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Wilderness Backpacking Trails in British Columbia - Last Minute Preparations
By Robert Bannon

This is the final installment of articles under the heading of wilderness backpacking trails in BC and it is important to leave you with some things that are important to your success on the West Coast Trail:

• Tide tables are important to your safety in the sense that you don't want to get caught on a beach without an escape route when the tide comes in. It happened to us at Owen Point on day two and we managed to survive the experience. Suffice to say, learn how to read the tide table provided by the Parks Canada officer at the trail head
• This is an extremely sensitive ecological rain forest and backpackers are permitted by the good graces of the first nations people whose land borders the trail and Parks Canada who maintain it. Take everything out with you including packaging of any sort and do not harm anything, including living plants, trees and animals.
• Stay on the trail itself, including the muddy parts, because every time you step on to areas that are not part of the path, it becomes wider and wider and limits the growth of plants. The growing things that live here permanently have precedence over you and I. The old saying about leaving only footprints may not apply here and we would like to keep the West Coast Trail open for future generations to enjoy, so let's be extra careful
• People from all around the world arrive in British Columbia to hike one of North America's premier wilderness backpacking trails and as a fellow hiker, you will have an opportunity to meet and talk with many of them. Favorite spots where people accumulate and meet each other are Chez Monique, Tsusiat Falls and the mouth of the Nitnat Inlet where everyone must wait for a ferry to take them across. Coincidently, the owner of the ferry service also has a dock, picnic tables and offers a lunch of either barbecue salmon or fresh crab. Believe me, real food tastes fabulous about this time. Have some cash available
• Take your time. One of the lessons we learned on the trail was that there is lots of time to get to the next campsite. With the exception of one day when there are 12 miles to cover between sites, the rest of the seven days, no matter what the difficulty, leave lots of time to enjoy the viewpoints, take pictures and frequent rest stops. I encourage you to do all of that including writing in a journal so that you can enjoy your experience again and again

Finally, this can be the experience of a lifetime and one you will want to share with family and friends and if you are lucky, it might just inspire you to take on more challenges that will offer you the opportunity to live life more fully. Good luck.

I am Robert J. Bannon a published author, keen observer of the human condition and I recounted the entire story of our wilderness backpacking trail in my book The West Coast Trail: One Step at a Time. You can read an excerpt here: http://RobertJBannon.com/

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