Day #4 - Cape Sutil East to Cape Sutil

The first thing I do upon rising is to check on our innovative bear cache to see if it has been disturbed.  It hasn't.

Since our day's goal distance to hike is to be the shortest of any of the days on our itinerary, we are quite leisurely in getting up and taking down our camp.  We plan to reach Cape Sutil.  What we know about this trip is that drinking water sources are far and few between so a critical goal is to find a campsite near a drinking water source, and to set up camp while there is still daylight.  The sun usually begins to set around 8:45 pm.

Today we can hike along the beach because the tide is out.  The cobble beach with wet, slippery rock outcroppings, and the shoreline sloping towards the water (at the outset of the morning) makes the hike more strenuous and tedious than one might think of when one thinks of "walking on the beach".

Down the beach about half a kilometer we come across some caves hollowed into the sides of the outcroppings along the cliffs.  We walk by them cautiously because earlier in the morning, when Brian went to get water, he spotted a bear with a cub.  We venture gingerly into the entrances to a  couple of the caves.

A little further along, hiking towards us along the beach, we meet a young couple from Vancouver.  They alert us to avoid the more dangerous area of slimy, wet rocks by staying left.  A little past there the beach becomes sandier and easier to navigate.

In the early afternoon we transition briefly from the sandy beach to a forest trail and back on to the beach just before Cape Sutil.  (We do not go as far as the actual Cape).  This is it for forest trails for today.

We walk over half a kilometer along the fine, sandy beach to find an empty yurt that generally houses park rangers.  We look in the windows and see modest furnishings.  Wood for fuel is stacked in an outside shed.  A sign reads: "For Ranger Use Only".

We are expecting to come across a park ranger, according to information we have read.  We  hope to have a conversation and debrief some of our experiences.  It is disappointing to not find anyone about.

We pitch camp just beyond the yurt on the beach.  About a quarter kilometer after this is the path leading into the woods with the bear cache and then the pit toilet.  We go looking for drinking water and are surprised to find that the source is a drying-up stream, poorly marked and barely adequate to our needs.  Darci and India are able to filter out the sediment with their hand-held treatment pump.  This is the poorest (ephemeral) source of drinking water on our hike so far.

We appreciate the pleasant embrace of the surrounding beach, with its nurturing forest, and the sound of the waves.  Everyone is tired.  We look forward to the rest needed to carry on tomorrow.  We eat and chat around the fire and walk along the beach before crashing for the night.  It rains a little over the night and I wake up briefly around 3 a.m. to the patter of light rain on the tent fly.

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