Wednesday dawned sunny and clear. It was low tide, so I thought I’d take a stroll over to the now-exposed reef just off the point.
The ocean is lower than Beano Creek now, and you can see little streamlets of fresh water coming out of the temporary pebble dam that wind and waves had made a couple of days earlier.
We spent a couple of hours exploring the tidal pools before the tide covered them back up.
In this picture you can see that the higher the sea anemones are on the rock, the more they dry up when they are exposed by the tide.
The dam made Beano Creek another pleasant place for a dip.
This is one of the few places on Nootka Island where there is privately held land. This ten acre parcel has been bought by a cooperative. There are ten potential building spots, but only two or three have anything built on them.
As it turned out, the owner of this lovely tree house was a lady that I’d met the summer before, on Quadra Island. You can see a completed tree house, and another one in progress (the major beams and the floor decking are in place).
Both of the tree houses are actually hung onto the trunk of large trees. The top of this tree was expertly felled to create an entrance way, and forms a bridge over a small creek.
Behind the tree house you can see what clear-cut logging looks like. The owners of the property have mixed feelings about the clear-cut. It’s ugly, but it did create a road which lets them get to their property by car instead of by boat. Their vehicle got to the island via the UChuck III ferry, which we also took when we left the island.
We wanted to get an early start the next day, since we were planning to trek the headlands section of the trail to Maquinna Point, and wanted to try the coastal route, instead of the forest "trails".
We started walking along the pebble beach, which was hard going, but it ended half way around the bay. As we got closer to Callcium Creek, we were treated to another rocky tidal shelf.
With the tide low, it would sometimes be hard to tell whether we'd be able to follow the coast line, or whether we'd have to go through the forest.
Fortunately, earlier parties had left fixed ropes on some of the steeper sections of the trail. The rope wasn't really necessary - if you kept your balance, it was almost always possible to just walk carefully. The rope added a nice bit of security though.
Here, we'd tried going along the coast line, and had to beat a hasty retreat as the tide came up.
We were pleasantly surprised to find that Callicum Creek was a good source of fresh water, and that it was very easy to build a fire for the evening.
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