Beautiful sights and sounds of Vancouver Island!

Here are a few pic's and video of my last couple of weeks out and about.

Recently we went camping on friends land up above Jordan River, which is about 1/2 hour past Sooke on your ways toward Port Renfrew. The view from his land is spectacular although I didn't take the picture of it. However, you can see out over the Juan de Fuca Strait. It was a great getaway and I actually didn't take any pictures while we were there as it was time to take a break from all the technology such as my phone. I did however turn my phone on to record the sounds around us. We were camping right on a small lake and the sound of the frogs were almost deafening. I truly do love the sound of them, however, they actually were so loud around us, I had to wear earplugs to be able to sleep. Here is the video I took where you can see what our view was over the lake and the surrounding sounds of frogs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp2wuasNoNM&feature=youtu.be



Well, love it or hate it? I can't imagine actually hating any nature sounds but there are people out there that don't care for it.

Another time during the past week, I was driving along West Saanich Road and the view of the Patricia Bay and sky was truly beautiful. Here is the picture I took of the evening:

Our hike, well actually a walk, last week was along the beach at Island View Beach. It is not a difficult walk by any means, however, it is a good work out on the legs when you walk along the sand for two hours. There were only four of us that showed up and we were lucky to find that the tide was out. Here is a picture of the beach and the three that joined me:

 Have you walked this beach before? It is a great walk, but be careful if the tide is coming in. We had to cross running water a few times and well most of us got soaked feet. Our guy friend, as you can see in the above picture, is quite tall so needless to say, he didn't seem to have an issue with it but us shorty's did! We ended up getting back up to the higher part of the beach and walking a fair distance down the beach and turned around and walked back. All in all it took about 2 hours and you could make the walk even longer if you wanted to. One of my favourite views from this beach is the view across to one of the private  islands called James Island. Here is the view:

Well that is it in a nutshell for this week. We are headed out to climb Mt Wells tomorrow so I am sure I will have some great photo's and hopefully some good stories to share with you next week.

Nicole

Mt Finlayson - conquering my long time fear!

I have lived in the Greater Victoria area for more than 27 years and yet I had never hiked Mt Finlayson till just recently. Mainly because I always felt I was never in good enough shape but also because I had heard about how hard the hike was many years ago and I've had that fear ever since. Well I finally decided to face my fear and take our hiking group up there. Yes I was making my group face my fear with me. Well technically I wasn't "making" them, but they always know they will be talked about if you they don't go (haha). I figured we were ready and fit for it now since doing some more difficult hikes recently. That's the fun part about organizing these hikes, I get to decide what to do and my group just blindly follows - right my lovely hiking friends? ;-)

There ended up being 10 of us on this hike which surprised me as I had a *WARNING* in my email to everyone earlier that week that it was going to be difficult and possibly not good for people with height issues. We started up the trail and it was a constant uphill climb from the get go. There really was no break in the climb except for an area where we climbed down a gully area to cross a bridge and start climbing right back up! The following two pictures show some of us climbing down this gully on roots of the trees. It was a bit of tricky foot work.

...and here is the bridge then up the other side!

As we climbed further up, we came across some rocky area's where you had to figure out what way was best for footing. Here is a picture of our group at one of these rocky area's.

Part of the way up, one of our hikers had to end up turning around and heading back due to some foot issues she was having. Then shortly after that, we "lost" another hiker (okay we didn't lose her) as she was not able to go any further due to her fear of heights. It was when we were just emerging from the treeline and started to climb just on rocks with the spectacular but a bit scary view! Here is a picture of the trail where our hiker could no longer go any further. Our friend Cindy in the front and me holding onto the rock while passing this narrow ledge.

The rest of us continued upwards, now down to 8 hikers! We were losing them like flies. I myself was not feeling all that great. I kept feeling like I was going to lose my cookies so to speak. It was a hard hike but I have exerted myself like this before and didn't feel like this. However, my fear of heights was also starting to get to me. I don't have it as bad as others, but there are times that it can get to me. As we continued upwards, I started to feel a bit dizzy - not a good thing to feel on a rock edge! I said to my group "I think I am going to throw up". They of course figured I was not really being serious until I made my way over to a place that was out of the way and well, I really don't need to tell you the rest - especially if you are eating while reading this! Let's just say, I did what I had to do and I actually felt way better, so I continued upwards. I realized after that episode that I really should not have eaten bacon and eggs that morning. Duh, what was I thinking?

Here is a picture of Dan and I near the summit. This gives you a good perspective of how high we were. The building and golf course behind us is Bear Mountain.

And finally at the top! Our group of 8. Ahhhh....it felt good!

On our descent, we went back down the backside of the mountain. Many of us were glad we did as the thought of going back down the face of the mountain was just too scary! The backside is a casual descent through the trees and back down onto Finlayson Road. We had to walk down this narrow road with cars driving past us which was not the best place to be. It was our only choice though to get back to our vehicle's....well unless we wanted to go back up the Mountain and down the other side! Ha, that was not going to happen.

All in all it was a difficult hike but we did it and it felt like a great accomplishment. I don't think we will do it again anytime soon but maybe down the road to see how well we do next time. If you are afraid of hikes and worried about hiking up this mountain, you could go up the backside which would be a good work out but not as scary!

This week we are going camping for the long weekend so no hiking but maybe I will share some pics and stories about our camping trip next.

Until then, 

Nicole