Four ferries and one zodiac later....

Yes, we did this trip over a month ago. But hey, I'm busy having fun so it takes me a while to get to these blogs.

It took four ferry rides and one crazy fast zodiac ride before we finally made it to our destination, Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve and Haida Heritage Site. So I could start my blog at the starting point of our paddle, but that would be leaving out so much! Thus, I'll start with tales from the very beginning of our trip.

Camping for twelve days involves lots of food planning and packing. For the paddling portion of the trip we needed relatively easy to cook foods that didn't use tons of freshwater or take up space in the boat, and we wanted tons and tons of snacks to chow on while in the kayak. Darwin was very curious about all the food and got right into the middle of it all. Pretty cute little fluff. We were off once the food was packed and our car was jammed full of more crap than seemed necessary. Our first ferry ride out of four was a five minute drive from our house - Anacortes, WA to Sidney, B.C. Once on Vancouver Island we spent the entire day driving north to Port Hardy along the length the largest island on the west coast. We love Vancouver Island but we didn't have time to explore today - we had to buy marine charts, some fresh veggies, and a crabbing license for Jay. Those stops and the six hour drive meant we arrived in Port Hardy just in time to have dinner with the last bit of daylight. I was thrilled to hear that wolves had been sighted in Port Hardy recently, but we were not lucky enough to see or hear them that evening. Boo. Following our tasty dinner we tried to go to bed as early as possible so we could get up at 4am to breakdown our tent and head to the ferry terminal. 

Our ferry, the Northern Expedition, was massive (507 ft.), brand new, and very fast (22 knots!). Speed, by the way, was a very good thing since this ferry ride up the Inside Passage was going to take 17 hours. We had to be at the ferry terminal in Port Hardy by 5am so we could sit in line and wait to board. Once our trusty Toyota was loaded, we were free to explore the ferry. We were still half asleep wandering around this massive ship and we couldn't figure out where we belonged. So we snoozed in some giant chairs for a while, waiting for the ship to actually leave. Once we were underway, we found the stern deck and set up shop there for almost the entire journey. It was freezing in the morning, so we bundled up against the chilly fog and enjoyed the passage out of Port Hardy into little islands with lighthouses and humpback whales offshore. Dall's porpoises occasionally came and blasted past our wake, taunting us with only fleeting glimpses of their black and white bodies. And the birds! Murrelets, murres, pigeon guillemots, and gulls. Nothing super new to report on the birding front, but tons of birds nonetheless. Thank goodness for binoculars!

Only one part of the B.C. Inside Passage is open to exposed water and we sailed through that in complete fog with our books for company. Everyone that had been on deck retreated inside except one hardy family that had sleeping bags for warmth. Once we made it back into protected waters, the sun started to burn through the fog and mountains began to take shape. You can still see the lingering fog through the deck windows behind me in this image. And with the sun came the people. They all found the deck, but Jay and I had already scored on the comfy chairs and were happy in our claimed territory. As the sun burnt through and the day started to actually get hot, we noticed that we were surrounded by tourists. I guess we were tourists too....but I'll revise. We were surrounded by Germans! All Germans! Germans everywhere! I love it - we hardly heard an ounce of English for 17 hours. Germans are so damn well traveled.... they put America (and Canada) to shame in how far and wide they travel. It helps that their country realizes the importance of time off from work.

We spent about 13-14 hours on the back deck of this massive ferry, simply watching the view go by. It was stunning. Way back in 2000 I took ferries down the Inside Passage from Juneau, AK (this is going back to the days when I worked for Glacier Bay National Park) to Port Hardy, BC. But that was in December and when it was light out, it was always drizzling and the mountains stayed out of view. What a treat it was to see the Inside Passage during the day! I only left the deck once to run up and down stairs in the ferry for some exercise.

I wouldn't say we completely scored on unbelievable wildlife sightings (I am comparing this to Glacier Bay, can't help it), but we had some pretty darn good ones! We had a great view of some brown bears feeding in a stream on salmon and there were more than enough whales and porpoises to keep us entertained (one German dude kept saying "thar she blows", perhaps trying to invoke his inner Ahab?).

This photograph was taken as we were nearing the northern end of the narrow and stunning Grenville Channel. The channel is less than a quarter mile wide but extremely deep - that said, there is no way any other large vessel (cruise ship, tankers, etc.) could have fit with our ferry in the channel. Obviously the captains must be chatting with one another to make sure only one large vessel goes through at once. After we passed through the channel, the sun left us and we decided to try and catch some sleep before we got into Prince Rupert at midnight. We claimed a spot on the floor with our camping pads and snoozed for about an hour before we were rudely awakened by the ship's captain announcing our arrival into Prince Rupert. We stumbled down to our car, unloaded into a calming drizzle, and found the massive campground that was conveniently located next to the ferry terminal. While this campground wasn't exactly our style, we didn't give a damn at midnight. Our tent was up in no time and we happily climbed in and passed out.

This may look like the same ship - but this is actually ferry number three - the Northern Adventure. At 8am the next morning, we boarded this ferry, a slightly smaller ship than the ferry we were on yesterday but probably even more sea-worthy as she has to cross some of the roughest waters in the area, Hecate Strait. Hecate Strait is quite shallow, so the seas here are notorious for building up to massive sizes. We scored on this crossing as there was barely a puff of wind and we were able to set up our wildlife watching spot from the stern of the vessel. We had hoped to see some bird species that we don't typically see close to land such as fulmars or albatross. We did see some type of a tubenosed bird, but never got a good enough look at it to identify it - perhaps it was some type of petrel? Oh well, we scored on a windless crossing which was good for staying outside but the lack of wind probably meant the birds were less active.

This was a seven hour crossing in mostly exposed and open water, but it only took a few hours of journey time before we started to spot mountains far off in the distance - Haida Gwaii! It looked like a dream even from far away!

Once we landed in Skidegate on Graham Island you would think we would have been off to find a campsite right? Nope - we still had one more ferry to take so we could get over to Moresby Island, just south of the more populated Graham Island. So we got off one ship and got right into line for the next ferry to Moresby. Lucky for us, we had an hour to kill and we both immediately spied a rocky beach to check out. Low tide in Haida Gwaii! The tides here experience something like a 20 ft. exchange which is like candy for marine biologists. Almost every morning on our vacation here was spent exploring the rocky intertidal or sandy beaches. I'll get to those stories in future posts!

Ferry four! Just a little one and a fast 20 minute crossing to Moresby Island! We had met a nice Canadian dude while waiting to get on this boat - we all had a beer together, some dinner, and then jumped on this ferry. Meeting people when you travel is one of the joys of traveling eh? It was getting late and we still needed to get over to Moresby Explorers, the kayaking company that was taking us via water taxi to the remote Gwaii Haanas National Park. Once we hit land again, we drove straight to their office, went through the mandatory orientation that all park visitors are required to go through, and left to get all our gear packed for a five day paddle.We were the only campers on a grassy patch of lawn in the town of Sandspit - but we were not alone. Millions of blackflies (or some pesky biting fly) tried to hang out with us while we packed. The headnets went on and everything got much calmer when we were not running around waving our hands over our heads.

How much crap does it take to go on a five day paddle in the absolute wilderness? Apparently this much crap. The part that was really funny about this is that the kayaking water taxi dude complimented us on packing light. Ha! No seriously - he did. He claimed that most tourists show up with far more stuff than us. Huh. We did have three bottles of wine for four nights. =) This was our vacation after all.

Our mighty water taxi with our double kayak rental on top. We opted out of bringing our own kayaks because we were not sure if my rib (see our Hozomeen Lake blog) could handle paddling a single boat for hours at a time. The thought was that Jay could be the power in the stern and I could sit up front like Cleopatra if necessary (although this would have driven me nuts). It turns out my rib felt fine and was typically only sore at the end of the day. So we covered some ground when we wanted to!

This is the view from the boat launch at Moresby Camp - it felt sort of wild here so it prepped us for the awesome adventure we were heading out to in Gwaii Haanas. Beautiful intertidal! 

Here we are going through Louise Narrows at low tide and high speed. Super fun and slight nutty. If you could have seen how shallow the water was, you would understand my comment about the "slight nutty" part of the ride.

One hour later, we were on a beach with our boat, tons of stuff, and each other. Perfect! Wave bye bye to the kayak water taxi dude! We knew we were going to be spending our first few hours in the park visiting an ancient Haida village with a Haida Watchman.....but after that visit we hoped to see only bears, eagles, and sea stars. Our wish came true.... not a single human was sighted in five days. If only we could have stayed longer. The blog and photos from our paddle will be next!