After a landslide foiled our plans to do the Juan de Fuca trail only weeks before we were meant to go, my friends and I had to scramble to come up with a backup plan. Our plan B was Cape Scott, which I was really excited about as I’ve never been north of Sayward despite living on the island for 30 years, but unfortunately none of our vehicles were sound enough to travel the long distance on logging roads and we didn’t think insurance would cover a rental vehicle on logging roads.
Enter Plan C – Della Falls and Love Lake. Della Falls had never been on my “must-do” list – I just don’t get excited about seeing waterfalls, plus the hike in sounded too easy, and the $140 water taxi was also a bit of a deterrent. But Carmen, having just bought all the gear, did all the research to try to get us excited. Besides, we all had the time off and we definitely wanted to get out for a multi-day hike. I wasn’t super keen to lead a group of beginners on a less-travelled path, so Della Falls it was! With less than a week before our planned departure, we managed to get a 1PM water taxi from Port Alberni on the Friday with a return pick up on Monday at 4:30.
We travelled to Port Alberni with plans for a “quick” lunch before getting our water taxi; however, the restaurant (Pescadores) was super busy, so we had to get our meals to go and rushed to go get our water taxi. The ride across Great Central Lake to the trailhead took about 45 minutes. We shared the taxi with two lovely young women who we presumed were professional athletes.
Melanie had just completed a Chocolatier course, so after a short chocolate break, we hit the trail and arrived at the Margaret Creek campground in 2 hours (6.7 kms along the trail); the “athletes” decided to hike to the main campground near the falls (14.5 kms). The trail was easy as we expected, but the packs were heavy, there was rain in the forecast, and we did not want to risk setting up in the dark. We were the only ones at Margaret Creek and had a lovely spot along the water – unfortunately, the mosquitoes were relentless, so we all wore our netting (some more than others). Rather than sit outside getting eaten, we went into our tents at 7. The rain started at 8.
Saturday was a bit drizzly to begin with, but not too bad. We got onto the trail at a leisurely 9:40AM and took our time getting to our final destination. Along the way, we ran into someone Tiffany knew who was heading out. Here we got intel that the site at the base of the fall was 800,000x better than the main camp – noted. We had lunch at the cable car and after a fairly uneventful crossing and hike along the trail (including a swimming pit stop) we came upon the main campground. Carmen stayed at one site to save it for us in case the one at the falls (2kms further) was taken or we didn’t like it. It was great and it was empty!! I hurried back to Carmen and off we went (good thing we tried to save a spot as the campground was filling up).
We really scored with a view of the falls from our camp and a short 2 minute jaunt to the base of the falls – people on their way to the falls were jealous. The only gross thing was the toilet – I don’t need to get into why, but let’s just say that you wouldn’t want to use it unless you were desperate. We also ran into the “athletes” who it turned out were not athletes at all. Some hammocking, reading, dinner, and falls time later, it was another early night for us.
The next day we ventured up to Love Lake. I was excited to hear that there was a 750m elevation gain – yay, some “real” hiking! It was only 4km from the Septimus/Love Lake turnoff, but it was up, up, up – with lots of switchbacks to ease the pain. On the way, we were rewarded with a spectacular view of Della Lake at the top of the falls, in between Nine Peaks and Big Interior mountains. We reached the top in under 2 hours, then traipsed across a lovely meadow full of alpine flowers before getting our first view of the stunning Love Lake. We were all starving by the time we reached the top, so we ate lunch and relaxed a bit before heading down to the lake.
I had zero intentions of going in, but did soak my legs a bit. Tiffany got up to her waist and Carmen went for an actual swim up to her neck, and then a mum and her two kids came along and showed us all up with multiple head-under-water swims. Note, this is an alpine lake that still had snow on shore! Brave people.
Our descent took an hour and a half and we were happy for hammock time and another early night, but were not thrilled with some interlopers that decided to pop their tent right in our campsite!
We weren’t being picked up at the trailhead until 4:30 on our final day, so we weren’t in a huge hurry to head out, but managed to get onto the trail by 9. A group of 6 passed us while on the trail and when we heard a bunch of voices ahead of us, we knew we were nearly at the cable car. Carmen and I got there first and saw that there was something very wrong. A woman was sitting on the platform, white as a ghost and there were medical kits open and strewn about. Her friends had said there had been an accident and that it was bad, but didn’t really elaborate. Carmen jumped in because she is a nurse and was promptly given a pair of gloves, she soon found out what had happened – the woman had not let go of the cable when the car released and subsequently had her hand pulled into the pully system. She laid down and Carmen pulled off the bandage to see what was left of the tip of her index finger – it was not good! After wrapping it all up, the woman asked to tape the rest of her fingers – turns out it was likely she broke 3 fingers as well – ouch! I can’t imagine how the rest of that hike was for her as we were only half way.
We crossed the bridge near Margaret Creek and ran into our swimming family again – who were…. swimming! We headed into our old campsite to have lunch and a splash before hitting the trail again. And then we ran into them again in another great swimming spot, so this time we got in as well. It was lovely. We reached the dock shortly after that and had about an hour before the water taxi picked us up, so of course we swam. The lake swim was balmy and such a lovely end to such an amazing weekend. I am so grateful I went!!
Soul Adventurer 