illustration: Ken Seabrook
The big sleep
How to choose a new sleeping bag.
Capsized in the storm-tossed waters north of Brooks Peninsula off Vancouver Island’s west coast, Murray Comley and his friend swam desperately for a pocket beach—then watched as pounding waves smashed their fibreglass kayaks to pieces on the rocks. Nightfall posed a new challenge.
“We retreated wet and cold to the back of a dank cave and shivered restlessly until the sun returned,” recalls the North Vancouver founder of the Ecospirit Adventure Club.
The next morning, the two men combed the shore and found their soaked synthetic sleeping bags wedged in the rocks. After squeezing as much water from the fabric as possible, they began the two-day bushwhack back to their vehicle.
“The second night was spent nestled inside wet sleeping bags laid out under the cedars amid a light drizzle,” Comley recalls. “Compared with the cave, it was bliss.”
Read more in the current issue of British Columbia Magazine
