Alberni Bam Bam Official (Day 2)

Lake Cowichan to Port Renfrew, Pacheedaht Campground

Finally today, our party of five joined up with the “official” Alberni Bam Bam bikepacking route. It’s fun to travel with an experienced and well travelled group like this. It made for a low key and easy morning, everyone was ready to ride at 8 am. First five paved miles in our pace line formation went fast. A quick stop at Honeymoon Bay general store and we were off to climb, climb and climb. The elevation profile on the gpx tracker showed a lot of red which typically means that we will pedal road grades in excess of 15% grade and although some of the climbs were long and steep when we joined the paved road at around mile 25 we only had about 2100 feet but expected almost double that.

After a few more pavement miles we took our lunch at the Harris Creek Spruce recreation area where a Sitka Spruce stands proud with a diameter of about 13 feet. Kind Germans took our photo.

Traffic picked up and we carefully crossed single lane bridges minding the motorcycles and all the campers leaving Port Renfrew. We were at camp around two in the afternoon which gave us plenty of time for showers and laundry before biking almost 3 miles into town for dinner. The next two nights will be wild camping and likely no cell service until we reach Bamfield.

Port Renfrew is on the West Coast Trail and there are sections of the campground dedicated to the hikers tackling this 47 mile trek on the southwest portion of Vancouver Island. This trail is world renowned and I hiked it back in 2009 and it rained on us the entire time. Such is the life on the west coast but let’s hope that the little bit of rain that we got last night is it.

43 miles

2300 ft of climbing

My day 4