Skin Freezes At Minus Forty: Seymour Narrows

A few days ago, my Father-in-law Chuck told us about Ripple Rock. Ripple Rock was situated in the middle of Seymour Narrows just north of Campbell River. This rock created terrible currents and whirlpools that would wreck many a ship. The decision was made in the 1950's to get rid of it. The solution was to tunnel under the water and place explosives within the rock. Around 1400 lbs of explosives were packed into and under the rock. When they pulled the trigger, what resulted was the largest non-nuclear explosion to date. The rock was gone and shipping was safe.

Chuck thought it would be a good idea to go and hike the trail out to the narrows. I went to the tourism centre and got a map and asked where the trail was. The young lady told me the hike was about 3 hours long. The map said the trail was 4km each way. The math sounded good to me.

What we were not told was that the trail was of moderate difficulty. There were some significant elevation changes and some scrambles as well. While this would not be terrible news for most people, my mother-in-law has two artificial knees and climbing can be a bit of an adventure for her. We realised the way things were going early on in our hike, but Diane decided to press on. She made it both ways with only light to moderate complaining.

The forest was incredible. You could almost image dinosaurs roaming amongst the ferns and giant moss covered trees. The endpoint was pretty worth it as well. We made it out onto the narrows at low tide and we could see the whirlpools and eddies around where the remaining rock lurked under the water. There is also a very strong current in the narrows. We witnessed a sail boat get caught in an eddie, get turned part way around and start going the wrong direction by the current before he got it under control.

One last point. I had decided to take Diane's tripod up with us so that we could take a family photo at the top to prove we made it. I quickly realized that the damn tripod was heavy. This was no travel friendly model that I was toting up the hills. As a result, I forced all of my fellow hikers to pose for photos at the end of the trail. There was no way I had lugged that God forsaken chunk of iron over 4km to not use it. I am now of the firm opinion that I will be saving up for a small carbon fibre tripod, no matter how long it takes me.