Mackenzie Bight 8/44 weeks

Another gorgeous day on the south end of Vancouver Island for our eighth hike. On this outing we were joined by Marlen and Jeremy as well as Alisa, Bernie and Kaiko. Mark has been endorsing Mackenzie Bight for a couple of weeks now. I have been reluctant because I figured that if you take people on a challenging hike before they are ready for it they will lose enthusiasm. Maybe next week they will look back on the difficult hike and talk themselves out of going again. My reluctance turned out to be more self protecting than I thought. Yes. It was me that I was ultimately worried about and rightly so but more on that later.
Mackenzie Bight is a challenging hike in a beautiful portion of the greater Gowlland Tod provincial park. I had to reference the word 'bight' in Webster's dictionary. For our purposes it is defined as a curve in a coast as well as the bay formed by such a curve. It also means the slack part in a piece of rope just in case you were casting about for the perfect word there. We will stick to the definition of the gorgeous curve/bay that we visited Sunday.We strolled down the wide path that is the Mackenzie Bight trail and climbed back up the Cascade Trail.
Looking at the larger section of this map, our house is just below Butchart Gardens. The symbol of the picnic table is the north end of this park where we had our first hike of the year. Its exciting to find such a huge park so close to our house. We could visit this place a number of times in our 52week challenge and never visit the same trail. Mackenzie Bight is a great part of the park and a wonderful place to hang out. Our trail dropped straight down to the water at Saanich Inlet. Pease Creek joining the Inlet is one of the most magnificent sights in the area. On a day such as this, the larger Inlet was drenched in sunlight but the end of the trail was still in the shade of the towering forest. It was almost like coming to the mouth of an enormous green cave.

The mouth of Pease Creek.

We were in the park for approximately two hours. There was at least a half hour break when we all gathered near the waters edge for qi gong; Marlen led us through a few brocades and then shared with us the healing sounds that he has been practicing. I learned that there is nothing like trying to match a healthier person's breaths to illustrate just how shallow my own lung health is. Duly noted as something that needs a bit of work.

We have been advised to hike a few places on the island that are more challenging than this park so I will need to work up to them. Im not sure whether it would have made much of a difference to have turned around and headed back up the Mackenzie Bight Trail, but the Cascade Trail was steep and rugged. There were wooden steps put into the side of the hill and, although these didn't feel so steep that the knees suffered, by the time I reached the top I felt like vomiting. At one point, about halfway up the trail I draped myself pathetically across the wooden fence to try to catch my breath. As I was whining out loud about the idiot that chose this particular trail, an extremely fit woman power walked passed me at an alarming speed putting my public display of exhaustion to shame. It occurred to me that a person could skip the gym fees and just hike the one hour loop in this park three days a week for optimum fitness.

Mi Ler Buddha

I love these shots...like a 60's album cover.

Our happy trail boys; Mark, Marlen and Jeremy.

the cascade

Don't take my word for it though. My inability to easily hike a challenging trail is the remnant of a misspent youth and I was the only person who felt this way at the end of the hike. Having said that I have to add that there is nothing so gratifying as the mid-hike belief that you cant go any further, and then getting to the end of the hike. Im sure I felt much more accomplished than my hiking partners who found this trail less challenging than I did.

A good motto to end this hike on...

Next week: Durrance Lake