An unneeded rest day followed by the longest day of hiking I have ever had:

Day 2 had us feeling a little deflated, sore from not having hiked with backpacks in a while and then heavy rain got us back in our tents for the morning while we waited for it to pass. It didn’t, so we packed up our soggy selves and got moving to the next spot. Just a short 5km got us to the most popular camping spot on the Nootka trail, Calvin Falls. To our absolute delight we found there was a shelter built here. We were stoked to have a spot to dry off our clothes, bags and shoes. There even was a firepit under cover! This little place was very needed for our morale. It was awesome to see all the name placards in this shelter dating back to people first doing this trail as early as the late 80’s. A cold swim, campfire chats and a good night rest had our spirits back up and ready to tackle the next day, (or so we thought).

Day 3 was meant to be our biggest day, thinking we had around 20km to take us close to the end of the trail for our boat pickup the next day. But we very much underestimated what this would entail. the first 10 km were relatively smooth, from technical rock walking to traipsing through the sickenly smelly seaweed. We were less fortunate with the water crossings this time, stacking them all into this day, though relatively straight forward the last one before lunch claimed one person to the slippery rocks underfoot and much deeper than anticipated last few steps. We thought were doing great by this point a couple hours in and plenty of km’s under our belt. Unfortunately, the tide and trails had other plans for us. The tide being high meant a couple of long detours up and through dense bush, spider webs and brush constantly berating you only to come out on the other side having gone what would have only take 5 minutes if the tide were out. This is also where we discovered our 20km was definitely not going to be 20km, with plenty of distance left on the map and evening starting to kick in real quick we know we were in it for the long run. Lots more ups and downs winding through the forest and out into beautiful secluded coves, the going was tough but the weather was stunning and the scenes unreal. It felt a little unfortunate we had to buckle down and keep moving not giving us all the time to really enjoy this part of the trail, but with night approaching and no campsite for a while we kept moving. A few hours later we finally made it to a little spot of paradise at 10pm making our day a 12hr 26km day. A beautiful sandy beach with the sunset glow over the mountains and a cute hand made bench for us chow down some food before a much needed sleep.