May 13th – West Coast Trail hike part 2

I had gone back to the Juan de Fuca park to hike some more of the West Coast Trail. On my drive I spotted a black bear next to the road. That convinced me to suit up my bear mace and small knife on my belt – just in case. I started at the Sombaro Beach point and hiked all the way to Kuitshe Cove. On the map, the trail was rated moderate in terms of difficulty. But damn it was tiring, I hate to see what difficult is. I give props to anyone who did the whole west coast trail hike with all their camping gear on.

Overall the scenery was nice, but nothing too spectacular. On my hike back, I was approaching fairly close to the starting point. I was walking along a stony beach, with several surfers further down from me. And all of a sudden I see a black bear run towards the bushes from the beach after I guess I had startled it with the noise of the rocks shifting under me as I was walking. It was probably just under 100

meters away from me. It stopped short of the bushes and just stared at me for several long seconds. It was a somewhat big bear, I guess 250-300 pounds. I automatically went into alert mode and placed my hand on my bear mace, and returned the stare. After those several long seconds it ran into the bushes. I then proceeded to walk along the beach, with now the bear mace in my hand with the safety clip unlocked – ready for giving anything a dose of mace. As I carefully walked on the beach, over the slippery rocks, I kept looking over my shoulder for any signs of the bear.

Later thinking about it, I realized I made a mistake in the encounter of the bear despite all of my wilderness survival training. Firstly I should not of stared back at the black bear into its eyes to give it any sign of a challenge. Secondly, I should of stared down and talk to it in a calm, quiet voice. Also if it weren’t for the big rocks around me, I would of slowly backed away. I was just too caught up in the moment to think about doing that – it was a wild experience!

I was pretty exhausted when I got back to the car. On my drive out of the place, I spotted a small black bear cub, next to road eating the leaves of a plant, it was cute. But no sign of its mother, but I just kept driving past anyway. Three sightings of black bears in one day! And this time I didn’t have to join a bear watching tour to do it.

One more funny story. In the morning Jeroen, had told me about the half Chinese/Native guy that he met at the hostel. Jeroen, had spent part of last night hanging out with this guy, kicking a few drinks around with him. Jeroen, told me that the guy had later acted pretty weird. What happened was that the guy stole Jeroen’s pants (lying next to his bed), and give it back to Jeroen because according to the guy – if you take something and give it back to the person, it makes you two best friends for life. Also Jeroen said he saw the guy hanging around his bed 2 times, and seem to plan it for them to meet up. That completely weirded out Jeroen, and I was glad that I was too tired to hang out with them last night.