After about an hour and a half of fairly involved twisting, turning, scrambling, balancing, and reaching, we neared the next major indentation along the coastline: Rhyolite Cove. I had to admit, the continuous roughness of the terrain does get you wanting a respite, and we were looking forward to some easier beach walking at the cove.
We stepped onto the pebbly pink beach at Rhyolite Cove at about 1pm. All that coastal scrambling had generated a pretty good appetite amongst our group, and this was the perfect spot to stop and have some lunch. We located a convenient driftwood log bench and dropped our packs. Additionally, Pu felt the call of the water (as he always does) and hopped into the cool waters of the lake to wash away his sweat.
courtesy JInnes
courtesy JInnes
Over the Rhyolite Bedrock
Nicely rested and satiated, we packed up and continued our journey south. The footing was indeed easier here through the cove.
Rhyolite Cove is so named for the nature of the bedrock here. It is a different type of igneous rock (i.e. formed directly from molten) than that of much of the park, which is generally underlain by granite. Here, the bedrock is rhyolite, a much finer-grained (more "aphanitic" is the scientific term) igneous rock. This is the direct result of the molten rock cooling much more quickly, resulting in a finer texture.
The fine texture of the rhyolite here at Rhyolite Cove also meant that it had eroded in a much different way than the rocks in the rest of the park. We could see low, rounded shapes eroded by the lake's waves, and on close inspection, the texture of the rock was of many tiny little cube-edged pieces. There was very little in the way of loose rock lying about, and the eroded surfaces meant walking along the coast here was quite easy. Kind of like walking on pink pavement.
courtesy JInnes
courtesy JInnes
Different erosional textures
Different erosional textures
courtesy JInnes
Back into the forest for a bit
Coming out to more Rhyolite
After about fifteen or twenty minutes of rhyolite-walking, the rock changed back to the more typical granite. The terrain also became much rougher, with long patches of rough and angular boulders to cross, separated by stretches of easier and more scenic solid bedrock, often shaped into nice angles, corners, and rounded edges. We came across striking sections of dark, banded rocks as well -- yet another type of bedrock (called gneiss), this time metamorphic in nature (i.e. deformed and transformed by pressure and heat after it was formed). The gneiss was nice (ha), and solid and continous and fairly easy to hike upon.
courtesy JInnes
On we plodded, encountering just about every imaginable combination of terrain texture: solid, loose, sloping, flat, angular, rounded. Large boulders, small boulders, some sharp, some not. And thrown in with that, we had to keep our eyes open for the little blue diamonds that would lead us briefly into the trees and back out (Chris and Gillian were especially good at calling these out). Attention is certainly required if you want to avoid accidentally venturing off-trail and along a potentially impassible or more difficult section of coastline (these little into-the-tree bypasses are generally intended to route around these sorts of obstacles).
Making Southward Progress
courtesy JInnes
At about the 9km mark, the Coastal Trail went into the woods and began a bigger, steeper climb - about 200 feet up and around a (presumably) more difficult stretch of coast. And then we wound our way all the way back down to the coastline, where we were treated to more rough (but, admittedly, beautiful) coastline. We were starting to feel like we'd had a good day's workout, and thoughts were turning to camp[ing]. Although we hadn't been too sure about how far we would get (especially given the warning-ish trip reports we had read), we had mentally set Beatty Cove as our stretch goal (which was still more than four kilometres away at this point). when I pointed out that it was probably still more than four kilometres to Beatty Cove, I didn't get much in the way of an enthusiastic response. It looked like we were going to be looking for a stop point quite a bit sooner than that.
courtesy JInnes
Silhouettes against the Lake
courtesy JInnes
courtesy JInnes
Rough Trail makes you thirsty
