• AT HAND: Deuce Lee, The Big Dipper
• LOCATION: Near Victoria, Vancouver Island, BC, Canada
• DATES: ????, 2013
• STATS: 5 days/4 nights, 46.5 miles – 4,100 feet EG

An epic waterfall? A trail that demands the climbing of endless ladders and a hand pull cable car river crossing? Crabs caught fresh and cooked to eat on a river bank in the wilderness? Illicit, indigenous beers? Sleeping in a cave on the beach? Covering your poop in cedar shavings? Trudging through knee deep mud? Having an impressively bearded lighthouse keeper call BC Search & Rescue to evacuate you off the trail by boat in high surf while wearing a float coat because you slipped off the edge of a cliff and sprained your ankle so badly that you couldn’t walk so your hiking partner is left to finish the trail on his own in face-melting rain which means your trip gets cut short so you eat a bunch of poutine while waiting for him in Victoria? If all of this sounds like a dandy of a good time then the West Coast Trail could be for you.* Truly a rain forest adventure, managed and generously shared by the (stereotypically accurate) nicest freaking people on the planet. Tree tunnels and happy face leaves and pervasive, all-encompassing green that takes your breath away while you breathe it all in.

*Experiences may vary; the lighthouse keeper may have a shorter beard or perhaps even a goatee.

Of consequence: See above.