Another Day at the Beaches

December 7th (Saturday)

It sure did pour with rain overnight, but as the sun was coming up in the morning the clouds were parting, and it was a beautiful day! It was the first sunny day in a long time that actually felt warm. We didn't have to wear our long johns or our puffy jackets; it felt so nice to be dressed in less layers. 

We rowed to the dock in the morning and headed to the beaches. We had chosen to wear our hiking boots instead of our gumboots, so we had to walk around many large puddles that still remained on the trails. In the area with the floating boardwalk, we had to go one at a time and walk briskly across, letting it float back up after one crossing so that the next person would not sink down too deeply. On Fourth beach, where we had once been stopped by the raging river that was too deep to cross even in our gumboots, we took a slippery log that bridged the river at the top of the beach, and made it across.

Patterns in the sand left by the waves.

When we got to Seventh beach Rob and Angela, the Hakai Caretakers, were already there. We chatted with them for a while, and played with their dogs, until they left.

We enjoyed the warm sun on the beach and had our picnic lunch, and then played some catch on the sand as the tide went out. I even took off my hiking boots for a while to feel the sand on my feet. It felt lovely, but definitely still cold.

A bit before low tide, and as the sun was getting low in the sky, we started to make our way back. Instead of taking the trail to Fourth beach we took the shoreline route that goes around the corner via Sixth and Fifth beach.

Stepping out through the rocks onto Sixth beach was beautiful. The sand was perfectly smooth and clean. Not a print, or a piece of seaweed, shell, or stick lay on it.

It was a perfectly untouched surface, and with the sun shining around the corner of an island, which is connected at low tide by the sand, everything glowed.

Looking back towards Seventh beach, we could see down the rocky coastline of Calvert Island and all of the islets and reefs with the waves breaking around them. The tundra-like rocky terrain of the inland hills was clearly visible because of the low lighting, and the half moon was just above the trees in the foreground. It was beautiful.

Coming around onto Fifth beach it was equally untouched and pristine. Unfortunately, even though we had timed our arrival at Fifth beach almost perfectly to low tide, the tide was not quite low enough for us to make it around the last rocky outcrop and onto Fourth beach. It was so close that we actually tried waiting for the perfect timing in the waves to run from climbable rock to rocky knoll. We got to the first stopping point, and although we waited, the perfect moment never came, the water was just a bit too high. Instead, we took the unofficial trail that went up along the rocky cliff line. It was a much more slippery trail than it had been in the summer, and we had to be quite careful. By the time we were down onto Fourth beach the colours of the sunset were beginning to appear. 

We made our way back to West Beach, stopping along the way to look back at the colours. We watched the last of the sunset from West Beach.

We then stopped in at Rob and Angela's place for a visit before coming home to get a fire going and have some dinner.
It was a lovely day!