Hi Everyone -- Just a note to say we're back from an awesome paddle down from Alaska along the outer passage through the North Coast, Central Coast and Spirit Bear Region near Princess Royal Island and across the Queen Charlotte Strait. Possibly some Youtubes to follow over the upcoming months to be posted at: http://www.youtube.com/user/spiritbear26 a channel dedicated to self propelled nature sports.
August 31, 2009 (Port Hardy, BC)
We decided to end our trip in Port Hardy as opposed to continuing on to Campbell River or Courtenay -- in order to have a more sane transition back to city life -- with more time I would have loved to paddle into Victoria, but am also proud of the fact that I have paddled the length of the BC coast (not every cove and bay obviously) but the Alaska Boarder to Vancouver Island, around Vancouver Island and Haida Gwaii. Its a significant set of 3 long adventure kayak paddles with some pretty amazing paddlers, but after doing this I am humbled and can understand why it was so easy for aboriginal people along our coast to build the extensive trading networks from Mexico into Alaska.
Jonas was a great co-adventurer -- very easy going, excellent endurance and a good sense of humour. Jonas learned English from a UK style teacher and he had a fairly strong Swedish accent which meant her sounded something like a cross between the Swedish Chef and an English gentleman -- I finally managed to convince him to stop saying `bloody hell`` whenever he had a problem (e.g. with his infuriating camp stove) and to use either North American or Swedish cuss words. I know Jonas found me to be equally unusual -- he loved the fact that I had a craving for double Americanos and wondered how long it would be before I broke on our trip, as I didn't bring any coffee. I managed to keep things casual until Day 18 when we were about to arrive in Bella Bella and the first question I had was...is there an espresso maker in town?
Jonas, was a quiet paddler -- which meant many hours of meditative paddling. As time went on I learned to read Jonas`silences in responding to questions. The silence in answer to a question like "how are you do'in?" might be completely different from the one to a question like "did you catch the weather forecast?"
One example of Jonas' stoic character occurred at the start of the trip when he had to have a tooth pulled ...I used my multi-tool pliers, being careful not to shatter his tooth and gave him several Advil which he declined -- it was a challenge but after several tries I managed to remove his tooth. Okay I am stretching the tooth a bit, I managed to track down nearly every dentist in Prince Rupert on a long weekend and assisted him to get into a dentist chair within 24 hours of our arrival -- a near miracle -- and he was willing to paddle that day with a swollen face and four stitches in his jaw!
It was wonderful to have hours and hours of peaceful paddling each day -- so meditative and soothing to say the least (except for the first few days for Jonas) -- as anyone who has done long adventure paddles knows -- paddling is medicine for the soul.
Some of the highlights?
A 32 nautical mile paddle from Cape Caution through the Storm Islands to God`s Pocket and on to Port Hardy -- with a stop at Pine Island Light House and Scarlet Point Light -- along the way we met up with humpbacks, a group of sea lions who were curious about us -- at Pine Island -- and saw many orcas -- along with countless sea birds that are often surfacing up all over and diving for food.
From Alaska down to Port Hardy we saw thousands of salmon jumping everywhere - the coast is rich with salmon this year -- seeing salmon was an on-going experience. We often saw them jump within feet of our boat and of course wished we could just grab one. I’ve had seals and herring crawl onto my boat so to speak -- and was really hoping one of the salmon would have just jumped into my lap. Of course this is not an indication of the health of the fishery as anyone who lives along the coast knows salmon runs are collapsing all over - some runs are the lowest in the historical record and this is affecting the amount of food available to bears.
In the Koeye River estuary we were forced to leave the beach because of a large grizzly bear that was not at all afraid of us (as if they ever are -- but normally do not hang round while you are trying to unpack and make dinner). Apparently this one was an adolescent who's mom was killed by an older male -- the larger males had forced this one to the entrance of the estuary -- most of the bears were still in the upper portions of the river valley according to locals.
Yes we decided to camp in "Grizzly Bear Central" but as anyone who has paddled that section of the coast from Lama Pass down through the East side of Fitz Hugh Sound would know -- there are a lot of steep granite walls and not too many camping spots. Jonas insisted on not carrying bear spray as he felt that bears would likely not be a problem given his past experiences with grizzly bear cubs in the Rockies :/ ...but on this late dark evening he was quite nimble and agile as he got back on the water -- as the many bags attached to the deck of his boat seemed to indicate -- I never saw anyone get into a kayak that fast...I...however walked over to get my gear and calmly, with a the finesse of a highlander in a Stewart Tartan kilt ...looked around for a while at the bear and casually hopped into my boat...well after Jonas was half way across the cove ;) ... The next day we paddled about a kilometer or so up the estuary in hopes of seeing one of the 48 grizzlies that live in the area (based one DNA research of hair samples) -- but could only see areas where they had trampled grasses and wild flowers -- likely they were farther up stream at one of 3 lakes as the salmon hadn't started running yet.
Koeye River has an outstanding camp for Heiltsuk youth -- they have a long house, get to practice all aspects of cultural life from dancing and elder talks to fishing and cedar work. One of the great things that has happened is the internship of an elder -- who passed away recently -- in a mortuary pole in the area -- the first time this has happened in over 100 years and a significant positive change. The Heiltsuk also are doing extensive research and data collection as part of their growing responsibilities in managing the resources in their territory.
We had all of 4 days of northwesters on our back otherwise it was south easters, south westers or south...which translates as paddle hard into the wind. Only 2 low pressure systems with the associated gales occurred -- one resulted in a storm warning all up and down the centeral and north coast (5 meter waves on the off shore coast and winds up to 55 miles an hour!).
At one camp we spent 3 days waiting to get on the water -- for a 10 mile crossing more or less from Melville Island past Tripple Island Light, the international shipping lanes to Stephens Island (Prince Rupert is one of the busiest ports on the West Coast) -- this was one of 2 legs for us on our crossing of Dixon Entrance East -- a major challenge in its own right.
Speaking of crossings we did a lot of them and its a major theme for anyone transiting the outer passage -- we did 18 long crossings of 2 miles or more -- the most being 20 miles. Between Prince Rupert and Bella Bella we didn't have an opportunity to talk with anyone and the only buildings we saw were the isolated light houses at Green Island, Triple Island and Ivory Island -- these are (believe me) very isolated places. It was a lot of fun navigating - for example we accurately made our way through about 8 miles of fog between Port Simpson and the Haystack Islets and on the Alaska boarder using only compass and paper charts -- although we did bring a Oregon 200 GPS with all of the charts and topo maps of the west coast, we felt that it was a good practice to use our compass and paper charts most of the time, except from Bella Bella down to Vancouver Island where we mainly used the GPS.
I think we were lucky to have excellent weather paddling around the outer sections of Cape George -- the storm warning that occurred about a week and a half later would have made this a major challenge with the combination of swell, surf and wind (not that we would have paddled in a storm of course -- but would have faced a very challenging sea state afterwards).
I think the technical side of paddling open coast line with surf, boomers, surge channels and so on -- is extremely fun -- much like mountaineering, you are following a route through various hazards and it requires commitment and on-going assessment and risk management -- as you can often not just paddle into shore or out to sea. While we did not have much exposure to this form of paddling we did have the opportunity to do a number of fun technical paddles -- along the outer coast at various points -- Jonas led us through one section of technical paddling in Milibank Sound that was very fun.
The beauty of the wild BC coast cannot be under stated -- we are so lucky to have such incredible riches in our midst -- the name `wild coast` aptly describes what we saw -- there are many areas of the North and Centeral Coast that I want to return to explore more.
One night we were having dinner and saw a deer running in a bizarre and unusual way -- we realized that it was being hunted -- sure enough 2 wolves came along. It was wonderful to watch the whole situation -- the wolves working together, the deer attempting to escape by swimming off shore -- it worked and the deer likely lived to see another day -- though one time we paddled across a dead deer in the ocean -- just floating out of an inlet, it left me wondering how it met its demise.
One of the best experiences we had was meeting Leah -- she was paddling solo from Skageway Alaska and we paddled with her for 5 days -- she is highly skilled and is a really neat woman -- a guide in Mexico -- I have some photos of her heading out through a surge channel into some large swell as we paddled along towards Cape Caution in 23 knot winds (according to the nearby Goose Island Light wind reading) -- and a gale warning for our area. A few days before that we had the great fortune of being invited onto the Adenbroke Lighthouse. It was so much fun to meet the light house keepers at Adenbroke who treated us to great food, a warm room, and countless stories of the coast -- all the while the light, the stars and the sounds of the many humpbacks created the most soothing and life-affirming experiences we had. One of the lighthouse keepers (who's e-mail makes me laugh -- it starts off with here_to_save_your_drowning_ass@internetserver.com) was born on the light and after become a coast guard helicopter pilot decided that work at the lights was better and I can see why -- makes me want to apply! The other was involved in early efforts of Greenpeace and the Sea Shepard Society to end whale hunting and illegal International fishing in Canadian waters. Both of these guys were such a joy to meet and kept us talking for days.
Leah continues to paddle towards Bellingham -- as she is paddling in the steps of Betty Lowman (Carey) who was 22 when she rowed from Puget Sound to Skageway in 1937 in her boat Bijaboji -- named after her brothers -- Bill, James, Bob and Jim -- her and her husband's cabin on the West Coast of Haida Gwaii is still very much in tact as me and Ian used it on our trip around Haida Gwaii in 2006 and I believe she still lives in Haida Gwaii -- if you are interested she just published her account of her journey -- right now Leah is heading up to Cape Scott at the North end of Vancouver Island.
Both the inner and outer coast lines we experienced were wonderful with many changes in terms of micro climates and forest composition -- believe it or not the forests of the great bear rain forest are quite rich and diverse -- full of many animals, insects and plants -- at some camps we were eaten alive by small no seeums, at others by mosquitoes, and while paddling through on narrow passage, had the blood completely sucked out by flies the size of smart cars -- but for the most part the bugs were not any different than most other places along the coast.
We stayed at 21 camps between Alaska and Vancouver Island -- many were incredibly beautiful and others were extremely rough. One day we were surfing along with a 20 knot northwester and ended up at the perfect spot with the warm winds blowing in keeping the bugs at bay. Another time we stayed at a rough camp with the high neap tides coming in -- I miss read the tide tables -- accidentally flipping the page from Bella Bella to Bella Coola which sound the same -- any way the consequence was that high tide was not at 12:50AM but 2:15am and a higher tide -- with rain and wind and an ever rising flood tide we decided to move our tents to higher ground (me, I put my tent known as "Huba" on top of my kayak) until the tide turned -- it wasn`t so bad -- listening to music`(Krishna Das) on the ipod while drinking tea and occasionally hearing a grey whale or humpback nearby was quite uplifting. I found this trip to be much less difficult in terms of the technical side of things compared with Haida Gwaii or Vancouver Island but really rich in terms of the absence of settlements, the spaciousness and vastness of the many crossings, the beauty of the wildlife and the connections with other coastal travelers -- all of which I will remember the most.
No comments:
Post a Comment