Journey to the PCT: What I learned on the West Coast Trail

In this installment, I will be sharing some of the learnings and observations I had while backpacking the West Coast Trail. If you’re new to this series, check out my last post which answered common questions about my goals around the Pacific Crest Trail.

I wrapped up hiking the West Coast Trail on June 7th, 2026. I spent 6 days and 5 nights on this rugged trail based on Vancouver Island that is around 75km long. It’s an amazing trail given the historical and cultural significance therein (the trail has been used for hundreds of years as both a survival route for shipwrecked sailors in the graveyard of the Pacific, as well as a trail to connect villages). The management of the trail itself is a combination of Parks Canada and 3 different indigenous communities (the Huu-ay-aht, Ditidaht and Pacheedaht First Nations). Plus, it has so many different terrains to offer, including temperate rainforest (classic to the PNW) and coastal beach walks. It has a bit of spice that I’ve never encountered before, including 100 different ladders that must be climbed up and down, 5 different cable cars across rivers, and 2 different ferries. Combined with the tide tables (as some of the trail cannot be accessed at certain tides) there are quite a few logistics and considerations which keep you on your toes. Finally, the entire area is incredibly remote, with the exception of a few hundred indigenous people living many hours away from most civilization. As such, it’s quiet and wild.

I chose this hike for a few reasons. The first is that I was looking for a ‘practice hike’ to get me comfortable with my new gear and to see what it was like to backpack on my own for an extended period. The second is because this hike has quite a bit of lore behind it and is super popular in Canada, and I wanted to find out why for myself.

The trip was validating: I felt good backpacking on my own, and I felt like I had made excellent gear choices. It was great to stress test that gear in all kinds of conditions, from warmth and sun to 2 nights and a full day of rain. I learned that indeed I can handle myself on my own in the wilderness and that I do actually have the skills I need to keep myself warm, fed, hydrated and safe. It’s not that I really ever doubted those facts but until you try, you never know for sure. The first day or so I definitely would question some of my decisions – was this a good campsite? Water source? Am I eating and drinking enough? But eventually I started trusting myself more and really connecting with my body and listening to what it needed. I conducted myself in a calm manner, even when I had a stressful morning of packing up camp in a rush in the pouring rain. It wasn’t comfortable a lot of the time but I’m proud that I persevered.

There were a few kilometers where I felt nervous. The first was kilometers 13 and 14 because everyone was reporting a bear that was on the beach that I had to walk on. I was by myself at that point and was worried it would come out of the woods and with very little sand given the tides at that time, it might be hard to put space between us. At the recommendation of another hiker, I lightly blew on my emergency whistle while I walked to let it know I was nearby, and I didn’t have any issues. I had another kilometer or two like that where I had seen fresh bear tracks or scat on the sand and knew they were close, so I just made sure to sing loudly or blow my whistle to keep them aware of my presence. Given the remoteness of this area, these bears don’t encounter a lot of humans and are therefore quite skiddish and afraid. Still, I didn’t really want to encounter any by myself!

I mostly enjoyed my own company, and hiking alone for up to 8 hours at a time during the day. It was nice however to meet other hikers at night in the camps and have new conversations with people who weren’t in my own head. While I’ve done lots of solo traveling, this was the first time I’ve done so much solo hiking and after a few days you do find yourself at a loss for things to ponder on a bit. Still, it was quite meditative and many kilometers would go by where I can’t even tell you what I was thinking about the entire time.

Setting up and breaking down camp took significantly longer doing it on my own – the acts of daily backpacking, like filtering water, cooking food, setting up the tent, etc take a bit of time and I tried to improve my speed and efficiency in this. I’m sure over time this will get easier, but I felt I was doing a lot of packing and repacking all the time.

Some of the evenings I sat around a fire with other campers, and others I read and journaled in my tent before calling it an early evening. I was up early everyday, around 6am, partly with the sun and partly because the tides were lowest in the morning so it was good to take advantage of that on the trail.

I really enjoyed all the wildlife I saw, including humpback whales, garter snakes, banana slugs, sea otters, sea lions, seals, and minks. But probably the best part was just being somewhere so quiet. I would sometimes stop in the woods and wouldn’t hear a single sound. The silence was nearly deafening. It can be quite hard to find that kind of quiet in the ‘real world’. I could sing at the top of my lungs and there wasn’t anyone around to hear me or shout across the ocean at some of the coastal viewpoints.

I met some fascinating people along the trail, from all ages and walks to life, from 12 years old to over 70. There was the father daughter duo who were celebrating her high school graduation on the trail, the father having done the hike 10 times prior. The two daughters with their father in his 70s who was doing the trail for the 5th time. The firefighter from manitoba solo-hiking. The group of 5 friends from Vancouver who had gone to university together and had done the trail once before together. The tourists from Germany and Korea, the friends from Calgary, and so on and so forth. Everyone was so supportive of each other.

I honestly wouldn’t have changed much about my prep. There’s nothing I brought that I didn’t use. The only thing I wish I had more of was some toilet paper and a pad to sit on. My rain pants tore so I need to replace those but otherwise everything held up great. My pack weighed about 36 pounds on Day 1 with 3L of water and about 23 lbs by the end. I still had over a day’s worth of food leftover, which means I can definitely carry more than a week’s supply comfortably. In general my pack didn’t bother me at all. I was sore after the first day as I adjusted to it’s placement but from then on my pack weight really wasn’t an issue. Seeing how much weight many other people were carrying made me grateful for my investments in quality lightweight gear (and my ability to afford it, of course). It’s not that you can’t backpack with heavier or cheaper stuff – I certainly did for nearly a decade – but I do think investing really pays off in dividends when it comes to outdoor equipment. Not only does this gear last a very long time, but it totally changes the texture of the experience. Buying an expensive sleeping bag is the difference between being cold all night and being warm. Buying clothes made of synthetics or wool is the difference between your gear drying after the rain or not. And by having light gear, I truly felt by the last day or two like I was carrying only a day bag. It meant I felt confident hopping over boulders or trudging up steep terrain because the weight wasn’t wearing on my joints and causing me back or knee pain.

While the trail is supposedly one of the most difficult in North America, I’m not sure I buy that. It was hard at times but I felt well suited for it. The truth is, day hiking around Vancouver and in BC in general has been an incredible training ground. The trails here are like nowhere else I’ve ever hiked. They require navigating steep roots and rocks, exposed terrain, and insane elevation profiles over short distances. By comparison, the West Coast Trail has very little elevation gain, which has been my general sense of rating trail difficulty. But it was hard in maybe less traditional ways – hard in that there was a lot to think about regarding the ladders, the river crossings, and the tides. There was also a lot of mud and walking in the sand which were mentally draining even if they weren’t physically exhausting. For me, the hardest parts involved pulling myself across a wide river in one of these cable cars. My own body weight + my pack + the metal car I was traveling in was likely over 200 lbs. I had to stop a few times mid-river to catch my breath! The other hard part was about 6 hours straight of hiking in deep mud in the pouring rain. Each foot placement had to be quite careful so it was just very tedious and taxing to avoid hurting oneself. A lot less satisfying than the effort required to summit a steep mountain top but an effort nonetheless!

I don’t know if I’ll ever hike the West Coast Trail again. I’m so glad I did it so I understand what the hype is about and it was a fun, rugged adventure pretty close to home which is amazing. But I don’t think I’m going to be like some of my trail mates who repeat it year after year! There was a sort of magic to the place, so maybe I should never say never but for now, I’m just proud of how far I’ve come so far on this journey both in terms of preparing well and executing and conducting myself well in the wild.