The Abyss

One of the highlights of our trip to Nanaimo was getting to visit the Abyss via the Extension Ridge Trail. The Abyss is not mentioned anywhere on the hike, there are no signs or pointers so it's easy to get confused regarding where to go. There were many people there at the same time as us, equally as confused as we were lol If you're reading this in hopes of finding the Abyss, the TLDR is walk about 5 minutes (give or take) from the entrance of the hike to the 1st sign for the Extension Ridge Trail (don't confuse this for the sign reading "Trail Deactivated" that you'll come across first). The sign you're looking for has an orange diamond on the side with the #2 written in black. Follow that trail all the way up. It took us probably 20-25 minutes to reach the Abyss. While hiking up, you'll come across a couple of forks in the path. From what I could tell, for each fork .. the respective paths meet up and merge back into one path. Due to the complete lack of signage related to the Abyss, we were completely confused about where to go. We had come upon the Extension Ridge Trail sign but didn't realize at the time that was the correct way to go. We saw a cyclist riding through and flagged him down to ask if he could point us in the right direction. Well, yeah .. about that.... He spoke very confidently and pointed us in ... a direction away from the trail, along a path that I believe is the Trans Canada Trail. What the heck do we know, not much, as we blindly followed his advice. We ended up walking maybe 35 - 40 minutes, my plantar fasciitis yelling almost as loudly as my wife's hip lol, but no Abyss, so we decided to tuck our tail between our legs and "call it", just chalk it up to a lost opportunity and to leave the park with our tails between our legs, trying to foster an appreciation for the hike and the nature that we experienced. As we're almost back to the starting point, I saw some people that we ran into way earlier and they were heading up Extension Ridge Trail. Exhausted as we were, we decided to give it one more shot. We briefly befriended one person who was able to confirm we were finally on the right track as she had friends that already made it up to the Abyss ahead of her. Finally, our efforts were duly rewarded and as cliché as it sounds, it was so worth the effort! Needless to say, going down was much quicker. Ultimately, exhausted as we were, we left not only with a renewed sense of accomplishment and awesome pictures, but with a great story as well. When heading back down, we took the same route as we did when hiking up. However, there looks to be a faster way down (I can't speak to how safe it might be) as once at the bottom, we notice others had descended much quicker via the deactivated trail that I mentioned earlier in my post.