Day 71: Am I Getting Sick?
December 20, 2019
Kilometers: 1730.1-1761.4
Bay of Many Coves Campsite to Davies Bay Campsite
Well my tent didn’t collapse but it got pretty darn close. The wind was so strong last night it sounded like a jet was taking off constantly. On a few different occasions it bent my tent poles inward forcing me to push them back into place. The rain was also relentless. About halfway through the night I noticed that the bottom of my tent was wet. I’m already a bit too tall for the tent as it is and had to spend the rest of the night curled up to avoid getting my down sleeping bag wet. Needless to say, I didn’t exactly get the best sleep.
The rain stopped around 6 and I crawled out of my tent soon after. Everyone else had a miserable night as well. Despite the storm, the weather for the day was supposed to be good so we packed up and set off around 7:30. Charlie and I walked together for the first 10km as we cruised along the ridge we had climbed to yesterday. We got more amazing views of the sounds on both sides of us. A foggy haze covered some of the bays. Eventually the fog burned off and we could see the water more clearly.
We arrived at the next campsite that we thought about pushing to yesterday around 9:30am. We waited for the others to catch up. After about a break of 30 minutes we were off again.
We decided to regroup at a viewpoint that was another 8kms away for lunch. I hiked this section alone out in front of the others. The trail had some super hard climbs today. They were mostly hard because of the mud that had formed from last nights storm. The incline combined with the slick footing made it slow going for a little. However, we got more awesome views of the bays below.
I stopped at the overlook and began eating my lunch while drying my tent. The spot looked down on two different sounds that were both completely different colors. None of us could produce a good answer as to why they were so different in color.
After lunch I took off ahead of the others again. Weirdly, I started to not feel very good. I began to feel a bit nauseous and my neck got sore, which usually happens to me when i’m about to get a bad headache. I wasn’t sure if I was getting sick or not but hoped that wasn’t the case. I made my way quickly down the side of the mountain to the campsite. I arrived at 3:30 and immediately set up my tent, took some Advil, hopped in the creek for a bath, and then climbed into my tent.
As the others arrived I laid in my tent hoping that my lack of sleep the night before was the cause of my seemingly onset illness. When Charlie arrived he said he was also nauseous for the last few kilometers. It appears we may have caught the same bug.
We knew it was expected to begin raining again at 5pm and at 4:30 we saw the clouds come over the mountain opposite the sound. The wind picked up so Peter and I moved the picnic tables to act as wind blocks for our feeble tents.
We all laid in our tents as it rained on and off for a few hours. I made another freeze dried meal in my tent. It was beef teriyaki and it was actually pretty good. The drizzle stopped for a minute and I got out to take some pics. Tomorrow we have a super easy and short day into the town of Havelock, hopefully i’m not sick when I wake up.
