Clear the Coast 2025 update

Every expedition poses its unique challenges. For me, this year’s was sand + wind. By the end of a week, sand had infiltrated everything up to and including the saltshaker. Sand under my contacts, embedded in my scalp, pooling in the tent…I find I have a strong preference for beaches with small, weathered pebbles. They are seldom picked up on a summer wind and it’s easy to evict from the tent. 

This year, with only enough funding for a single trip, we decided to go to the North Coast Trail. We hadn’t been east of Laura Creek in years past and hikers were often telling us that the beaches at the beginning of the trail were loaded with debris. “Loaded” is of course a relative term. If they’d seen what we’ve seen, they’d have said, “moderately impacted”, but debris still needed picking up! 

We were able to send out three teams, to Laura Creek, Shuttleworth Bight and Nahwitti River. At the outset, I want to acknowledge and thank Living Oceans Director and longstanding volunteer Eric Granter, who agreed to lead one team; and David Jensen, also a volunteer and all-round backcountry expert, who led another.  

This is not to diminish the skills or commitment of any of the 15 others who stepped forward to help this year—they are all amazing! But it is a great comfort to be able to entrust the welfare of volunteers to other leaders and know that everyone will be safe and happy. And I also know that the whole team will join me in thanking Terry Grantner and Diana Brubaker for stepping up to help with the food, so that nobody was stuck with my cooking for a whole week. 

Team 1, at Nahwitti River, worked hardest to gather the lightest load. Eric posits that Cape Sutil must shelter Nahwitti and Skinner Creek from the worst of debris influx. Still, they filled 7 lift bags and hiked long distances over extremely challenging trails to do so. (But they had the nicest campsite, so there were compensations.) Noteworthy was the fact that they found Zim Kingston debris at both sites—it’s been washing around out there for 3 years now! 

Team 3 at Laura Creek collected the most, filling 18 lift bags and roping up a huge piece of industrial plastic as well. Of course, they weren’t content to stay on the single beach, but worked their way eastward toward the Team 1 at Shuttleworth. 

Shuttleworth…where there was SO MUCH SAND.  The beach stretches fully 2 km and then there’s a bit of a scamper to the east and two more beaches. We filled 14 bags and roped up a full-size freezer that was leaking its foam insulation all over the beach. 

We cleared all three beaches in a single day’s lift operations, then had our gear and ourselves lifted out to the road. There, we still had the task of consolidating the debris so that each bag held only one kind of recyclable plastic or landfill. It is well said that ‘many hands make light the work’ and also that ‘knowing the restaurants in Port Hardy will close soon makes fast the work’! It was a very long day, but we made it back in just enough time to get fabulous pizzas from Mo’s before he closed.