Juan de Fuca Trail: Striking and hiking

This is a trip report back from September 2014 when we hiked the Juan de Fuca trail. We were inspired to do the hike after a breakfast at Nick and Lena's house, where we met two other families who had just done the trail that summer. One family with a ~3 month old and one family with a 1 and 4 year old. We figured that it was the thing to do after you have a kid. I do highly recommend the area. There are several escape routes, so it is easy to make the trip fit your needs. A number of easy overnight trips are possible as well as multi-day hikes.  Here is the trip report from back then.

Striking and hiking

I was suppose to start working in the beginning of September, while Christian stayed at home with Fenya for a month, but since the teacher strike was still on work was delayed by 3 weeks. We really enjoyed being home all three, enjoying lots of family time, but after two weeks we decided to take a chance and go on a hike. We decided to hike the juan de fuca trail on Vancouver island. 47 km, ~2000 m elevation gain/loss, and 5 days. 

We left Saturday, and just as we had paid for the ferry, when Christian realized he had forgotten his hiking shoes at home. He debated shortly whether he should attempt to hike the trail in crogs, but decided on buying a new pair in Victoria. So after a quick stop at MEC we were on our way. We arrived at the China Beach trail head around noon, and managed to leave not that much later. We made good time on the first day and set up camp at Bear beach the first evening. Fenya really enjoyed playing on the beach, while I cooked dinner.

On day two we hiked to chin beach. This was the longest and most difficult section of the trail, and I definitely felt it. There is a lot of up and down. Our day ended up being around 6 hours of hiking plus a long break of cause, which is a bit longer than I like to have Fenya in the backpack (try to keep it a max. of four hours), but she still did great. On the third day we hiked to Sombrio beach, this was by far the best beach. We arrived early, so we had a chance to dry the diapers we had washed the night before. We also had time for swimming and relaxing in the sun. It was awesome. In the evening we went for a little walk to find the hidden water fall. It was very cool, the photos does not really do it justice.

This evening, I also got a text from Frances on the inReach saying that there would be a vote to end the strike Thursday and school would then start Monday... perfect timing. On the fouth day we hiked to Payzant campground. This was the first camp that was not at the beach and we definitely missed it, but we had had a long day, so we didn't really have time for lounging anyway. Wednesday we hiked out to the trailhead and Christian was lucky to get a ride back to China beach right away. Fenya and I played in the grass while waiting for him to pick us up.