On Sunday morning, we woke up and split into a couple of groups for the rest of the trip. Michel, Julie, Tyler, Sarah, and I hiked a few minutes to the saddle, steeply climbed up to Mt Cokely, and followed an advanced/difficult, poorly-marked trail down to the trailhead. After a few hours of slowly descending on the ridge, we arrived at the trailhead. Below is an amazing video that Kate created a few days after the camping trip:
[vimeo 179294383 w=640 h=360]
Arrowsmith saddle 2016 from kate hamm on Vimeo.
From the trailhead, we drove about 45 minutes to the Co-Op gas station where we met back up with and picked up Julien and Rachel. From there, the seven of us drove to Nanaimo where we would be eating a celebratory lunch and also where I would be taking the ferry back to Vancouver. We ended up stopping at Longwood Brew Pub where we had burgers and beer in a beautiful environment. Afterwards, we said our goodbyes and Michel dropped me off at the Nanaimo Ferry.
I boarded the 5:20 PM ferry, and arrived at the Lyn and Paul’s AirBnB in Surrey, where I’ve stayed on three separate occasions during this backpacking adventure. After taking a shower, I sat down to work on the blog and noticed that the blog had been suspended because of a violation of WordPress’s terms and conditions. In short, this was a terrible, terrible feeling and a wake up call. It’s so important to retain full control over any information that’s important to you and to backup all information on a regular basis. Even though, the site was reinstated the next day, it was a terrible feeling and experience. Lesson learned.
