The Marathon Trek

All that was left in Whistler now was the last few days of packing and preparing for the trip. And of course the obligatory party! As it was Matt's last day as well there was a party arranged, and it happened to coincide with karaoke night in the Crystal Lounge. What a happy coincidence. As is traditional, the first half of the evening was spent drinking slowly but steadily to ensure that sufficient lubrication was achieved. Suffice to say that point was achieved, and a fine rendition of the Backstreet Boys "I Want it That Way" was performed. This was then followed by a multitude of fine dance positions in Tommy Africa's, then outside on the street, then a customary post club snack (Why won't they open a Pita Pit over here!).

Luckily my bus wasn't till 3pm the next day so I had plenty of chance to chill out and recover from my hangover before leaving. There were tearful goodbyes as I got on the bus, not sure what the next 3 days sitting on a bus would involve. Basically I was just thankful to get my board bag on the bus so I could move around a bit more freely.

Although, of course, this wasn't really the case on the bus, as it was pretty crowded, and there was no chance to stretch out! Probably the most frustrating aspect of the first leg of the journey was that I got on the bus from Vancouver at 6pm, which meant it was getting dark by Chilliwack, and therefore the bulk of the mountains were travelled past in the darkness. Another frustration that I had to deal with was the fact that the bus stopped about every hour or so. In terms of being able to get out and stretch my legs this was fine, but it meant that trying to get settled or get any sleep was more or less impossible. It also meant that we'd be stopping in the middle of the night for meal breaks, for example stopping in Revelstoke for an hour. At the time however, it was 4am, and if you can imagine there is very little to do in a ski resort at 4am in the summer! All I can say is thank god for Tim Horton's!

On the whole, however, the bus journey wasn't actually as bad as I had thought. Perhaps the worst aspect of the journey was the lack of space. Especially when the people in front of me kept insisting on putting their chair all the way back into the reclined position. Still, the actualy journy was quite good fun. I had been warned that I would be amazingly bored once I headed east of Calgary and out across the plains. But, I actually found it fascinating in a way. The sheer vastness of the area is impressive, not least cos I was driving through it for over a day. It was a nice evening on the way through, and the late evening golden sun warming the grain elevators and harvested fields made it very pretty. Also, the further east the bus drove, the more I noticed that in some ways the towns were becoming more and more reminiscent of English towns, predominantly due to the increased number of older buildings.

This was especially the case as the bus left the plains and got into Northern Ontario. THe landscape changed again and in some ways was reminiscent of a rockier and slightly hillier version of the Broads! THe towns began to feel more like a late 19th, early 20th Century English town, and it all felt a little more familiar.

The main difference driving across this area was the sheer size of Ontario. We crossed the Manitoban / Ontario border late afternoon on Thursday, and to be honest I presumed the predicted arrival time in Toronto of 6pm Friday must be wrong! But we were heading through the province for ages.

One thing about this trip is that it did seem to make time go quicker. I can remember when we reached Saulte Ste Marie, probably with about 4 hours to go, it really did feel like there was a only a brief 10 minute journey left to go!

Soon enough though, I was in Toronto, and probably the longest (In terms of time) continuous journey was over. After about 6 hours sleep over the last 3 days I was delighted to be able to get off the bus, and just stretch out, knowing that I didn't need to get back on in another 15 minutes!

Taking the Island by Storm

Well, not exactly, although there was a bit of a storm blowing in when I was heading across to the island. The day started off with tearful farewells, as I was leaving Whistler with Amelia. Although I was returning, this was Amelia's farewell to the mountains before a train trip to, ultimately, Toronto.

But I was only heading to Vancouver Island, on the search for trees. The itinerary for the first day involved travelling Whistler to Vancouver, Vancouver to Horseshoe Bay, ferry to Nanaimo, and then bus to Port Alberni (Very important - when buying a bus ticket to Port Alberni, be careful how you pronounce it. I nearly got sold a ticket to Albany, New York!).

It took a while for Vancouver Island to impress me. It was raining as we left Horseshoe Bay, was blowing a gale on the journey to Nanaimo, and once there was kind of grey and miserable. This made the particular part of Nanaimo we were driving through perhaps even worse than it was. Although it really was just a collection of strip malls, fast food chains and tacky motels, and the bus station that looked like an ideal place to get mugged if you were into that sort of thing.

I found myself still sitting next to a guy who kept telling me that he hated most people, apart from the Scottish, Irish and Kiwi's. Thankfully my beard was looking particularly red that day, so he was convinced I was pure Celt! Passing through the small town of Parksville, we stopped at the bus station to pick some people up. A guy who'd been drinking on the bus the whole time got off to have a cigarette, only to find a random old guy pick up his case from the hold and try and walk off with it. The drunk guy promptly grabbed his case and pushed the old guy. This then prompted the bus driver to shortly after kick the guy off the bus due to being "Concerned about his conduct with relation to the old man"! This prompted the guy sitting next to me let out a little chuckle about once every 5 minutes about it till reaching Port Alberni, an hour or more away!

It wasn't until we turned away from the east coast, and towards Port Alberni that things started to improve. Suddenly the bus was heading through mountains, with lakes and beautiful trees passing alongside. Passing at very high speed I must say, and more than a few times I could be found gripping to the side of the seat fearing that we'd soon leave the road and career into the lake! The driver wasn't hanging around.

Just as the sun came out, we dived in between the trees on either side, and saw signs advertising Cathedral Grove, the main reason I was stopping over in Port Alberni. Cathedral Grove is a stand, on both sides of the highway, of old growth Douglas Fir. Looking from the bus the size of the trees was amazing. I'm sure I didn't see the biggest of the trees, but they seemed unfeasibly tall from the bus.

Now was the crucial part. I hadn't yet figured out the best way to get myself back to Cathedral Grove from Port Alberni. In the guide books, and on the websites that I'd looked at, it had described the grove as "Just outside Port Alberni". I was therefore thinking perhaps I could just walk back, or maybe hire a bike or something, or perhaps even catch a bus. As I sat on the bus expecting to see Port Alberni appear round the next bend, I soon realised that walking or cycling wouldn't be an option, not least as we climbed up, and then down some pretty serious gradients, at least more serious than I'd be willing to climb or cycle up! I then heard the news that there were no buses that would take me there. Bugger!

However, my spirits were raised when I was informed by my landlord for the next two nights (An aging hippy called "Wolf", who had spent about 15 years being a lifty in Australia, New Zealand and Europe, and also lived without electricity or water for another 10 years in Indonesia!) that hitch hiking was amazingly easy there, and that I'd get picked up for sure!

Or so he said. The next day I headed out in the general direction of the grove, heading out to the edge of town, deciding that this would be the best spot for picking up a lift. Firstly, it was about 5 kms to the edge of town, and it took me a while to get there in the amazingly humid heat. Secondly, once I was there I proceeded to stand there and try and hitch for a couple of hours, when I found out that Vancouver Islanders weren't quite as generous as I'd anticipated. I returned, vanquished, had a look through town and returned to the hostel, ready to get out of Alberni, and get to Tofino.

Following another terrifying bus ride along narrow lakeside roads, I got to Tofino, and was impressed straight away! It had the vibe of a Cornish surf town, not one like Newquay or Bude, but one of the ones that hadn't been developed yet, although it was certainly pretty crowded, and I knew for a fact that the town was booked solid, only managing to get into the HI hostel in the games room on the second night dur to it being so crowded.

Tofino is surrounded on both sides by water, with the beautiful Pacific beaches to the west, and wonderful views over the Browning Passage to hundreds of islands. The first night I was there, I just sat outside the hostel, and watched the sun set over the water. I was trying to read a book and listen to music, but was unable to cos I had to keep paying attention to the beautiful sunset, and a friendly cat!

After a good nights sleep, I decided to head out to the Pacific Rim National Park, with my aim being the Rainforest Walk. I had set out with two girls to get there somehow, but due to a combination of one not speaking English, and the fact that it looked as though hitch hiking was probably going to be done, I decided not to continue too far with them. Instead I hired a bike, hopped on and off I went. Of course, once again, what I didn;t realise was the distance involved. The rainforest trail turned out to be 25km away from Tofino, and after numerous stops and side routes I reckon I'd probably cycled 60km. It was pretty good though, and I saw one of the rarest ecosystems in the world, a temparate coastal rainforest. It was quite interesting, with some superb old growth red cedars and hemlocks, and some pretty strange sounding birds. The clouds soon came in though, and I managed to get back in shortly before it started raining. Luckily, the clouds drifted off just in time for another spectacular sunset spent down on the beach.

It was now time to move on. I'd been told I couldn't make the journey from Tofino to Whistler in one day. Facing the prospect of staying in Vancouver for an evening, which would be both annoying and more expensive than I'd planned for. Luckily though everything went to plan, and I made it back to Whistler that evening, ready to plan the next stage.......

Snowboarding will not be available for the forseeable future........

The end of the season was nigh. In many ways I was actually almost glad that I had broken my board. It meant that I couldn't work on the glacier for the last few weeks of the season, which, by all accounts was a blessing in disguise. I was beginning to get a little fed up of working on the glacier, as although I was on the slightly less labour intensive t-bar, I still had to do quite a bit of work each day to salt the lift lines and put up fences, which I had had enough of through the winter and spring!

Working on the glacier became even worse as the snow continued to disappear. Apart from anything else the riding gradually got worse, with more and more of the glacial ice appearing from underneath the snowpack. This meant that the public park was getting smaller and smaller. Admittedly this situation was made slightly better when the camp of champs closed down, and the public park moved onto their patch. Anyway, no matter how good the riding was, because of the disappearing snow it meant that the snow on the lift line out of the glacier had disappeared. This meant that the only way out was a sizeable hike up the cat track, and for those working on the glacier, there was little or no chance to go for any food.

So I was glad to be lower down the hill for the last week. I was generally chilling out on the lifts, having a laugh with the guests and generally taking it easy. Probably just as well each day was pretty easy, as it was during that week that for some reason I decided to sign up to work every single day!

I had decided that I needed to try and get that little bit of extra money, and I wanted to try and get a free Crankworx t-shirt, so I decided to volunteer for parking / customer service duties for the event. Of course, as things turned out, I didn't get a t-shirt, but I did get the fun of standing around in the car park, choking on dust all day, baking in the sun! What fun. Actually it wasn't too bad, as I did each day with friends so I basically stood, chatted and waved my arms a bit!

I was going to have the entire Saturday off, but when I ran into Shaun, suggested doing a night function, I jumped at the chance. Night functions have to be the easiest way to get some money. I sat around, ate the food, and read some magazines, until about 1am when I got to chat and laugh at the drunken wedding guests as they stumbled there way out into the late night. Luckily no one vomited, but the number of glasses that I got hold of was incredible!

This left only two days worth of work left, which passed uneventfully if quite amusingly! I even got roped into another evening function on the Magic chair, which involved two groups of 8 people plus bikes in 3 hours! Sometimes it seems that people are desparate to pay you overtime!

So that was the end of my working life in Whistler. I must admit, although I was happy to be able to live a life of relaxation for a week or so, but the time did feel a bit empty. I think there was a mix of reasons, primarily the fact that without work, there was no snowboarding to fill my time, knowing that I was leaving soon and the need to finish my packing, and the fact that a lot of my friends had left. Although I was happy to have this little bit of extra time to explore Vancouver Island, to spend with my friends, and finally travel to Toronto, I did feel that I wished I could just head home there and then, and avoid all this extra hassle in a way!

But, I'd booked tickets, it was all finalised. Off to Vancouver Island I go......