top of page

West Coast Trail FKT attempt

On Friday July 22rd, just 4 days after winning the Toughest Mudder in Whistler I find myself sitting in a stuffy little room, with 20 hikers getting shown a slideshow on various ways of NOT getting eaten by a bear. Thinking to myself in private daydream that I will likely be so tired in the last 15km of the trail that I will be an easy (yet meaty) meal for any 4 legged creature. At that stage I reckoned that even an oversized raccoon could take me down.

scenery on the WCT

We returned to the lovely town (village? hamlet?) of Bamfield, where my lovely wife Lindsay and I took the water taxi over to West Bamfield and walked over to "Brady's Beach". It was an absolute gem and we spent hours there playing on the shoreline.

After an extended trip back across the inlet we went to bed in the Bamfield Inn (the only hotel in town).

We woke up at 5:00, got ready and headed to the trailhead at 6:20. Lindsay started immediately and I held off for 10 minutes to stretch and warm up a little. At 6:30am I hit the trail.

Back in the 1800s and all the way into the mid 1900s, the west coast of Vancouver island was a ship graveyard. The shoreline where the West Coast trail is situated is literally checkered with Shipwrecks. The coastline was such a long and barren stretch of land that even after sailors would wreck on the rocky outcrops, they could often starve of die of exposure, with no sound or reliable way back to civilization. Thus, the West Coast Trail was born, as a way for people to get to the shipwrecks and hike the forlorn sailors back to a warm bed and a big meal. I thought that it was pretty cool to be running in the footsteps of these people. Throughout my run I often thought about what the trail would feel like to those people who just experienced a brush with death.

The first hour ticked by in no time. I was running quicker than 5 min/km pace and feeling fantastic. I soon caught up with Lindsay, but she didn't feel like running my pace that morning so I bid her adieu and kept hustling. The WCT is all about timing. There are multiple places where you can either take the "Forest Route" or the "Beach Route". The Park officers told me that typically the Beach routes are quicker and since I was mostly running at low tide, I decided to focus on the Beach as much as I could.

The nice thing about the beach routes is that they are flat. No ladder bridges to slow you down. However, I had a stout headwind to contend with as well as energy-sapping, super soft sand. There was probably at least 30km of this beach running. After a while the relentless wing and sand started to weigh on me.

hanging out before the run

I hit the ferry crossing at 31km in, and blew a whistle to get picked up. I was 3:27 in, and I felt like I was making great progress. Despite repeatedly blowing my whistle, it took 6 minutes to get picked up by the ferry. This seemed like an eternity as I sat on the shore, eating and stretching. When I read Gary Robbin's report, he said that he was able to coordinate with the ferry driver to pick him up. I don't know what the current FKT holder, Matt Cecil did, but I was repeatedly assured by the (very unhelpful) park staff, that it would be only a "few minutes" and that coordinating with the driver was "impossible". hmm.

After buying a gatorade from the people at the crossing, i got back to it. I really started to get into a groove after this, as i zig zagged between the forest and the beach sections.

I came to the conclusion that I was well up on the record pace and became somewhat complacent. I was still moving well and pushing hard, but without splits or other things to go by, I was stupid in thinking that i had it in the bag. I knew the last 25km were supposed to be the toughest, but I had no idea what that meant.

It was as if the last 25km have seen no trail maintenance in the last decade. As a trail that you have to pay $140+ to run, (even more to camp on) I was shocked. The trail was in tatters, with bridges falling apart and boardwalks disintegrating under my feet. This, in conjunction with relentless mud bogs had me just shaking my head. Don't get me wrong. I LOVE technical trails. But these weren't technical, they were completely neglected. Where the fees go, i don't know? On two occasions, the force of me, running on a rotten boardwalk caused it to break, which gashed my leg badly once. I've spent 15 years building trails and there are numerous methods that can be used to fix this, but they just didn't seem to be doing that. [END RANT]

Anyways, I slowly saw the record slipping through my fingers, and despite pushing and pushing for the last 30 minutes of the run, I ended up stopping the clock about 4 minutes shy of record time, in 9:37:16. Stats for the day was about 76km, with around 1800m ascent. Oh well! It was still a breathtaking day spent out in the wilds of the west coast.

I think that this was definitely a very beautiful and tough trail, however; the logistical and expense of doing this trail, combined with the lack of maintenance put it at the bottom of my list for Top Canadian trails to run. I would run Killarney, Superior Coastal trail, or numerous mountain runs over doing the WCT again.

Course/GPS file:

bottom of page