Juan de Fuca, Vancouver Island, BC | 47km, 1960m
One month after running Rockwall and with one 10km run in between, Justin and I figured we were ready enough to do the Juan de Fuca trail. The Juan de Fuca trail, while shorter than Rockwall, was substantially more technical and slippery.
We drove out and took the ferry to Vancouver Island on Saturday. The chances of seeing Northern Lights were high and we had high hopes but were met with cloud coverage the whole ferry ride over. Fun things we learned about Victoria that evening:
- Plan your campsites ahead of time - all campsites were sold out on a long weekend
- There will be no hotels available at midnight last minute for under $400 a night
- ALL forest service roads are gated so you will not be able to find free camping
- You can not sleep at rest areas
We managed to find a sneaky spot to camp which we bolted out of at 6am. Positives: beautiful sunrises.
Sunday was the day we intended to run the Juan de Fuca but the forecast turned so we decided to kill a day near Victoria and explored some lovely waterfalls and played some disc golf.
On Monday, we planned to start the trail before the sun was up so that we wouldn’t miss our ferry back to Vancouver, but in typical Lepikhina-Krawetz fashion, we decided we could surely still make it if we started at sunrise.
~1km
The trail went as follows:
Mystic Beach: we mistakenly thought the beaches would be the easiest parts. Running on loose rocks and sand is not necessarily easier than taking big steps over slippery rocks and roots.
~2km
The trail was a mix of beautifully well built bridges, precarious toppled tree walks, wet roots, and steep muddy hills.
~5km; ~8km
Bear Beach: no bears to be seen at this one! Perhaps later…?
~10km
Slugs and mushrooms
Chin Beach
~20km
~25km
~30km
Things started to get mistier as we were on the fourth and longest beach - Sombrio Beach. This beach is also incredibly popular for day camping and surfing. While we were lucky to not see any bears, we missed a mama and her cub a few minutes down Sombrio Beach. We spent much of the trail clicking our poles together and singing “bears bears bears, are our friends, either way, stay away”.
~32km
Botanical Beach
~35km
Essential packing list for this trail included: hiking poles and gaitors.