Sombrio Beach

Oct, 12, 2011:

I have some extra days off this week due to Canada's Thanks Giving holiday and work giving me an extra day off due to having had me caged for over 12 years.  I wrangled Brett out of the house and we drove up the coast to Sombrio Beach.  The weather was iffy so we packed our water proof stuff and some extra socks, but it turned out we needed less layers rather than more.  The hike made us sweaty, specially the climb back up to the parking lot.

After walking down from the parking log you can go right or left... to the right you cross this odd little suspension bridge over the creek.  It's quite bouncy for such a small structure.

 

All along the cost the creek mouths open into the sea in these slightly wider, deeper areas.  It can be quite dark in the creek due to the forest being so dense and then the beach gets this dramatic brighter line of light.

 

It was a bit misty, but sunny at the same time as we walked through the woods toward the beach.

The wet weather of the coastal rainforest softens up any fallen tree allowing them to become nurse logs for many other species.

We were many kilometers south of the world famous West Coast Trail but this bit of trail we were on reminded me of the notoriously muddy conditions the WCT experiences.  We trod around this bit gingerly being a couple of nancy boy, dry sock types.

 The wave action was causing water to surge up into the creek mouth.  It really brought to mind the power of water.  I kept on thinking about Tsunamis and how the water would rush up the creek.  The whole of Vancouver Island is vunerable to potential Tsunami and all the little communities are putting together action plans with little signs going up on escape routs on roads etc.

 There were some surfers out in the waves.  We never did see one get up, they all seemed to be waiting for a good wave to come by.  It seems a rather cold and soggy way to spend a day to me.  I've been in the water on the island here and it's damned cold!  I know they're wearing wet suits but what about their hands and faces?

The gulls were having a fun time of it.  The waves were big but the wind wasn't strong.  This means they could fly about lots and pick through all the rack on the beach for good stuff to eat.

 

Some of the waves were rather big.  Catching them with the camera was surprisingly hard.  These two are about the best I managed to nab.

Back onto the path and up toward the other side of the beach we found this very sharp turn with a walkway and railing.  The huge leaning tree helped frame it on the left.

A short trek later we saw this huge tree that had fallen over.  We had some really bad wind storms all up and down the island last winter and this tree could have very well come down then.  The contractor for the park has obviously sawed the thing so one is left wondering if it could maybe have be felled on purpose to avoid it falling on someone.

Back out onto the beach further south.  It seemed to be a bit more of a shallow slope here and consequently the waves rushed way further up the beach.  A couple of times we had to run to avoid a dousing.  The water on the west coast can be quite dangerous and every now and then we hear in the news of someone who's been washed away by a wave.

We wanted to get further down the beach than this but just around the corner from this small point the waves were crashing right up against the cliff.  We didn't want to chance a run over the water saturated gravel to get to the other side so we took some pictures from here of the cliff in the background before turning back.  It's too bad we couldn't get further as Brett says there are some caves further along the beach.  Next time we'll have to access the beach from the lower road and see if we can get to the caves from that side.

The water was really crashing on the cliffs and rocks further down the beach... my zoom isn't quite good enough to do it justice, however, when I got the pics downloaded I noticed that the camera had caught people on those rocks being pounded so heavily by the surf!

There were masses of flies on some parts of the beach.  They were all eating kelp and sunning themselves on the rocks.  Lord knows what'll happen to them all when the bad weather of winter arrives.

The kelp was all over the beach.  It made walking very slippery in spots.  most had the hold fasts (roots) ripped from the rocks they cling to but every now and then we'd come across some kelp still fastened to rocks.

On the way back I noticed this twisted stump with all kinds of beach stones on top.

Brett kept on insisting we try to find the trail up in the bush.  We found 3 outhouses and lots of camp sites and many many dead ends.
I also found these fairly tall, thin reed-like plants with the sun coming through them.

And finally we're back at an actual trail!  Sweating and bespeckled with bits of twig and fern I snapped one last picture of the beach before we climbed the trail back to the car.  20km up the highway is Port Renfrew where I had some very excellent halibut and chips and Brett had a bbq'd steak wrap.  After lunch is was back home for a sit down and late night salad for dinner.