Every year me and 2-3 of my closest friends will go camping in the BC wilderness somewhere, never the same spot twice, always finding new and exciting places to explore. This year we went to Vancouver Island and started driving north, we figured we’d find some place not too far from Tofino because after the camping trip we usually stayed a couple nights in a hotel to get the full vacation experience, and Tofino has great restaurants and lodging.
We got to Tofino, went out to eat, and pulled up a map. There was a bunch of trails around, we randomly picked one and away we went. We found a road that ended onto a gravel trailhead. There was a house being built at the end of the paved road and we decided that would be a good spot to leave the vehicle. A security car was parked at the unfinished house and we walked over and let him know we would be leaving the car here, so not to worry about it if they switched shifts and a new worker assumed there was people lurking around the property. The security guard was fine with this and we wished him a good day and pressed on.
My friends and I are in fairly good shape, recently been declining a bit but we were able to hike with heavy packs pretty easily still. We got about 1 hour in and decided to stop for a snack/get changed into some warmer clothes. The trail was pretty rocky but wide open, hardly a tree which is weird for that area. We all had hammock tents so we couldn’t set up camp until we came to a forested area.
Couple more hours of hiking and we were started to change landscapes, the wide rocky path turned narrow and jagged with a mixture of roots and mud. The foliage began to get thicker and trees started becoming more and more prevalent. We would be able to make camp soon.
We crested the top of a hill and all of a sudden there it was, dense green forest waiting to be explored. We walked maybe 45 minutes into the forest until we came to a wall of rock that angled up over the ground below. This would be a great spot to set up camp without our hammock tents because the rock would give us shelter and we could look up at the stars in the distance. We brought out the camping stove, sleeping bags, and booze. Couple shots each and we were feeling pretty good.
One thing to know about our hiking trips is that there is usually some sort of drug that we do whether it be mushrooms, LSD, or maybe just marijuana sometimes. This one we just brought some weed and booze, nothing crazy. At about 10pm we were feeling pretty loose and decided to go for a short walk around and explore the immediate vicinity and decide which way to keep going in the morning. We didn’t walk even 4 minutes along the rock wall until we found a giant opening. A cave, not a cave that we knew was there, nor many other people we figured. We had our flashlights and walked in.
Instantly the silence became eerie. You could hear faint water drips in the distance but other than that, your heartbeat was the only thing making sounds. The further we walked in, the quieter it got. The wind blowing through the trees was just a whisper at this point. The ceiling came lower and lower as we got deeper. We are not cavers by any means, and to be frank, fuck that noise, I will walk through caves, but as soon as you ask me to shimmy on my stomach to fit through an opening, that’s when I turn around and leave. We were hunched and getting closer to crawling, we decided that was enough, we had our fun, time to go back. We turned around and headed towards the opening. As we walked we could see faint light coming from the mouth, almost there.
As we approached the light became brighter and brighter, we were confused, the moonlight wouldn’t be this bright, it was 11pm and we were the only ones around as far as we could tell. We turned a corner and all of a sudden, boom, we were standing in sunlight. I remember saying “What the absolute fuck!? How long were we down there?!” We all stepped out into the daylight and looked around. This was definitely the spot we entered from, I pulled out my phone and it said 11:09pm, I showed my buddies.
Nik, the oldest of the group just started laughing awkwardly, I didn’t know how to feel. I didn’t know what to think. My friend Mark was just staring into the distance, looking at his phone, looking back in the cave, rinse and repeat. We walked back to where our sleeping bags were and sat down. We made coffee and just sat in silence for 10 minutes before Mark suggested we go back to town. We agreed. We packed up everything and made the hike back in about 2.5-3 hours.
One thing about Vancouver Island is that most of the shops close at 6pm in town, only things open are hotels, restaurants, and bars. We get into town and its like a Saturday afternoon. Grocery stores are open, people with kids walking around, and all of our phones, including the car clock all read 3:00am at this point. We were grasping at straws trying to think of what could have possibly happened. We stopped at a gas station because even though I hadn’t had a cigarette in almost 4 years, I needed a fix. I bought a cigar and asked the clerk for the time/day.
He informed me it was July 16th, 2022, at 11:55am. I said thank you, walked back to the car and told my friends. We set our phones ahead the 8 hours we were behind and went to find a hotel. We checked in to a cabin/lodge type place called the Crystal Cove Resort. It was about a 10 minute drive from downtown and had cabins right on the water. We were thrilled. We unpacked, mind you we hadn’t slept and we lost an entire night somehow so we were tired but we were going to make the most of our vacation. We unpacked and started drinking/smoking, at sundown we had a fire out on the beach while we chatted and laughed.
Nik turned to me and said he wanted to walk up the coast a bit and see what was around, we agreed to go with him and off we went. We got maybe 2-3km away from our cabin and there it was, another cave entrance. We all looked at each other and without saying anything, walked directly in. We didn’t have flashlights with us this time because the moon was reflecting off the ocean before and we could see perfectly fine. We walked in maybe, MAYBE 2-3 minutes into the cave and decided that was far enough without light, we had our phones, but it wasn’t enough. We turned around and walked out. But we didn’t walk out where we entered, we walked out where we were the night before. I suppose the two cave entrances could be no more than 15-25km apart, not like we teleported across the globe or anything but we were very confused. We looked at our phones and there it was again, 11:09pm.
We had nothing with us, and we weren’t going back in the cave. We had to walk back to the original spot we parked the car if we were going to find our way home. We got close to where our sleeping bags were the night before and as we approached we saw flickering light coming from where we had set up camp. It was our flashlights. All of them. A pile of 4 flashlights, all of them on facing in different directions. As we got closer we saw our sleeping bags where we had left them, our cooking stove, our bags, everything.
We each grabbed a flashlight and looked around, everything was how we left it the night before, before we got back and packed up. We were pretty drunk and stoned at this point mind you, we were trying to laugh about it. We had thought maybe there was a methane buildup in the cave and we all hallucinated the trip into town, the daylight, the entire thing, and we fed off each other making it real for all of us. We joked maybe we died in a car crash on the way there and we were stuck in some sort of purgatory. We were too flabbergasted to think anything else, we laughed as we packed up for a second time making stupid jokes along the way like, “I swear we did this already hur durr”
We hiked back to the car, put in our stuff and I reached into my pocket. I had half a cigar in there still. Half a cigar that I couldn’t possibly have if we never actually went into town.
We heard a holler at our direction. It was the security guard coming to see what the commotion was at our vehicle.
He walked over and said, “Oh it’s you guys, you guys have fun? Why are you coming back at night, is everything okay?” We said something along the lines of yeah, we had a family emergency and have to cut the trip short. He told us “That’s too bad, but hey, 3 days out in the woods with friends isn’t too shabby”
I looked at my phone again, yeah it was 3am again, but 3am on Tuesday. We had gotten to the trail originally on Friday night, we thought we lost 1 night so it should be 3am Sunday morning.
We drove to Crystal Cove and there was a family vehicle parked outside the cabin we had been renting the night(s?) prior. We still to this day have no clue what the hell happened. We drove back to the ferry terminal and waited until morning, hopped on the first ferry home and next year we think we are going to go to Vegas.