No use getting up early for two reasons. The boat across the Nitinath Narrows doesn’t start making the crossing until 9:30am and the tides are not favorable further up the beach until after noon. Our start got pushed back a bit further because Shelly and Carl in the Crab Shack didn’t open until after nine and were a bit slow getting breakfast going and computing our acculturated bill. We didn’t load into the boat until 10:15am. No matter. Low tide wasn’t until 12:30pm and the 2.7m tide to allow crossing the beaches didn’t happen until after 2:30pm.
Malcolm, Malcolm and Bones enjoyed a sausage, scrambled egg and hash brown breakfast. I ate my standard, and delicious, cereal for breakfast. Hippi Doug took us across the now quickly running inlet, tied up at the “dock” on the other side and we gingerly walked the narrow plank from floating dock to shore, glad to see it had roofing nailed to its slippery surface. Malcolm Jr and Bones headed up the trail first, Malcom and I lagged behind for a minute, started hiking, then realized we had not started our recording devices, got them recording and then started out again.
We were in the woods for the first few Kilometers, from Km 32 to 29, then dropped to the beach at Tsquadra Pt. We walked the beach, a mixture of soft, grainy sand and bedrock to Tsusiat Pt. Here the tide did not allow us to round the outside of the point so we took a short trail up over the neck of the point and dropped onto the beach on the other side. Malcolm took to the forest trail (he found it easier on his right knee which beach walking seemed to aggravate) while Malcolm Jr, Bones and I stayed on the beach to Tsusiat Falls. Malcolm dropped down off the trail to join us. Here we ate lunch at the base of the falls, Malcolm Jr went for a swim in the pool at the base of the falls, M & M played a little frisbee and Bones visited the facilities before we climbed back up to the forest trail and continued on to the Klanawa Cable Car river crossing. I got out ahead and had to wait about ten minutes for the rest to catch up. While on the platform for the cable car I helped two people crossing from the other side by pulling on the ropes to bring them across. Malcolm and Bones arrived as they finished their crossing, doing just one man to the car at a time. The second man noticed his bear spray was missing. Bones and I loaded ourselves into the car and started across, telling him we would send the bear spray back if we found it on the other side.
This must be the longest cable car on the trail, and the most difficult to pull up the last half to the platform. We found the bear spray and sent it back, but then couldn’t find Bone’s trekking pole. We concluded we much have dropped it in the river on the crossing. M & M soon followed and we were back on the beach again for over 3 Kilometers. There was no forest alternative on this stretch, (Km 23 to Km 20).
A series of cliffs and headlands forces the trail back into the forest for Km 20 to Km 17. Here, for the first time, we found real trail, not the root tangled, stump blocked, boardwalk mess the previous days had presented. We were able to cruise and covered the 3 Km quickly, At Km 17 we dropped back to the beach and pulled into Darling River campsite at about 6:00pm. Malcolm thought he would take the trail for this section, but returned to the beach in less than a Kilometer when the forest proved a little more difficult walking than the beach.
Due to all the rain the fire ban had been lifted. Once tents were up and dinners cooked we all sat by the fire I had started and enjoyed the warmth and light. A couple ladies camping further up the beach joined us around the fire for about 15 minutes. Bones sang a John Prine song and then I trundled off to bed. What a great day.
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