Our goal for the day was to climb up Cliff Peak, the
highest mountain on Cortes Island.
We began on the trail to Von Donop Inlet. The trail to the inlet was very well
maintained and easy to navigate.
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| The trail to Von Donop Inlet |
We soon arrived at the inlet and took a little
break. It was a very pleasant
location. We spotted a number of boats
in the water while we were stopped. I’d
imagine it is a popular location for kayaking.
We continued hiking north, coming to a spur trail to a
lagoon. Not being particularly pressed
for time, we took this trail. The lagoon
made for a nice rest spot, and offered us a view of Cliff Peak.
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| Lagoon with Cliff Peak in the background |
After stopping for a while, we headed back to the main
trail and kept heading north. We began
encountering more deadfall across the trail, but the trail was still pretty
hikeable. We encountered a number of dried-up
creeks, another sign of the dry year we had been having.
As we continued, we saw wolf tracks in mud, as well as
some wolf scat. We knew this area
contained a number of wolves and it was a bit of a concern for us.
The trail began to get more and more overgrown, until it
our progress slowed to what had to be less than 1 km/h. We fought through tightly packed trees, and I
know I took many branches to the face along the way. The trail became more of a concept than a
concrete thing, and we soon began talking about turning around.
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| The supposed trail |
After reaching one particularly bad section, we both
agreed to turn around. We figured that a
chainsaw would be necessary to hike Cliff Peak.
On our way back, we took another spur trail to Mud
Bay. I saw a few places here that looked
ideal for camping. When I eventually
return to Cortes Island, I fully intend to camp somewhere in this park.
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| Mud Bay |
We continued heading back on the main trail and decided
to take one more spur trail. We thought
it went to the village at Squirrel Cove, but it ended up just going to a
fishing cabin on the shoreline of the cove, cut off from the village by a
headland.
We continued back to the parking lot and then drove back
to Gorge Harbour. I used the pool and
hot tub, which felt great after all of the hiking. Later that evening, we ate at the Gorge
Harbour Marina’s Floathouse Restaurant, which was excellent.
The next day, we headed to the Children’s Forest, which
is a project to buy a large chunk of land from Island Timberlands for the benefit
of the children of Cortes Island.
Not long after starting the hike in, we came across a
dilapidated old car. Interestingly, this
would be the theme of the day, as we would run into another two similarly worn-down
cars.
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| Give it a good polishing and I think it will run again |
We turned onto the Rave-on Trail (named after the annual
rave held at Carrington Lagoon) and followed it to Grandmother Grove. After a bit of hiking, we came to a
picturesque little field. Not long after
that, we were at Blue Jay Lake.
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| The Rave-on Trail |
 |
| Approaching Blue Jay Lake |
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| Blue Jay Lake |
We started heading back, taking a side trail along the
way. The trail went outside of the
mapped area of the forest, and ended up climbing up to an area that had clearly
been logged.
We headed back and returned to the parking lot, where we
grabbed our camping gear. We were going
to be hiking into Carrington Lagoon and spending the night, and hadn’t wanted
to carry our camping gear with us all day.
After loading up, we headed back into the forest.
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| It's still got a few miles left in it |
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| It's a bit of a fixer-upper |
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| Carrington Lagoon |
We soon came out to Carrington Lagoon. It was easily my favourite spot on Cortes
Island. Being in this place felt like
walking around inside a post card.
We picked our camping spots and began setting up. I was on an exposed ridge and there was a
fierce wind blowing. Setting up my tent
was extremely difficult, but fortunately, Dave and my Dad were willing to help
me.
I would go as far as to say that the camp-site I had that
night was my favourite camp site that I have ever had.
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| The view from my camp-site |
The next day we got up and packed up, ready to hike out
of the forest. To finish our goal of
hiking all of the trails in the forest, we turned onto the James Creek
Trail. We followed it for a while before
crossing an old logging road. All three
of us missed the fact that this road was the trail we were supposed to turn
onto to go to the parking lot. We ended
up staying on the trail we were on. We
kept going for what felt like ages, slowly coming to the realization that we
had missed our trail. We came out at a
residence, confirming that we had messed up.
Refusing to backtrack, we stayed on the trail, even as it turned into a
road. Eventually we came out into an
area we recognized, realizing that we were a few kilometres from the parking
lot.
We ended up missing the ferry to Quadra Island that we
had intended to take, but we did make the next one. It was certainly an interesting way to cap
off our time on Cortes Island. I don’t
think any vacation is complete without getting lost at least once.
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