Rainwood Photography: The West Coast Trail - Part I: Pachena Bay to Darling River

The First Day - Friday, May 22

Evening

Head camp cook, my father, prepares rice and

beans for our first dinner the night before

hiking commences. He loves to cook, as is

Evidenced by his exuberant expression.

The grey sky grew darker with the onset of the dusk at Pachena Bay. Flying up from their South American breeding grounds, a small flock of whimbrel, Numenius phaeopus, arrived at the bay. Feeding commenced immediately as many of the birds hadn't yet fed since their 4,000 kilometre journey began late last winter in Chile. In the south, their long, downward curving bills fit well into the burrows of fiddler crabs but now, half starved, the whimbrel take anything they can catch, which is mostly springtails and sand fleas. Suddenly, the 0.4-kilogram birds stopped feeding. A tall, erect figure was slowly approaching from an opening in the trees, where a smouldering fire was burning. Whimbrel have keen eye sight, and it was clear to them that the figure was keeping an eye on them. Their beady, black eyes glared nervously from under a white eyebrow and dark cap. Disturbed by the interruption, they took off and whistled irritatedly in short, pathetic notes. I had no desire to bother the whimbrel further and, believing any further pursuit for a photograph would be unnecessarily stressful for the birds, I wandered back to the fire in my campsite. They landed at the mouth of the Pachena River estuary and continued their ravenous feeding.

Second Day - Saturday, May 23

Morning

After orientation, my father and I begin hiking from Pachena Beach. Our goal is 13.5 kilometres to the Darling River. Excitement and optimism ruled the day, and the foreboding feeling that someone might get hurt is dissipating with the wet mist that shrouded us in the night. Something in the neighbourhood of over 60 people are evacuated from the trail each year. A few years ago we had hiked the Juan de Fuca Trail (the West Coast Trail's southern counterpart) and my father's knees gave out half way through. We should have been a statistic, but my father was so determined to finish the trail that he literally crawled down the trail for the last two days. Now, after intensive therapy and the compulsive use of hiking poles, Dad is more confident that those kinds of problems won't be a part of this trip.

One last look at Pachena Beach before climbing over the rocks to the Pachena Access trail head.

The northwestern crow, Corvus caurinus, is a coastal specialist. This one was having a go at the mussels that cover the rocks near Pachena Bay.

Dad recorded moments from the trip on an HD camcorder. Those poles are his closest companions from the trip.

Salal, Gaultheria shallon, forms a dense undergrowth near openings. Whenever the salal gets thick at the trailside, we take it as a sign that we are nearing the ocean.

Afternoon

Cornus canadensis, or bunchberry, is a small pretty flower that seems to frequent muddy trailsides or bogs. In some places, this plant nearly carpeted the forest floor.

Ladders certainly seemed amusing the first day but this is nothing compared to what would come later.

I laugh at my naivety. These seemed long

at the time.

Sometimes the trail would plateau at the

tops of steep cliffs. The hemlock and

spruce grow straight and tall and the

salal covers the ground in dense cover.

One tonne of growling blubber hauled itself up onto the rocks and gave a mean look to a smaller individual. The message was clear and the underdog fled into the rolling, grey sea. Steller sea-lions, Eumetopias jubatus, are the largest of all sea lions and the biggest males can exceed a tonne in weight. With calves growing older, the females have taken their youngsters to haul-outs and introduced them to the anarchy of sea-lion society. The rules are simple: biggest male wins. Now that the calves are becoming more independent, females are more receptive to mating. The males are more than eager to pass on their genes. No one dares challenge the giant male's supremacy

Oregon grape, Mahonia nervosa, grows
red from malnutrition and deer fern,
Blechnum spicant, frames the colour.

but, farther from his ideal place amid a growing harem of females, two more males have established themselves. They steer clear of the big boy on the other side of the rock but they are uncomfortably close to one another. As the males grumbled at one another irritatedly, one of the females became a little frisky. Over stepping her social bounds, she gave a whining roar, right in her commandeering male's pudgy face. Upset by the intrusion of his personal space, the male roared back and advanced, sounding like the upset stomach of a Brontosaurus. Surprisingly, the female seemed pleased and nipped playfully at the giant's bristling whiskers. The chase was on. But 800 kilograms is hard to shift. Especially when your body is made for the ocean. The pare gallop like legless dogs to the other side of his small harem. Distracted by the promiscuous female, the male inadvertently violated the unspoken boundary agreement with his neighbouring male and he charged. The two males faced off for only a few moments as the unlawful male backed into his own turf. The female seemed to be smirking. We often see male sea-lions as irritable behemoths looking for a fight but, considering they don't eat for over a month as long as they defend a turf, they are remarkably good-natured and non-confrontational.

A squabble breaks out among the females. Although there are plenty of open-mouth threats, they don't often bite one another.

This bull must be close to 800kg but, judging from the comparatively small size of his harem, he is certainly not the largest beach master.

A male confronts a female about her misbehaviour. She looks fairly defiant.

These males tell each other off after a female lured them into a fight.

Two black oyster catchers, Haematopus bachmani, fly low over the sea-lion colony.

Dad is amused that we are photographing each other simultaneously.

For not eating for two months, he looks pretty good. Good might be an understatement.

The largest bull has the largest harem. He had to oust another smaller bull to get this prime spot, but the looser didn't leave. He just slinked around in the swells and eddies around the rocks.

These tree-dwelling ferns are Polypodium glycyrrhiza.

A robin, Turdus migratorius, looks a little motley perched in the damp forest. The robins on the trail frequented the beach and we affectionately nicknamed them "beach birds."

Polypodium glycyrrhiza is commonly called liquorice fern, because of the taste of its rhizomes (horizontal, bellow-ground stems). Some native American tribes would chew this plant for its sweet flavour.

The "stems" coming up from the branch or tree that these ferns are growing on are actually petioles (part of the leaf). The actual stems of the plant are horizontal and hug the tree so closely that the moss grows right over them. The leaves grow from this horizontal stem, called a rhizome.

Evening

Filtering water is a daily duty.

Evening--and the sun set, once again, invisible behind a curtain of mist. Every evening the mist rolled in and moisture permeated everything. The grey sea melded away into the fog blending bellow the horizon. A spray of wet air jettisoned into the air and a grey back, spotted with white, humped out of the rolling sea. The ridged tail followed and the ragged flukes rose skyward as a grey whale, Eschrichtius robustus, descended in pursuit of its next meal. Unlike other baleen whales, greys are benthic feeders, filtering sediments for crustaceans at the bottom of bays. As the whale descended, it pushed out its right, lower lip and slurped in an immense amount of mud and grunge. Curiously, nearly all grey whales are right-lipped, just like people are usually right handed. Once the hapless copepods were inside the behemoth's mouth, the whale pushed the silty water out between the plates of its baleen with its tongue. After rising back to the surface, the gray whale took a glance at its surroundings above water, spy hopping. There were large rocks with breakers crashing over them both north and south of the bay. The ones to the north looked ideal. Cruising toward the jutting rocks, the whale turned on its side, flippers and flukes sticking up into the cold, wet air. A little maneuvering and the whale was rewarded with a sensation akin to what a human feels during a good massage. Rubbing on the gravel bar behind the rocks dislodges parasites and makes it harder for pesky barnacles to grow. Grey whales are north Pacific speciality. Although they were once more widespread, whaling had reduced their numbers and now they are only common off the coast of western North America.