Cathedral Provincial Park - July 25-28, 2019
My friend Ariadna and I executed our plan to do a four day hiking trip! Originally, we had planned to do the West Coast Trail on Vancouver Island but after doing Welch, we got hungry for hiking higher peaks. She found out that we could dabble in some scrambling at Cathedral. But to get there, we first had to hike in 16km to the core area to camp. With up to 60lb on our backs, this was probably the most gruelling hike we have done, despite the trail not being that steep. It was a 1300m elevation gain over the 16km, definitely long but doable had we not been carrying our gear. Ariadna’s pack was much heavier than mine so we switched at the 7km mark. But at the 11km mark, we were both utterly exhausted and I told her that I simply couldn’t carry her pack much longer. Thankfully, the trail became easier after that so after a long 8.5 hours of slowly trudging up the mountain, we finally made it to Lake of the Woods campground. We set up as far as we could from other people with the perfect view of the lake and the faraway mountains we knew we would be climbing the next day. Despite being utterly exhausted, it was all worth it. Needless to say, we quickly set up camp, ate, and went straight to sleep by 9pm.
