. I was impressed that Sheri made the climb down as free climbing can be very intimidating, and as she freely admits she is afraid of heights.
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The “V” cave was very cool, and the pictures don’t do it enough justice. It is not a place that you would want to be in during high tide, and certanly not during a storm! However, it did allow us to pass the headland. Unfortunately, it would have been better if we had turned back at this point…
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We emerged on a rocky beach and continued forward. We found much to our dismay that there was another impassable headwall, and that this one was much worse than the previous one. It looked possible to scale across the top, but very very risky to try. I would give it a 5.6 on the Yosemite scale, easy rating, unless you are wearing a pack, and the route beyond was unknown. At this beach we decided to climb up the very steep bank covered with salal as it appeared that there was a trail. There were some impressions that looked like imprints of boots in the side of the earth. This trail, as you can see by the pictures was not all that great, and it was likely an animal trail to begin with. Cape Beale Map.
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You can see how steep the trail is from the few pictures we took from the top. I had been using my trusty Khukuri to fend of the Salal and cut an easier route. Thankfully Salal is not thorny.
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From this area we sought a path around the impassable headland, feeling that if we could just get a little past it we could continue onto the Cape Beale Lighthouse - after all, we were not that far away right? After quite some time bushwhacking - at least an hour - we could see the ocean again… and realized that we were standing at the top of a very large cliff overlooking a beach below. There was no way down but the “express” route. The cliff was about 100 feet high. We figured that since we had passed Deadmans cove, that with proper bushwhacking we would not be far from the lighthouse, or that we could continue through the brush to find the trail to the lighthouse.
We tried to work our way along as close to the cliff edge as we could, but the going was difficult due to the lack of a trail. Thorny bushes, shrubs and all manner of rain forest greenery impeded our passage. I had read in the SAS Survival Manual that Jungle terrain could be nearly impassable - I did not believe it. I do now.
I was tired, and very hungry, so we stopped in the largest clearing we had seen for a break. (The pictures are poor quality) I suddenly remembered that I had brought my Silva Compass with me, and mentioned it to Sheri. She berated me, quite correctly, for not mentioning it sooner as we had been using dead reckoning all this time!
Now that we had my compass out we could start to take bearings on visual references (trees - what else?) and head towards them to maintain a straight course and avoid getting lost. We continued like this for approximately 2 hours. We had gained quite a bit of elevation, and could no longer see the ocean. We were covered with tons of dirt and associated forest detritus, not a pretty sight. My new MEC Bora 70 pack was quite dirty at this point, no longer shiny clean, and had a few abrasions on it.
Summiting a large hill not really indicated on the map, again, not a good map for orienteering by any means. We climbed down a very steep ravine that was, like everything else, covered in hard to pass brush. At the base of the ravine we noticed some stagnant pools, and realized that with the shape of the ravine that they slowly traveled west. I suggested that we follow this down to the ocean to get our bearings, and possible walk along the beach. I did not know if we would come to an impassible cliff again, or perhaps a waterfall as the water slowly turned into a stagnant stream. Still, we could hear the ocean and knew we were close. As it turned out, this stream descended slowly to a rocky beach. Joyfully, we climbed out onto the beach to find out where we were. We expected to be very near the lighthouse.
Gaining our bearings, we realized that we were in Deadmans cove, and that we had misinterpreted the map earlier. We were nowhere near the lighthouse, and we had been hiking for a long time. This was not good. This map shows the difference in our routes. Yellow is where we thought we were going, and Red is where we actually went. Cape Beale / Keeha Map Mistake.
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Looking at the area, we realized we could walk along the shelf to the inside corner of Deadmans Cove, and either follow it around, or, using the compass cut into one of the bays and go cross country to the actual Cape Beale trail. This is what we agreed upon.
Going along the shelf was considerably easier, even if it did require minor scrambling.
Then we came to a small headwall with a small surge channel. Fortunately, the tide was low. It was about 4 pm. I made some comment that I was worried about the climb around this, but Sheri was very upbeat, which again impressed me. I recognized from rock climbing that passing this would not be easy. Indeed, the pictures to not show the danger that this crossing posed.
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I explored the options, and realized that to pass this area we had to climb a tree, and then traverse a rock shelf, and carefully climb across the area above the surge channel. If you fell, it would be about 40 feet onto rock. We did have a cell phone with us, but we did not have it activated, and we had considered phoning for rescue. Both of us agreed that we could never live that down. Had one of the boats that were cruising along the coast come near, we would have flagged it down however.
I climbed across the surge area, and went on ahead sans pack because I wanted to make certain we could get to the end of the cove, and from there, make our way to the actual Cape Beale trail now that we knew where we were. It was a minor scramble again, but easier than moving through the brush. We could make it to the cove, and cut across to the Cape Beale trail to get home.
After some consideration of how to get across, I had Sheri throw me the ropes that we had used to tie our tarp down, I tied them together with blood knots to make a long rope again, and had Sheri tie one end to our packs. With this, I was able to pull both our packs up the headwall so we did not have to climb across with packs on.
Sheri then made the climb up the dead tree, and across the traverse. She did great - but I was very worried all the same. I was very impressed with her tenacity at this point. The only other time I had been in a situation in the outdoors of this magnitude was the “epic” Carmanah hike that Curtis and I did in 1995.
We worked our way across the rocks, and made it into the small cove where we would take a bearing, and head into the brush to the Cape Beale trail, and our salvation. Sheri had the map, and oriented the compass, and set a bearing. It had been years since I had done Orienteering, and Sheri made maps for fisheries, so she was more on the ball than I. Still, the bearing that she took looked wrong to me, and I asked her how she took it. She went over the bearing again, and showed me how she did it, and she realized that she had done it incorrectly, and had taken a bad bearing. We both agreed that it was good that both of us looked at the map and agreed on the bearing before setting out as we were both tired and making mistakes. It turned out that we were working really well together under stress.
We set a ‘Turn around time’ of 6 PM. That is, if it hit 6 PM we would begin looking for a spot to camp or bivy for the night, and resume our exit the following day. The reason for this was to avoid trekking aimlessly in the dark and making our situation worse.
We set our on our bearing, the map showing that we would only have to go about 200 Meters to reach the Cape Beale Trail if our bearings were correct. We set off in higher spirits…
The bushwhacking got worse - considerably worse than it had before. The forest had large old growth cedars, Sitka and other trees that were beautiful - but the corresponding “old growth undergrowth” to go with it. The message in the S.A.S. Survival Manual about “impassable” jungle came back to me. Some of the undergrowth was terribly impassable, and took ages for us to get by. There were fallen giant trees blocking our path, covered with undergrowth above and below.
We had long since abandoned trying to find a “delicate” route through the brush as no such route existed. We just opted to barrel through the undergrowth wherever we could. I thought about the closed terrain and how we could very likely come across a black bear in close quarters. About the time I was thinking that my bear spray that was mounted on my pack actually fired! The spray blew by the right side of my face, and a yellow green cloud of bear spray filled the air. Coughing, I tried my best to crawl away. The safety clip had come off while crawling through the underbrush, and I was under a giant fallen tree when it fired at the ground in front of me.
It was not a pleasant experience, fortunately, I backed up quickly when this happened, and the underbrush that had depressed the trigger was no longer causing the bear spray to fire.
Crawling through this tangled undergrowth, was very taxing, but both of us were very motivated to get to the Cape Beale trail and make our way out.
I looked at my watch, and realized that it was getting very close to 6 PM, and that worried me. There was considerably more thrashing, and I being tall and not terribly streamlined for undergrowth spend a good deal of time literally crawling on my hands and knees through the undergrowth. I had long since given up caring about getting dirty, or having moss and pine needles rain down on me from above.
There were some crazy features in the undergrowth. At one point we came across a narrow “stream” that was about 3 feet wide, and 10 feet deep hidden in the brush, capped with a lovely fallen giant that we again had to try to scale and pass.
I was beginning to get very discouraged at this point, but Sheri was very reassuring and upbeat. We came to an area that was much easier going, and Sheri was very happy making comments about animal trails, and how animal trails often connect directly to human trails when they are close. Animal trails are very rarely longer than a few meters, so she seemed ecstatic that this was likely close to the Cape Beale trail. I was in such a funk that I did not believe it. We were nearing Mud Bay, and indeed, according to the map we should have crossed the trail ages ago. Being only a short distance away from Mud bay was concerning, because according to the map, we should not be this close, and we had passed what appeared to be a very old and very poorly maintained trail about 45 min prior, and I did not want that to be the Cape Beale trail.
A few feet ahead, Sheri crawling along fast, stood up and hooted triumphantly. She was standing on the trail. It was 5:50 PM. We were ten minutes away from our cut off time. That was a relief. We did not take any pictures of the trail where we exited, indeed, we neglected to take pictures of the horrible undergrowth that we passed through as we were more concerned with getting out than taking pictures.
Sheri suggested we walk along the trail to the lighthouse as we were only about 1.5 KM away. I really admired her spunk. Here we were, just making it out onto the trail before our cut off time and she had the energy to keep going to the lighthouse! I thought about it, and decided that I was too tired to go to the lighthouse. I wanted to, but decided against it. Sheri agreed to this, and we headed off along the Cape Beale Trail back to Keeha lake.
We paused at the first stream we found to filter water as our supplies had run out some time prior. The trail was in bad shape, but compared to what we had just been through it was like walking through a mall. After a considerable time hiking along the trail we came across some beautiful beaches - Topaltos beach being one of them. There is no official camping at this beach, but considerable evidence that many people camp there. We also found footprints from a dog, and realized that these prints were from a group that had stayed at Keeha with us, and left for the Cape Beale Lighthouse after us by the regular trail, and beaten us by hours and hours.
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At this point it was just a slog to get out. Lots of slow going along the trail, deep mud everywhere, and I smacked my head a number of times on low hanging trees as I am tall, and could not see them with my head down and my Tilley on!
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Finally reaching Kichha Lake and the connection to the main trail out was a nice feeling, but we still had a long way to go. It was 8 PM by the time we reached this point.
We finally made our way back to the car at 9 PM. We drank more water, and ate some of the trail mix we had. We were quite hungry, and some of the stuff I put in the trail mix I probably would not have enjoyed nearly as much if we had not been so famished. We did have other food that we could prepare, but that would require using the stove. We dropped off our Keeha Beach / Cape Beale hiking permit at the Pachena Bay West Coast Trail hut to signify that we had made it out. This is not the best way to do it, but at that late hour it was the only method we had.
Driving back out, we made it into Port Alberni at 11:50, and were just able to get in the last order at the McDonalds in town. We both had a Double Quarter pounder with cheese. Supersized. Not what we would have normally eaten, but being as hungry as we were, it was great.
In retrospect, we learned that there are some serious errors with the map. The older map of the area that Parks Canada used to distribute is more accurate. Also, the contour lines are not close enough to be of too much use (30 meters!) and seem to be incorrect in many cases. While on the West Coast Trail we learned that the map had a number of errors from Monique of “Chez Moniques” and she went off on a tirade as to how the map maker made the map before he had ever been on the trail…
If you want to see the coast between Keeha Beach and Cape Beale - take a Sea Kayak or a boat. Don’t hike it like we did. If you are at Keeha Beach, and you want to see the “V” cave, go for it, but once you reach it and you have seen it - go back. Trust me on this, you don’t want to follow our route.