18 years ago I’m sitting in my cubicle doing Java programming, and my tech lead comes up to me to chat about my next project. We discuss the details, and then she asks me the dreaded questions programmers fear which is “how long will it take?”. I stumble with some guestimate based off my limited experience and she goes along her merry way and plugs the number into a gantt chart.
Even with the emergence with the agile manifesto, and now the current paradigms of using 1-2 week sprints to plan projects, business and customers still are asking technologists to provide how long a project will take.
The unfortunate thing about agile is that even though it is an ideal way to run a project, financial models rarely follow that methodology. Meaning, most statement of works are written with a time estimate on a project. There are some exceptions to the rule where some customers pay for work 2 weeks at a time, but it is pretty rare.
Throughout my technical career, I have rarely seen any formalized software estimation models emerge that we all use, so I was surprised when I was reading How Big Things Get Done, a mention about software project estimation. The beginning chapters talked about the challenges and successes of large architectural projects ranging from the Sydney Opera House (problematic project) all the way to the Guggenheim in Bilbao (amazingly under budget).
The book proposes using reference class forecasting which asks you to
Get software estimates of all similar projects perform in the past in your organization with your current project
Take the mean value
Use that as an anchor
For example, if I was doing an application modernization of Hadoop to EMR and I had no idea how long it would take, I would try to get references to other projects of similar complexity. Let’s say I had data of 10 previous projects and the mean came out to 6 months. Then 6 months would be your anchor point.
The book does immediately point out that the biggest problem isn’t this approach, it is obtaining the historical data of how long previous projects took. Think about it this way, out of all the projects you have ever estimated, have you compared the actuals to your forecast? I bet you, most of us haven’t done these retros at all.
Some take aways for me is:
If you are in a large organization and you have done multiple projects, take the time to do a retro on projects you have done and store in a spreadsheet what project you have done, the tasks, complexities, and the actual time it took to finish. Unfortunately large companies have this valuable data but don’t go through the exercises to calculate this. With this, some rudimentary reference class forecasting can start to be used instead of subjective software estimations.
If you are a small organization or don’t have a history of projects and don’t have any reference point, then unfortunately I just think you are out of luck.
At the end of the day, I think industry needs to get better at software estimation, and the only way is to develop some type of methodology and refine it over time.
For the past couple of months, my Facebook usage has started to diminish. In the past, I used to post quite a bit, and I dare say probably 10 years ago to the point of oversharing. It seems to me that the popularity of Facebook has been dropping in my network to the point of many people completely withdrawing. It is hard to imagine, but empires in tech eventually fall (hello Internet Explorer, Netscape, or Friendster anybody?), and it is not hard to imagine Facebook joining one of those empires someday.
Last year when we were traveling through Chile, we made some new friends during a tour. At the end of our excursion, we exchanged contact information, and they wanted my Instagram handle to keep in touch. I was pretty surprised as back in the day when traveling I remember adding people to Facebook to keep in touch, but it seems like times are changing.
6 months ago I was mindlessly scrolling through Facebook and one post caught my eye. Facebook feeds are kind of weird, because our feed is a collection of family, close friends, and acquaintances.
For better or for worse Facebook creates a fake close friend illusion because if a friend posts often and you consume it often, you know everything on what is going on in their life. But does that mean you are actually close?
The post that passed by my screen was from Lara. After I graduated from the University of California, Irvine (UCI) with a degree of Information & Computer Science (ICS) in 2003, my friend Jesse started an alumni chapter.
I was pretty fortunate as my ICS cohort constituted of a bunch of nerds. They pushed me to study more and do better in my classes, and after graduating we all looked out for each other and got each other jobs. One of our complaints is we had no help from our upperclassman or alumni, so my friend took it upon himself to start a program where alumni would help each other network and help mentor current students in their career journey.
Lara worked in the division called external affairs. That entire group’s primary responsibility would be to facilitate communication and events with external groups. Jesse helped lead several events and there was one event I remember distinctly where I was part of a panel to talk to prospective ICS students applying to UCI.
At the event were about 300 high school students where the dean of ICS was there. The panel constituted of myself with some friends and the moderator asked us if we were still using what we learned in university in our current jobs. The panel all answered that we didn’t use what we learned in school, and as we continued our answers we noticed the dean of the school turning a bit white.
Noticing this, we pivoted our answers to how we “learned how to learn” and got out of that networking event without causing much more damage to our school’s reputation.
My communication with Lara would primarily be through these events, and we chatted every time there would be a networking event. However since 2008 I really haven’t talked to her in person and only casually have kept track of her life on Facebook.
The post that came across my feed was her mentioning she had leukemia. As the months progressed I would see her progress in fighting to get better and at one point it seemed she really turned a corner. However only 2 weeks ago I saw this post.
“Well, folks, this is nearing the end of the road for me. The leukemia is back and it’s not good.
Why is this happening? I don’t know, but I can only hold on and go along with it.
If we don’t get to say goodbye, know that i treasure our friendship.
💕”.
Then a couple days later, there was a message that she passed away on Facebook.
It’s weird you know, to find someone who passed away from Facebook. Also strange because I knew her, but really wasn’t close to her. I think we have these defined rituals of funerals for those we are close to, where we can grieve with family or friends. But the passing away of acquaintances has no defined ritual or rite for anybody to fall back to.
Easter Island
Before going on any travel trips, my travel style is usually to do as much research as possible. My general methodology is to ask friends for advice, read guide books like Lonely Planet, look up travel itineraries on Reddit, and try to schedule zoom calls with travel writers.
The last idea of scheduling zoom calls with travel writers was actually a new idea that has been rather successful. When we were planning Portugal, we had to make some major decisions on travel routing, and the guide books didn’t provide clear guidance one way or another. One day I was listening to a Rick Steve’s podcast about Portugal, and a local guide Cristina Duarte seemed rather knowledgeable. I decided to cold e-mail her to ask if she would be open to doing a one hour paid zoom session.
She actually responded pretty quickly via email and then we scheduled a session on zoom in a couple days. With zoom we had a google sheets up with a draft itinerary and a google map to ask questions about locations. Cristina was able to guide us on some major decision points as well as a lot of tips about the country.
This model was so successful in helping plan the Portugal trip that we did the same thing again with another travel writer Mark Johanson for Chile.
As we talked to Mark, he guided us on selecting a few regions, and for Easter Island said you have to book a guide to see the sights so you can’t see things on your own. Post pandemic, government regulations have changed (I think due to the better) to help protect the moais from tourists.
Oddly enough, I think my first exposure to Easter Island was when I was 8 years old playing a Nintendo game called Gradius. The game was a 2d side scroller, and you piloted a spaceship basically blowing things up. For some whatever really weird reason there were enemies in the videos of moai shooting bubbles of their mouths.
To this day, I wonder why these moais were even in Gradius. Perhaps maybe because of a story you will see later in this post?
Other than that video game, I really didn’t know much about the island at all. Even guide books for some reason didn’t provide much information about Easter Island.
With the advent of the Internet, I think there definitely are tradeoffs to traveling. On one hand doing research and learning about your destination is now easier than ever. There is no shortage of travel influencers creating videos on Youtube about destinations you can watch. With the Internet you can virtually experience almost everything before getting to your destination.
On the other hand, we have lost a sense of truly exploring the unknown and genuine wonder. I remember backpacking through Europe in 2005 with really limited access to the Internet because smart phones were not widely available. We got lost so often in the city, and nowadays with Google Maps, it is just really hard to get lost.
Getting to this tiny remote island was an adventure on its own. You first had to get to Santiago, Chile, then you take a 5 hour flight directly west. You are such in the middle of nowhere in the ocean that you can take a direct flight to Tahiti and then fly back to North America.
After landing and settling in our hotel we had a day to explore the tiny town as our tour didn’t begin until the next day.
The first huge surprise was seeing everyone dressed up in the streets in costumes like Batman, The Flash, and even anime characters like Naruto. After seeing they were getting candy from all of the store owners, we realized it was Halloween, Oct 31st. I asked how long this tradition has been around Easter Island and some shop owners said it came probably 10 years ago. I’m amazed how some of the weirdest holidays in the Western world can migrate all over.
The second surprise I had was I expected Easter Island to be way more touristy. In the town, barely anyone spoke English, so those old Spanish high school lessons were fortunate to help us survive going around town with Jason.
Kava Kava
To tour or not to tour? Often this is a question always asked when you visit a foreign country, but for Easter Island, the choice is taken away from you. Now when you visit Easter Island, you can only visit sites if you are going with a tour or through a local indigenous guide. Lonely Planet recommended the tour group Kava Kava, so we booked a 2.5 day tour with them.
Our tour guide was Sebastian, and we were super lucky as he is one of the owners of Kava Kava. In addition to being a tour guide, he formerly was a park ranger, and involved in the tourism ministry for the government.
The first fact we learned from him was that the name Easter Island came because the early colonizers discovered the island on Easter day. However the local indigenous people call the island Rapa Nui (which is the same name as the indigenous population).
La Pandemia
We all were affected by the pandemic in different ways, but Rapa Nui really was a rough situation. When borders were shut, the people on the island had to fend and survive mostly by themselves as the island was cut off from the world for about 1.5 years.
In a normal year, the people of Rapa Nui would get their goods from the bellies of commercial flights, but once that dried up due to the closures, the people had to fend for themselves.
Many of the Rapa Nui people reverted back to their roots of fishing and farming, but many of the Chileans on the island didn’t have that ancestral knowledge to rely on and took free repatriation flights from the government to leave. The population went from 10,000 people down to 5,000 people.
There was quite a bit of fear of reopening borders for quite a while until Omicron started. Once most people on the island got infected, and there weren’t any deaths, the island finally decided to open in 2022 with the requirement of a negative PCR test. However I think as of this writing, tests are no longer required to enter the island.
One thing which I think changed the experience of Rapa Nui for us was being on the island without many people. Since at the time they just started to open up to the world, about half of the restaurants and the town generally speaking were understaffed.
Touring
Sebastian could write a whole book about the history of moais and the Rapa Nui people if he wanted to. The most interesting thing to me about the trip was a reminder that history, contrary to our thinking of it, is not absolute and not set in stone.
Sebastian told us there are 3 important parts of the moai. First, the ahu, the ceremonial platform the moai is on. Secondly, the actual moai statue. And lastly the pu’kau, the hat on top of it.
We spent the first day visiting the Rano Raruku – the moai factory. Moais were painstakingly handcrafted out of a mountain, and then moved up to 11 miles away. In a totally different part of the island, the pu’kaus were made and then transported to the moais and placed on top of their heads.
Since the island just recently opened we had most of the site to ourselves. It was quite surreal to walk through moais through various state of restoration.
The current theory is that 4 people with 4 ropes were used to ‘walk’ the moai. With one person on every corner they moved the moais slowly.
Pu’kaus on the other hand are still a big mystery. To this day, archeologists, don’t have a settled theory on how these huge hats are placed on the moais. The further the mystery of moais, they are unable to carbon date the moais because there is no organic material on it.
The thing which moved me the most was that these people spent most of their lives making the moais, moving them, and repeating this process. Talk about a legacy because we are still admiring these statues 11 centuries later.
Sebastian said that most people ask how long it took to build the moais. He said that in our current capitalistic society that time is the unit of measure which most interested in. Back in the day the Rapa Nui cared of no such thing. I think there is something to be learned from this, where perhaps time shouldn’t be the most important factor, but instead the quality and the journey of what we go through.
I look at my life today and find myself so distracted with so many things I want to do. Even in my Google Chrome tab, I probably have 50 tabs open with 3 instances of the browser to show the extent of my multi tasking of what is on my mind.
Looking at how the people worked on the moais have got me thinking, what kind of legacy do we want to leave? And does making whatever legacy require a singular focus? Learning about the history of the Rapa Nui people revealed a beauty of doing one thing well, like really well, for a long time.
The Most Run Down Site
Towards the end of the tour, Sebastian took us to Ahu Te Peu (which oddly is on Google Maps and oddly is rated 4.1) where all the statues were knocked down and still on the ground. It was definitely out of the beaten path where we had to hike there and nobody else was there at all.
He said that archeologists have specifically not restored the site to continue to do research on the moais. I never really thought about it, but most of the historical things we see, look in awe, and post pictures on Instagram are of restored sites. Whether it be sites in Europe, pyramids, or temples, if things weren’t restored you would just see rubble.
As we walked around and looked and everything in a decrepit state, I found this moai site to be my favorite on the island.
Very rarely in life do we see something in its raw, unfiltered state. Half destroyed, but preserved, and probably never restored again ever in the future.
Japan and Rapa Nui
We were standing by Ahu Tongariki, a set of moais by the ocean. Sebastian explained to us in 1960 a tsunami caused by an earthquake swept the moais way off the platform and all over the place. Since these statues were super huge, specialized cranes had to be used to move it because of its weight.
The Japanese company Tadano had the idea to volunteer to help restore the moai for their marketing material. The idea was that the company would benefit from the press of having one of their cranes restore such a historic site. The goal was to use the cranes and the moais in their marketing material.
As the Japanese worked on the restoration, they ended up learning of the spiritual significance of the site and withdrew all of their marketing materials out of a sign of respect. From that time forward, the Rapa Nui people and Japan have had a special relationship.
In current times, there has been much discussion of repatriation of stolen artifacts from colonial powers. In the British Museum, in the front is a moai where the Rapa Nui have petitioned the British government for its return.
In one sense, museums provide people the ability to experience artifacts and cultures without traveling afar. On the other hand, there is a troublesome history of artifacts stolen from other countries not being returned. In the perspective of the British Museum, once that floodgate opens, then all the countries will start asking for their goods back.
Sebastian told us the Japanese also are helping the Rapa Nui people recoat all the moais every 15ish years or so as the moais are indeed falling victim to weather and time. That eventually there will be a time they don’t exist anymore.
Since the Japanese and Rapa Nui have this special relationship it was interesting to learn that the Rapa Nui volunteered loaned one of their moais to Japan for an exhibit in Osaka in 1982. All this kind of reminds me of the importance of earning respect of cultures we encounter, and the special bonds and relationships that can form from mutual respect of one another.
San Pedro de Atacama – Explora
The Rapa Nui trip was so fulfilling in every sense that if we ended our Chile trip there, we could have just went home happy. Fortunately we had another leg of the trip, the north of Chile, San Pedro de Atacama.
Talking with Mark earlier, he mentioned that this area either serviced low end backpackers, or high end fully established excursion experiences. Given there wasn’t a mid-range end, we opted to splurge on the latter. We chose Explora as they planned all the tour guiding for you.
After departing the plane and being exposed to the elements, it is as if a machine sucked all the moisture from my skin. I knew San Pedro de Atacama was a desert, but I didn’t realize how harsh it was. If you have ever been to Death Valley National Park, it is similar to that, but more intense.
Looking at the UV forecast, it was at 14 and uhh, I always thought 10 was the highest number. After an hour via ground transport, we arrived at the hotel.
Explora is one of those experiences where every one there is on the fancier side of the income spectrum. We met quite a few people there for their honey moon and chose Explora to not worry about the hassle of planning.
A trip planner helped plan our next 4 days. We did a mix of hiking, and photogenic driving tours around the city.
The tours we went on were really great and were made in way to maximize enjoyment. For example, you would start at one part of the hike, and they would meet you at the end of the hike with a picnic. In a regular hike you would start at some beginning point, but afterwards you would have to come back.
I had mixed feelings about the experience, as it was super nice, but only available to those with financial means to take these tours.
When I was back in Southern California recently visiting my parents, I met up with an old friend who was also in the computer science program at the University of California, Irvine. After playing a tennis set, we were just chatting about our jobs and we talked about salary transparency.
I asked if we had an alumni event, would he share his salary with our friends from our graduating class. He said yes, and we chatted a bit about how our generation is a bit reluctant to share salary with others.
I think within our social networks we probably can guess how much other people make through some visual cues (cars, lifestyles, housing, etc), but if we knew exactly how much our friends made would it affect our relationship with them?
My friend mentioned something super interesting where at his company, generation z employees are transparently sharing their salary with each other, regardless of the gap of salaries present amongst their peers in order to have the most information to see if any of them are getting underpaid.
I think there is a fear in letting people know how much you make. Fear that perhaps it might change the relationship, but perhaps some transparency might actually help in people make a decision when pondering career paths. I don’t know, this is really still an unresolved topic in my mind.
Rare Plants
The most memorable tour of the trip in San Pedro de Atacama, was the scariest one. We started a hike pretty high up, about 4,000 meters to see the Tatio Geysers. The geysers were super hot and cool to see, but the coolest part was starting a hike there along a hot river which was 40C. As we walked along the river bed we saw this yellow grass which only exists above 4000m.
Towards the end of the hike we saw these green fuzzy things. Our hiking guide said they were called llaretas, and grew one mm a year. He guessed that this fuzzy plant was probably a thousand years old.
I just stood there in awe at something which could survive for such a long time. When I reflect upon this time frame, I wonder possibility what things we have in our society today will last a thousand years?
The things we collect will inevitably go out of date and decay, but I think nature will reign supreme in the long run in reminding us what is important with its longevity.
Valparaiso
The last part of our trip was visiting the city of Valparaiso. I had wanted to visit the city (which is about an hour away from Santiago), last time I was there in 2015, but had gotten massively sick from some food at a restaurant back then.
Okay, this is my theory, but Jason disagrees. Back in 2015 we were eating at Astrid y Gaston in Lima, Peru where we ordered the tasting menu. There were four of us there, and we had one vegetarian menu as he didn’t eat meat. Protein wise, we had raw fish, chicken, and some goat.
After the meal, the 3 people who ordered the meat tasting menu all got bad cases of diarrhea, while the vegetarian friend was fine. Jason said it was because the vegetarian friend was from India and had a better microbiome, but I really just thought we got nailed from the meat.
This was an awful situation because I was going to hike the W, which was a 5 day hike in Patagonia Chile about 4 days later. After a couple days of suffering with diarrhea, I gave up (as well as the other 3 meat eaters), and took antibiotics to clear out our system. Seriously, after that experience I considered going vegetarian.
When we flew back from San Pedro de Atacama to Santiago, we took transit directly to Valparaiso. The city is known for being completely covered with graffiti art.
Our tour guides in the city were Sebastian and Esteban. We learned about the art of the buildings, and really the art on the buildings reflected either a love letter to the city or a statement of social protest.
This piece describes a protest against big farms taking water from all the smaller farms. Everywhere you turn left or right there is literally graffiti art somewhere. Even for local businesses, they request local artists to paint something local and relevant to their businesses on their storefront.
As with all informal economies, Sebastian told us the unwritten cultural rules of graffiti art. First rule is that artists don’t paint over each others art. If you did it and people found out, you would get a bad rap.
As we drove through byzantine streets, Sebastian stopped to explain this piece of art. What you don’t see is on the right of the building is the ocean front. This is an ode to locals who simply enjoy and never take for granted the sights and scenery of town. Many of the people on murals would be local people, like the old local milk man, newspaper delivery person, fisherman, etc.
This piece of graffiti art is an ode to refugees. As we finished the tour I didn’t actually think of anything as ‘graffiti’ as we have in our urban cities. Instead I saw everything as art, and perhaps this type of guerilla architecture and design is what we need in our hyper planned cities we have in North America.
Chat GPT
By now I’m sure now you have used or heard of Chat GPT. In short, it is the acceleration of something called large language models.
I was actually playing around this with my techie friends quite a bit, and I cannot stress how revolutionary this tool is. I’m sure a lot of people have been playing around with it to write e-mails and do essays, but at my work in software engineering we use it every day.
For me it came really natural to use because I watched a lot of Star Trek growing up. The premise of the show is there is this star ship, and it has a sentient-ish computer. You would just describe the scenes and then it would happen.
Similar stuff happens to Chat GPT. In my line of work, engineers are describing a problem and then asking Chat GPT to actually generate code.
One day I had an engineer approach me with kind of a weird problem. He told me there were a thousand production databases, and he needed a way to dynamically retrieve the meta data from back-up files to obtain the database name.
He showed me a query he performed on a back-up file then we proceeded working on the problem.
1. First with ChatGPT we established the parameters of the problems 2. Then we asked it to generate a script in powershell 3. The script looked good, but we asked for some refinement on how the data was being displayed
# set the SQL Server instance name and the backup file path
$serverName = "localhost"
$backupFilePath = "C:\backup\backupfile.bak"
# create a SQL Server connection object
$connectionString = "Server=$serverName;Database=master;Integrated Security=True"
$connection = New-Object System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection($connectionString)
# create a SQL command object to execute the RESTORE FILELISTONLY command
$commandString = "RESTORE FILELISTONLY FROM DISK='$backupFilePath'"
$command = New-Object System.Data.SqlClient.SqlCommand($commandString, $connection)
# open the SQL Server connection and execute the command
$connection.Open()
$resultSet = $command.ExecuteReader()
# loop through the result set and retrieve the file names
$logicalName1 = ""
$logicalName2 = ""
while ($resultSet.Read())
{
$type = $resultSet["Type"]
if ($type -eq "D") {
$logicalName1 = $resultSet["LogicalName"]
} elseif ($type -eq "L") {
$logicalName2 = $resultSet["LogicalName"]
}
$physicalName = $resultSet["PhysicalName"]
# do something with the file names
}
# close the SQL Server connection
$connection.Close()
# Output the logical names
Write-Host "Logical Name 1: $logicalName1"
Write-Host "Logical Name 2: $logicalName2"
From what I have learned so far, ChatGPT actually works bests for experienced engineers. The results are only as good as how good the questions you ask it.
Author Note: This trip was taken in 2021, but updated in 2023 with updated details.
I’m not really sure where I get these crazy ideas, but a friend and I booked the West Coast Trail. It is this multi day thru hike in the west coast of Vancouver Island, which is accessible via ferry. Unfortunately in 2020 the hike was canceled, but a friend and I fortunately got in the lotto and booked one of the most coveted start times, July 2nd. July typically is better to go because you want as little precipitation as possible.
I have done a lot of hiking, and cool trips, but never thru-hiking. What this means is you start from one point and end out and another point. You carry everything on your back including your food, tent, and supplies.
To prepare for the trail, there pretty much were two resources to read. This book Blister’s and Bliss and the super valuable Facebook group.
From reading the group, everybody recommended to either buy dehydrated food or make it yourself. The reason being is you don’t want to carry real food for the possibility of spoilage and additional weight.
I bought the book from the backpacking chef, and decided to start experimenting. First thing I bought was a dehydrator.
There is a fan on top of the dehydrator and you set the temperature and time. It runs typically for a long time, and takes about 8-20 hours to dehydrate certain foods. What you do is fully cook whatever you are going to eat, let it cool a bit, then dehydrate it from 120-135 degrees for multiple hours.
After much experimenting I successfully dehydrated: + rice + beans + lentils + tofu (you have to freeze it first) + kale + ratatouille + thai curry paste + quinoa
I didn’t really like dehydrating meat such as chicken breast because it kind of tasted weird at end of the day.
For the food I would pack one meal in a ziplock bag.
At the end I made 7 meals consisting of + japanese curry – tofu, kale, beans, ratatouille mix, textured vegetable protein + thai curry – instant rice noodles, thai curry paste, tofu, beans + lentils – green lentils, quinoa, salsa macha
For breakfast I packed oatmeal, for lunch tortillas, and PB&J, some parmesan crackers – bars. Total weight – about 9-10 pounds.
Preparation #2: Packing
For the west coast trail, you want to only have a backpack which is about 20-30% of your body weight. The lighter the better. That meant for me about 30-40 pounds.
What a lot of people do for thru-hiking is weigh every item and put it in a website called lighter pack. It basically is a fancy excel spreadsheet online.
During the pandemic, all sports gear in Vancouver was in short supply. I spent uhh, a lot of pennies upgrading all of my gear. I bought an ultralight 1.2 lb tent in the states, bought a new jacket, a new sleeping pad, and a gravity filter. I couldn’t find the tent in Canada, so I bought it from REI in the states, and then asked my parents to ship it up.
Visualizing my gear one last time I put everything in my bag for a final weigh in and test
Final weigh in was about 34 lbs. If I count the number of hours I spent dehydrating and packing and thinking about the trip, I for sure spent at least 40 hours planning.
One app which was incredible useful was Avenza Maps. With this you are able to see where you are relative to the trail that Parks Canada provides as a PDF. However be aware that the map is not 100% updated to the latest routes so use Avenza Maps only as a reference and cross-check the physical map given.
Trail Report Day 1: 75km —> 70km – 3.1 miles AKA – The day I despise ginormous large ladders
For the thru-hike there were two options, south to north or north to south. We opted to go south to north as it starts off super difficult, then slowly gets easier. Logistically, we spent a night in Victoria, and then got dropped off the trailhead in Port Renfrew. After a quick orientation we took a ferry across and this was the first thing we saw:
If there was anything to wake you up, it is a ladder two stories high. At this point I turned off my brain and went up really slowly.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but this trail was actually quite dangerous, because if you fall or slip, consequences could be quite fatal. In hiking, there are some interesting terms such as calling a trail ‘technical’.
When hikers call something technical it refers to the terrain being more difficult where you don’t simply walk on a dirt path. When you walk, on more technical terrain it may refer to scrambling on rocks, uneven trail, roots, etc.
For this portion of the trail it wasn’t too technical, but rather high in elevation. The hiking in this section took about 4.5 hours to get to the campsite.
In this hike, every campsite is by a beach because there are glacial melt from rivers which feed into oceans. This is important because you need to filter water at each site when you are done. Carrying gallons of water for 7 days would be impossible!
At the campsite there were a mix of people finishing the trail and starting the trail. It is pretty typical in any really big hike to inquire about trail conditions. We heard that many people bailed out at the hike half way because of the heat conditions. I’m sure you heard about the ‘heat dome’ in the Pacific Northwest, and temperatures were in Portland/Seattle/Vancouver from 100f and higher! Hiking in 100 degree weather would be brutal.
After we ate dinner, one of the ladies we were talking to came back to me and asked if I was a doctor. She asked if I had hydrogen peroxide and said I looked familiar and asked if I worked at the BC Women’s Hospital.
—— Aside For some odd reason, people pretty often have asked me pretty weird questions about my occupation. One time I was in Dallas Lovefield Airport flying on Southwest airlines waiting for my gate. Somebody asked me if I was a pilot.
I was kind of just puzzled like, what makes me look like a pilot? Just kind of weird what people assume of you.
Another time I was yet again at the airport (this was pre-covid life where I used to travel twice a month), where someone asked if I was an athlete competing in the Olympics. As flattered as I was, that was again a pretty weird assumption to make. I distinctly recall wearing sweat pants and having a Bose headset on me. —— End Aside
Knowing I didn’t want to cramp up doing yoga stretches on the beach was near impossible, so I did it on the platform of the restroom.
I’m sure people were wondering who that crazy person was doing yoga at night.
Unfortunately/fortunately I was getting strong 5G reception from T-mobile from Washington. Most people had the true chance to disconnect, but uhh.. I was checking my e-mails before sleeping.
Trail Report Day 2: 70 —> 58km – 7.4 miles AKA – The day I despise rocks
You would think sleeping by the beach is relaxing, but really that is far from the case. I didn’t sleep that well as the ocean was thundering in the middle of the night. I finally dug out my ear plugs and somewhat slept okay
One of the things which was really beautiful and I couldn’t capture in photos was that mornings unique sunrise. On the left where you see that bright light is the sun. As time progressed because of the cloud formation all I would see is an expanding line over the horizon.
Brushing your teeth also has some special considerations. That means brushing and flossing near the ocean and away from your campsite because you don’t want any food bits to be near your tent to attract animals.
Again, these were one of those times where I just shut off my brain, and prayed for safety the entire trek. This would be rated uber technical.
Later on in the Facebook group I read about someone who slipped off a rock and fell and had to be medivac’ed out. Looking back it was a pretty dicey section.
We finally reached a section called Owen Point, where you could not cross unless tides were low enough.
While my friend was taking a picture I witnessed someone attempt to cross when the tide was not low enough and slipped off a rock. She fortunately was okay. After watching several people get hurt, we decided to really wait for the tides to be safe and crossed.
After the boulder section there was a super interesting coastal walk for quite a long time. The waves really shaped the geography of the land in a unique way.
However walking on coast shelves had their own problems. You would need to be aware of what was slippery and not.
Certain spots looked like dead body markings, but they were just salt which had dried up, perhaps from previous rocks moved?
Similar to Galiano Island, again so many interesting formations in the rocks
After the coastal part, we reached KM 66 and went inland. The scenery changed back to forest
At one point, the trail turned to be pretty muddy and as I was stepping off a slippery platform. I slipped right off and fell 4 feet off the log and right on my back. Fortunately I landed right on my backpack. I was pretty shaken up, extremely scared, but Praise God had no injuries from that fall. Later on, I checked and nothing broke in my backpack.
We stayed at a pretty small campsite for the night.
Trail Report Day 3: 58km —> 41km / 10 miles cullite to cribs AKA – The day I despise uneven coastal hiking and realized I forget stuff easily
Paranoia set in after falling off a log earlier. I basically was watching nearly every step I was taking.
We had a super long 10km walk along the beach. You would think walks along the beach are fun, but nope. First off when you step, you sink into the sand. Second off, you are kind of walking at a weird 45 degree slope where your left and right legs are uneven.
—— Aside: the grand debate about shoes When of the topics debated quite heavily in the hiking community is to wear trail shoes or boots. For most of my hikes I have always worn trail shoes. The pros I would say are:
+ Lightweight + Dry quickly + You don’t develop blisters around your toes
I had always done hiking in very hot areas so I never had an issue with trail shoes. EXCEPT on this trail I got my shoes and socks wet. What happened is that my shoes never dried because of the mistiness and humidity of the trail causing 2 blisters on the bottom of my feet.
A lot of people say that boots protect your ankles, but I am of the view that having strong ankles protects your ankles. That means doing various lunges, steps, and light weights to help your feet.
I learned later from the Facebook group that trail shoe wearers should be bringing a mineral based cream to put on their feet when wet to avoid blisters.
Let’s say at the end of the day I am still a trail shoe fan, but now open to perhaps waterproof style shoes. Still not convinced about boots~ — End Aside
After endless walking, we went through tide pools again, and there were quite a few dead crabs, washed up kelp, and sea urchins. We even saw some green sand which I’ve only seen in Hawaii.
After a long slog we finally arrived at a pretty nice beach campsite.
When you cook in the back country, it is quite different than regular cooking. What you do is put your dehydrated food in a camping stove, add water, and bring it to a boil. Think of it as a healthier cup of noodles.
After dinner we chatted with a mom who was with 5 kids (!). She mentioned that her husband had a brain concussion 10 years ago and couldn’t do any of these hikes. She really liked talking with us because she wanted some adult time as all of her conversations were mainly jokes with kids.
I then proceeded to do my night routine and realized I couldn’t find my toothbrush. I started to panic and realized I couldn’t find my toiletry bag. I had left it at the previous campsite at the beach *face palm*.
Further more, the repercussions would be bigger because I wouldn’t be able to brush or floss for 4 days!
I approached Cindy (the mom) as she was sitting down with other people. I publicly explained my debacle and Cindy gave me some toothpaste in a ziplock bag. I needed to floss with braces, and another lady had dental floss picks which were BRACES FRIENDLY. The odds of getting this were so small. I offered chocolate to them, but they just said to pay it forward.
The bigger problem is I now had no toothbrush, but from talking to some people, they said that at the next stop, I probably would be able to pick up a toothbrush.
At late night, I fell asleep to the chorus of frogs chirping. Actually was quite soothing after a stressful day.
Trail Report Day 4: 42km —> 33km cribs to nitinat narrows
— Warning: below talks about poop talk One of the things hikers and campers talk a lot about is poop. You need to consider how you will poop and where. For this trail, there are outhouses, so all you have to do is bring toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and soap.
It is important to time your poop schedule because you want to go to the bathroom in the morning then in the evening. Because if you need to go #2 in the middle of the day, it is extremely inconvenient as you have to dig a hole.
My routine pretty much is wake up to poop, eat breakfast, then poop one more time before heading out. Fortunately throughout the hike I have pretty much adhered to this routine.
Another huge issue is peeing in the middle of the night. When you are warm in the tent, you have to change, walk to the bathroom, then walk back. Imagine being at home, and instead of walking to your bathroom, you have to walk to the building next to you.
Many people try to alleviate this issue by doing a double pee. So peeing at night, hanging around the restroom for 20 minutes, and peeing again. — End Poop Talk
This morning it didn’t rain, but the beach was EXTREMELY misty and everything got wet. That means packing up was miserable. I was so out of it I thwacked myself in the eye with my tent pole, but fortunately everything was fine.
We trekked inland and the trail was extremely overgrown and extremely muddy. After 5 hours of hiking we passed by this really beautiful lily field.
I knew the first half of the trip would be brutal, so I booked a cabin halfway. In the middle of the hike you have the opportunity to do something called ‘comfort camping’. There is a place where you can eat and order real food. Although it is at exorbitant prices, every morsel was worth it.
We finally arrived at Nitanit Narrows which is an area run by first nations, the Nitinat tribe. The area consists of cabins for rent and a super popular food shack pretty much everyone eats at.
It was odd that I had only been eating dehydrated food for 2 days, but I already was craving real food. I got the halibut and baked potato and it was GLORIOUS.
Afterwards we met Doug, one of the caretakers of the property. He showed us to our room and I was pretty pleasantly surprised. I had seen pictures, but this way actually better in person.
After drying all of our stuff outside, we sat in the patio area where there was a group of 5. They were heading north to south, and they asked about a bunch of tips on the difficult section.
Doug came by to talk about the land and his experiences here. He talked about how his family escaped residential schooling because his mom was white, but many were taken away.
Residential schooling has occurred in the United States, but it is a a pretty hot button issue in Canada. In short, there has been a long history of first nations (in the US called Indians or Native Americans), being taken away from their families to be educated in government run schools. Of course you can imagine the trauma, and destruction of families about this.
We were with 5 other guys in the afternoon talking, and when we all were talking Doug asked if we all wanted to go pick up crabs from their crab traps in a boat!
We all headed into the boat with the DOG, who amazingly enjoyed the experience and probably quite used to it. Crab traps were set-up with fish heads spread out in the lake and then later on they are picked up.
There are regulations where crabs have to be a certain size, or else they are thrown back. This does make sense in a sustainability perspective.
Trail Report Day 5: Nitanit Narrows 32 km to 23 km klanawa river. AKA: Approaching easy town
—Aside Hiking Debate #2 – poles or no poles You would be surprised but there are so many debates in the hiking community. This debate is to bring hiking poles or not.
Hiking poles to me are insurance that if you have a slip you have the opportunity to catch yourself with your poles.
For gear, my opinion is to buy higher quality but more expensive gear because if it breaks on the trail, you are out for the rest. I remember buying cascade hiking poles from Costco, and it breaking in the middle of hiking of Peru. That really was not a cool experience.
My vote is if the trail is remotely technical – yes poles! —End Aside After a refreshing nights sleep, we headed out once again. There was some mud, some slippery boardwalks, and a lot of walking through twisted roots in a forest.
We did a brief stop at Tsusiat Falls where we both jumped into the lake. About 2 km later, we arrived at a campsite where it was the only the two of us.
After setting up camp, I explored the beach area
Around near the campsite I saw mussel shells and a ton of logs everywhere. I remember reading that during the winter, torrential storms come in and reshape the beach landscape. Here are tons of logs that washed up in the beach.
Trail Report 6: 23km to 0km pachena bay AKA: Let’s get out of here!
The trail started again coastal with an endless slog of beach and tons of rocks and boulders. At this point I had developed two blisters from wet socks so I was cautious. We arrived at the last campsite before the exit at 1pm, and decided just to exit out of the park immediately. It was another 4 long hours, but then we exited!
The ending was super uneventful. Like we could really find the parking lot and there were no acclaims of cheer or anyone to even meet.
At the end of the day, a lot of people have been asking me, was the hike enjoyable or worth it?
I’ve been thinking about it a lot. I think my style of hiking is to hike to a super gorgeous viewpoint and take photos. The West Coast Trail to me is more of a hike of endurance as I’ve never done a thru-hike before.
Life revelations?
As I told some before I usually don’t have any life revelations during really challenging hikes. I guess that’s a good sign?
As in most things of life going outdoors is part preparation, part training, part luck, and all prayer.
Addendum:Here the recipes I used for my trip Dehydrated Recipes:
Black beans – 125F, 5 hours –
Mayocoba beans – 125F, 5 hours
Ratatouille – 135 – 18 hours – need to break it up half way, make sure all vegetables
