Four Days Hiking on Flores Island

We spent the May 2015 long weekend hiking the Wild Side Trail on Flores Island in Clayoquot Sound, a 30 minute boat ride north of Tofino.  The Wild Side Trail is one of my favorite coastal hikes on Vancouver Island. The 11 kilometre (22km roundtrip) trail traverses numerous beautiful beaches as well as lush headlands through beautiful West Coast temperate rain forest.   The ultimate goal is the gorgeous Cow Bay Beach, a massive stretch of beach fully exposed to the Pacific Ocean swells.

Residing within the UNESCO Biosphere Reserve of Clayoquot Sound, Flores holds one of the largest tracts of contiguous old-growth forest on Vancouver Island. 41 km² of the island has been demarcated as the Flores Island Marine Provincial Park, 1.43 km² is the Gibson Marine Provincial Park where hot springs are located at the southern banks of the Matilda Inlet the Marktosis reservation is 1.2 km² and the rest is Crown Land.   Source

We avoided camping at Cow Bay Beach which was quite busy for the long weekend.  With at least 50 hikers out for the weekend plus a boatload of 20 or so who had chartered a boat directly from Tofino.  We stayed on the southern beaches of Flores Island for the first two nights near the emergency shelter, day tripping out to Cow Bay and back.   We build a nice little camp here with benches and a little kitchen.  We even found a well filled soccer ball on the beach which kept us active around camp.

We then spent our third night at Kutcous Point.  Kutcous Point was a stunning spot to camp; we explored the five gorgeous headlands in front of our camp and watched the sunset across the Pacific Ocean.

Below find a compilation of video from the four days of camping.

Pictures from the trip: