JDF - May 20th-22nd 2022

So excited, it was finally time to hit the JDF. We woke up at 3:30 am to catch the 6am ferry and headed out. We ended up getting to the terminal at 5 and were near the front of the line so we had no problem getting on. I ate breakfast on board and we disembarked at 7:35 and made the long trip to Botanical Beach trailhead. The drive was uneventful and we eventually arrived at ~10:30 and got ready. The day was beautiful and it was starting out great. We headed down the short trail to the beach with lots of adjusting and stopping and starting and had lunch. We finally started the real trail at 11:30 and everything went to crap... The trail was AWFUL, it was in the poorest condition of any trail I have ever been on. There was thigh deep mud and water pretty much the entire way which made the going extremely slow and challenging. We slogged on however and made it to Payzant Creek at ~2:30 pm. This was only the 7km mark and we still had 7km to go to where we had planned on camping. Coen and Sam were very tired and demotivated already and things weren't looking good. I convinced them to continue and on we went. When we got to Parkinson Creek at the 10km mark around 4:30 they wanted to camp there but there was no camping and so we pushed on. The last 4km were not easy to say the least. It took us almost 3 hours and Coen and Sam were pretty much numb just pushing on. They basically told me then and there they weren't going to complete the trail and wanted to bail. I was dissapointed, not going to lie, but I realized that even if they continued, at the pace we were going we wouldn't make the itinerary we had planned anyways so it made sense to bail. Anyways we finally made the camp (little Kuitsche) at around 7:30 and they were both absolutely beat. I ended up setting the tent up by myself and Coen went in and passed out immediately for half an hour. We picked our favorite dinner because at that point I figured why not, we were probably bailing anyways the next day. We ended up crashing around 8:30 or 9. Waking up at 8 we got ready and hit the trail at 9:30. We talked a bit about our plan and Sam and Coen both said they couldn't do the hard section from Chin to Bear and thought maybe we could hike to Chin and then spend the night, hike back to Sombrio on Sunday and leave on Monday from Sombrio. I was dissapointed but I figured I was outvoted and it didn't make sense to go to Chin and back (14km of boring, difficult trail) so I proposed just hiking 4km to Sombrio, which is a beautiful beach, spending the rest of Saturday there and bailing on Sunday. They agreed.

We got to Sombrio at 11:30 and got a great spot on the beach. We spent the day chilling, reading, messing around in the water and had a little fire in the evening. We ended up going to bed at 9, we were all still pretty beat from the previous day. The next morning I got up at 7 and hiked up the 2.5km road t othe highway and caught the bus. I got dropped off at Port Renfrew and hiked the 2km to the trailhead and picked up my truck and picked everyone up. We headed home. I will be back to finish the trail someday!