TOFINO, B.C. -- Two days ago it was pouring rain here hard enough to worry Noah. Yesterday afternoon it was blowing like stink, with whitecaps marching across Tofino Harbor. And today, when we set out kayaking on Clayoquot Sound, it was bluebird skies, light breezes and flat water.

That just about sums up the predictability of weather here on this ragged edge of the continent. You book your trip and you take your chance.

And sometimes you luck out, I thought, as Lilli and I worked our paddles like syncopated butterfly wings and pointed the bow of our double-seater sea kayak toward the giant trees of Meares Island, a place famous in the recent annals of British Columbia timber wars.

Clayoquot is pronounced "CLAY-kwat" by the locals.

It was here, in 1984, that environmentalists teamed up with the local First Nations tribe to block timber giant MacMillan Bloedel's plans to clear-cut the island's 22,000 acres of virgin rain forest, kayak guide Andy Murray told us. It was the first major victory in ensuing battles to save British Columbia's old-growth.

Most visitors to Meares, by kayak, water taxi or other boat, take a popular Big Trees walk on a boardwalk built for the purpose. But it happened that our outing coincided with an extra-high tide, enabling our flotilla of eight kayaks with Tofino Sea Kayaking Co. to land at a different trailhead, where Murray was our tour guide on a private walk on a trail unlike any I've hiked before.

Landing among the sea grasses on Meares Island in Clayoquot Sound.

What set it apart was the extraordinary number of underpasses and overpasses -- ducking under and climbing over giant fallen trees, many of them nurse logs that fell decades ago and now nurture their own sprouting forest. It's all part of this coastal temperate rain forest that gets about 11 feet of rain per year (Seattle averages 36 inches). Murray told us of one place nearby that recorded 18 inches of rain in one day.

At a pause along the trail, Murray spoke like an authority on biodiversity while we stood among shoulder-high salal beneath an a cappella chorus of treetop songbirds. "This forest hasn't had a major disturbance since the last ice age," Murray said, looking around at towering spruces and hemlocks, and cedars as wide as a truck.

Guide Andy Murray tells visitor Carrie Hofman, of
Seattle, about nurse logs on Meares Island.

We ended our hike at the base of a cedar so large that a hemlock tree with a trunk at least a foot in diameter was growing out of a crack in the trunk of the cedar, but it just looked like another tree branch.

As we paddled back to Tofino, wind kicked up waves enough to make the passage exciting and get us a little wet. But it was a good day. And a little seawater in the face just means we won't have to salt our supper.

Cost for the 4-hour outing: $74, minus a 10 percent discount because we were guests at the Hostelling International hostel.

P.S. Speaking of supper -- Big Daddy's Fish Fry, a little stand on Tofino's main drag, more than filled us up when we got back after our paddling workout and had a hankering for fish and chips. Warning: One piece of fish, Big Daddy's style, includes just about the whole cod. Two orders of the two-piece (@ $12) gave us plenty left over for breakfast.