Port Hardy/San Josef Bay

I didn’t have anything planned for this day. While on yesterday’s orca trip I spoke with a few people to see what they were doing. No real leads there. I had decided to walk the estuary trail in Port Hardy, it’s not very long but the possibilities abound of seeing all sorts of wildlife.

I got up early and took off on the Quatse River trail. The variety of birds is amazing, all sorts of sea birds, land birds and raptors. I saw several juvenile bald eagles just sunning themselves and watching the area for food no doubt. Once you get to the edge of town the trees show up like a wall. If you go off the trail the moss becomes a thick blanket on the ground. There’s no way you can go by the wives’ tale that moss grows on the north side of the tree, they are covered with moss all the way around.

I stopped at the local visitor’s center for an idea or two for the day and was directed to Cape Scott Provincial Park, San Josef Bay in particular. It was a 70km drive, ~45 miles, on gravel roads put in place for/by the loggers. Even though it was Saturday there were still a few full logging trucks you wanted to stay away from. It took 1 ½ hours to do the 45 miles as you only averaged 30 mph. That’s where metric is good, I was doing 50 km/hr so I didn’t feel like I was going so slowly.

All along the way was a patchwork of forest. Every few miles there were signs saying when the area was logged and reforested. Only once or twice on this drive did I see a recently logged area. I couldn’t believe the devastation! I have never been in a war zone, I’ve only seen them in news clips. This looked like a war zone; tree stumps ripped out of the ground, limbs scattered in every direction with just small shrubs and grasses still growing. It hurt to look at it. It made me think of the car wreck on the side of the road, you don’t want to look but you look anyhow. Fortunately from looking at the other areas that had been previously harvested the logging companies realize that they have to ‘reforest’ to keep forests for future harvests.

Once I got to the end of the road, which got narrower as I was going along, I had another 1.5 mile hike to San Josef Bay. It was through more of the forest. The smells of the forest and mosses are very rich. Once on the beach I smelled the sea. The beach stretched for over a mile. Since it’s a hike to get there and the beach is so huge it seems empty. I saw 3 – 4 campers on the edge of the beach tucked along the forest. There were also a couple dozen day tourists like me just taking in the scene. From here the next piece of land you could see is across the Pacific Ocean about 4,000 miles away.

There are a number of sea stacks along the beach. They are the remnants of the erosion of the beach. The sand and soft rock eroded from the pounding surf and these stacks remained. There is all kinds of life on the stacks; from grasses and shrubs to full grown trees. In the low spots on the stacks are tidal pools with anemones and other sea life. When I was there at a low point in the tide these pools were about 8’ above the surf.

Thank you for stopping by.

Mark

The start of my trip/orcas

I posted this trip in an unusual order at first thinking I would only write about the kayaking. As I got into writing I decided to include all my trip. Read on...

This was the first real day of my trip. Yesterday I travelled from NM to Port Hardy, British Columbia through Denver and Vancouver. It’s been a while since I’ve travelled by air. United is down to a giving out a cup of something to drink. On the flight to Port Hardy from Vancouver they passed out snacks, juice and an after snack candy. This was on a small plane on a 1 hour flight.

After checking in at the hotel I walked along the waterfront and Main Street. Port Hardy is a town of about 5,000 mostly working class people, fishing, mining, logging and a bit of tourism. Any time one goes to a destination like this in the states it seems there are dozens of tourist shops selling all the usual tourist stuff, not here, there’s a shop or two otherwise the usual hardware, grocery, sporting goods stores and gas stations. Not even a McDonald’s, certainly not missed by me!

I quickly noticed the difference between the tourists and the locals. Since it was only about 65 outside the tourists were wearing the coats or sweaters and the locals were wearing T-shirts and shorts. I was one of the fleece jacket tourists. While walking along the shore line I started hearing bald eagles calling in the distance, the first time I’ve heard that in a long time. Berries seem to be growing everywhere; black, red and thimble, which is a very small version of a red raspberry. I tried one and quickly decided I prefer my blackberries. There is the scent of pine everywhere; if the pine scent isn’t there the smell of the ocean has taken its place.

I planned on a couple days of day tours then my kayaking trip, then an afternoon in Vancouver as the start of my trip back home, with the following day travelling the rest of the way.

I started with an orca trip with Mackay Whale Watching out of Port McNeill, about a 30 minute drive South of Port Hardy. My usual ‘don’t want to be there late’ personality showed up again, I got there 45 minutes early. I saw a lot of the town in about 30 minutes. Living in the big city spoils a person with all kinds of places to go to to waste time and money. Looking back on it now I realize that I was still wound up from my usual; getting up, going to work …. You know the routine. I did manage to slow down within the next day but it did take time.

Mackay’s has been around for a long time, they were one of the first companies to have orca tours. They have helped with guiding the legislation on how tourists are to behave around orcas. They are very knowledgeable about orcas and the local sea life in general.

The boat was full of tourists from many different places; the US, Canada, England, Holland and Germany. I was amazed at all the European tourists coming to this remote part of the world. You have to really want to come here because there is no direct way to get here.

The day started out nice and clear but it quickly turned cloudy and stayed that way for a good portion of the day. All along the way we saw and heard bald eagles. After an hour or so of travelling we had our first sighting, a pod of three to four orcas along the shore. They were quite far away but we all kept snapping photos with the hope they would get closer but you shoot anyway because this may be the only sighting. Nature does not operate on a clock!

Almost everybody in the area, especially locals, call in any orca sightings on the radio so if there are any orcas they probably have been seen and it has been passed along on the radio. It certainly increases the chances of finding some considering the size of the area they cover.

After following the first pod for 10 minutes or so Bill took off across the Johnstone Strait to find some other orcas. Within a few minutes more orcas appeared, much closer this time. Everybody jumped up and started photographing again. Bill identified one of the orcas as Springer who had somehow gotten lost on the south end of Vancouver Island. The northern orcas and southern orcas do not associate with each other so having Springer accepted back into its north pod is significant.

The orcas were swimming up and down the channel just feeding. It was a lot of fun to see them up close; you could see the different markings which are used to identify them. After seeing several pods over the next hour or two we stopped for a lunch of soup and a roll followed by a dessert. When Nicole brought up the dessert we were too busy photographing the sea lions on the shore to stop for dessert.

On our way back to drop some of the other tourists at a remote hotel we saw a black bear wandering along the shore. She looked over at us then just proceeded to walk along the shore not paying us any mind.

The trip was great, I highly recommend it. My only disappointment is that I did not get the ultimate orca photo. It is hard work aiming your camera with a long lens to get that close-up photo on a moving boat when you are not certain when and where your orca will make its next appearance. I will have to try again.

After the orca tour was over I continued on to Telegraph Cove another 20 minutes south of Port McNeill. I toured around the tourist shops and visited Tide Rip tours where I had made reservations to go on a Grizzly bear tour. They have been seeing bears consistently so our chances are good to see a bear or two. I can’t wait.

Thank you for stopping by.

Mark

Kayaking day 6 - the final day

I slept remarkably well considering my 2” thermarest pad was the only thing cushioning me from the rocks. It lightly rained off and on most of the night. I woke up to the sound of a humpback whale blowing somewhere near.

We had breakfast and packed in light rain showers and cloudy skies. That was the forecast for the day. You could tell we were getting closer to Port Hardy by all the fishing boats out in the channel. Everybody was out salmon fishing because the salmon were starting to run up the rivers.

We made one brief stop on a beach to stretch our legs. The tide made its appearance again. Not more than 5 minutes after we stopped and put the kayaks on land we found ourselves up to our ankles in water! I’ve never seen such a change.

It seemed that the closer we got to town the faster we paddled. I don’t know if it’s because of the dark rain cloud coming our way or the promise of a shower once we checked back into the hotel, the latter I think.

After packing up all our stuff and another great lunch served by our guides we checked into the hotel and had a post trip coffee and visit with our guides before they went on their way to prepare for the next week’s trip.

All the guests went back to their hotels for a long hot shower, at least I did, a change of clothes, and a dinner with our fellow kayakers. We had a great time telling stories of our trip and I’m certain that I may run into them again on another kayaking trip.

Kara, on of our guides, kept records of our trip. In all we kayaked 50 miles and averaged 2 – 2.5 knots, which she said is quite good.

I had a great time on this portion of my trip. I’m certainly hoping I will be able to do it again, maybe not at this location but somewhere. I guess that’s the measure of whether you really had a good time.

Stay tuned… I will also be reporting on the other parts of my trip.

Thank you for stopping by.
Mark

Kayaking day 5

Woke to light rain. Helped put of a rain fly over the kitchen in case the rain gets worse. As we were waiting for breakfast and starting to pack we could hear a humpback whale blowing in the distance. Once we heard it everybody came down to look. We could see the spouts of mist from the whale but not any more than that. A couple blows later we saw the tail flip as it was going for a deep dive. One of the guides said we may not hear from it again for another 20 minutes.

Once we were packed up we took of towards the Browning Wall. This area was viewed by Jacques Cousteau and is known for its great diving. The wall goes down 700’ before it hits the bottom of the channel. We are here at low tide, a great time to view all the sea life on the wall. We saw hundreds of starfish and sea anemones of all different types.

From there we went back across the Goletas channel to follow along the Vancouver island coast. Just as we were getting ready to cross the channel a pod of transient orcas were passing through the channel. There must have been 3 – 4 orcas in the pod. We paddled up the island a bit and stopped for lunch on a small beach next to a small waterfall.

We continued on to our campsite on Vancouver island. Now we have to be alert for black bears because VI is large enough to support bears. All the other islands we had been staying on up to this point were too small to support large animals such as bears. When we got to our campsite there was a kayaker already set up. He was more than happy to have company because he had to scare a couple black bears off the beach before he could set up camp. I’m sure we made more than enough noise to keep the bears away.

This was the first time we actually camped on the beach. One had to make certain to move all the round stones from under one’s tent/sleeping bag. Fortunately most of the stones were flat so I did have a comfortable night’s sleep.

The trip up to this point has been great, tomorrow we are heading back to the real world?!?!

Thank you for stopping by.
Mark

British Columbia - Vancouver Island geography

Being a map nut from way back I don't know why I didn't include this at the start of the trip. I'm including a couple maps starting with the northwestern corner of the US and British Columbia getting more detailed with each map. Enjoy.

My thanks to Google Earth for their maps. Vancouver Island itself is over 200 miles in length.

Here you can see the overall locations of our lunch sites and camp sites. I grouped the days by color.

I've included our path for the trip. We took a water taxi to Hurst Island and started paddling from there. We circumnavigated Nigei Island going clockwise. We finished our trip at Port Hardy the launching point.

Thank you for stopping by.

Mark

Kayaking day 4

The little light went on in my head today, I hadn’t included a map of the area we covered so this location is a mystery to you. Well better late than never. We actually started off in Port Hardy with a water taxi ride to Hurst island where we staged to kayaks and on to our trip.

We were told yesterday this would be our longest day on the water, somewhere around 12 nautical miles, almost 13 statute miles. Kara kept track of the details for us and it turned out it took us between 4 and 4.5 hours to cover that distance. It certainly helped having the current and wind going with us for a change!

The day started out and stayed mostly clear. During the morning there was wispy fog blowing through the trees. This was neat to see because we don’t have much fog in the desert. Once we got around to the Northeast side of the Nigei island we had the wind and current to our backs. One really needs to pay attention to what is going on when exposed to the open sea. We had 3’ swells which were going in our direction. It felt a little like the kiddie roller coaster where you are up high on the swell for a few seconds see all around you, then down to the bottom where all you can see are the swells immediately around you. Kind of like a Disney ‘C’ ticket ride. (For those of you folks that remember such things) Terry kept directing us when to stay close to shore away from the fast currents and when to go out because of the rocks just under the surface. I just kept in his tracks, or tried to since I was in command of the rudder on this day. While we are still quite far from any towns this side of Nigei island faces the Queen Charlotte Strait one of the main channels for the cruise ships going to and from Alaska and the BC ferries going from city to city.

We stopped in a little inlet to stretch our legs and lunch; fruit, Greek salad and dessert. The tide was going out by this time so we had to walk our kayaks out past shallow rocks to deeper spots in order to paddle off. At this point we stayed in the quieter water between the smaller islands for much calmer water.

We came to Bob’s Landing on Balaklava island to camp for the night. There was a very small island between the camp site and us which formed a funnel for the water, you could actually see rapids from the velocity of the water flowing through the channel! Bob’s Landing was a former logging site so we had a large area of open grass to pitch our tents. Bob’s Landing is the first site we had to share with other kayakers. Up to this point we only ran into a total of 10 or so people the entire trip. After setting up I wandered up one of the trails to an area logged sometime ago. There were lots of tree stumps still lying around but also lots of small seedling coming up. Several others got back to their hot game of Uno. I don’t know who was winning but there was a lot of Uno trash talking the next day. By the time evening came it was windy and very cool. We all put on our wind/rain gear and the heavier fleece clothing because of the wind. I managed to stay up late enough to join the Bioluminescence Club. In order to join you have to stay up late enough for it to get dark enough to see the sea animals and plankton light up when being disturbed by throwing rocks into the water or stirring the water with a stick. Sorry no photos. During the middle of the night I pulled a couple extra layers on top of my sleeping bag because of the cool and damp.

Thank you for stopping by.

Mark

Kayaking day 3

We started out the day with heavy fog, just the way the previous day ended. I heard light drizzle on and off throughout the night. The first photo is at low tide. When we stopped the previous afternoon the water level was approximately the bottom of this image. We had breakfast; French toast with orange zest cut into the mix, back bacon which I have never heard of, it was all meat not the usual bacon, half meat half fat. Then we packed and started our day.

It was cloudy and foggy most of the morning until we turned the southwest corner on Nigei island when it started to clear. Once we made the turn all kinds of starfish, anemones and very large jelly fish started appearing.

We went on a bit further and stopped for lunch in what we now call eagle bay.

There were at least a dozen bald eagles in the bay. A lot of them were youngsters which had not turned white yet. This doesn’t happen until they are about 3 or 4 years old. We saw them taking flight from a tree on one side of the cove and land on a tree on the opposite side then return back again. All this under the watchful eyes of the parents.

The sun popped out as we were making the crossing to Vansittart island. Off in the distance you could see the mountains on the mainland of British Columbia.

You may wonder why I am referring to this island so much. As I mentioned in my last post it is one of the few islands with old growth forest. I was excited to hear this from one of my fellow kayakers. I read several books on the area so I would have an understanding of what happened. ‘The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed’ by John Vaillant is a good read on the history of the area talking about the 1st Nations peoples and how the Europeans moved in to start lumbering and how it took over. It still is a big part of the lives of the people in this area today.

After setting up our camp I wandered around the intertidal zone and up into a small forest. Here I came across a couple deer. They were as surprised to see me as I them. They didn’t run off, didn’t seem to be afraid. They finished munching on the grasses and wandered off looking back every few feet and taking another bite of the greenery. I’ve never been so close to wild deer!

After that we took an organized hike into the woods to hear about the forest. Some of these trees are 500 – 1000 years old; Sitka spruce, red cedar and hemlock. The trunks of some of these trees were 10’ in diameter. You can’t appreciate the size of them until someone is standing next to them. Most of them had the tops snapped off due to the fierce winds that hit the area in winter.
The night went between foggy and clear. We sat up for a while to watch the shooting stars, I also saw a few of the constellations I have not seen in a while because of living in the city. After all that I was off to bed. Fortunately I was told earlier that the deer are inquisitive and may visit during the night. I woke up during the night to light footfalls around my tent then I could hear sniffing just outside for a few seconds before the deer walked off. All in all a great day!

Thanks for stopping by.
Mark

Kayaking day 2

The day started out clear in our little inlet but there was heavy fog in the Goletas channel where we did most of our paddling for the day. Looking at these two images you can see how far we had to move the kayaks because of the difference in the tide. (I don't remember reading that in the travel brochure) :-) You can also see the challenge of fitting all our gear back into the kaykas, we knew it had to fit since it fit the first day!

Even though Vancouver Island is only a mile or so across the channel we did not see it all day. We felt we were on a great adventure not seeing any land other than the island (Nigei Island) on which we were camping. We paddled against a stiff current and breeze most of the day. I took my turn at paddling from the back of the boat. I had to quickly learn how to turn with the rudder. This is fairly easy once I got the hang of it. It was harder getting my feet into the stirrups used to control the rudder than actually controlling the rudder.

We made it to our next camping spot in the early afternoon allowing us to set up camp then go down the island a half mile or so to explore the beach. You can see a few of the finds along the beach. On Kara's pinkie finger you can see the shell of a sea urchin.

It had turned nice by that time although the low fog remained. We saw many tide pools with crabs and sea anemones. Bald eagles seem to be all over the place. What started out as ‘LOOK THERE’S A BALD EAGLE!!!” turned into ‘There’s another bald eagle’ by the end of the trip, still a sight to behold.

By the time we were finished touring the beach we returned to our campsite just in time to watch the fog roll in. It was a heavy mist for the rest of the night with occasional drizzle. I don’t think we could see much more than 1/10 of a mile for most of the night. Kara and Sara with some help form Terry made our meal that evening. We just had to make do with our teriyaki chicken, cashew rice, broccoli, fruit salad and carrot cake. Once we finished eating Kara, our lead guide, laid out the trip for the next day. On to Vansittart island, one of the very few islands with remaining old growth forest.

Thank you for stopping by.

Mark