Last week, three of us from Oregon made a week-long paddle around Louise Island, one of the larger islands in the Queen Charlottes archipelago. Louise is encircled on three sides by Moresby Island and Talunkwan Island, with its remaining, eastern, flank exposed to Hecate Strait, producing a varied selection of protected waters and open water. Our route began and ended at Moresby Camp, once the site of a major logging center, but now a rude collection of RV's, run-down shacks, and a shed housing rigid-hull inflatables employed to herd visitors to Gwaii Haanas, one of the jewels in Parks Canada's crown. Louise is very different from the better-known parts of the Charlottes, although the collection of totems and house poles at Skedans (Koona) receives lots of attention from visitors. And, paddlers seeking the "complete" Charlottes experience often conclude their tour of Gwaii Haanas with the top half of Louise, using Cumshewa Inlet as their exit. Gale force southeast winds delayed our start by a day, as a frontal system washed out, wetting our Gray Bay-sited tents to saturation. (I looove starting a trip with a wet tent!) But, there was only sunshine and mild wind at launch, leaving us to chuck gear into hatches and dodge the goo of a very low tide. Heading east, we punched away at the water, slowly passing old clear cuts and decayed piling, relics of a heyday of logging old growth near Moresby Camp. A couple hours later, we passed Conglomerate Point, one of several features named by the geologist Dawson in his 1878 tour. Helicopters now and then buzzed overhead, shuttling loggers and ancillary personnel to and from work. A tug and barge combination ferried across the inlet as we hit more open water, on a near-collision course with us. Wet suits made for a warm afternoon and were quickly stripped as we went ashore at the site of our first camp, the eastern shore adjacent to the mouth of Mather Creek. Mather is the longest stream on Louise, having a classic tidal estuary of dark, cloistered second growth, the relics of WW II logging activity. On the western shore, hidden behind a perimeter of brush, is an old cemetery with some thirty headstones on the site of the church which served New Kloo, one of the temporary homes of the Haida as they retreated from traditional village sites to Skidegate and Masset on Graham Island to the north. Dates evoked a subtle tale of simultaneous deaths of natives of all ages, the probable victims of smallpox and similar diseases. Another hundred yards upstream are cabling, turnstiles, and anchors from the WW II spruce harvest. As we circled back to the creek's mouth, I stumbled across decaying remains of the "log road" used with hard rubber-tired trucks. Curt recognized it as a road -- I would have missed it entirely. His biologist eyes picked it out as an unnatural formation of parallel snags. We reflected on the times and lives of those who worked these woods ... and those who died near this spot as their culture disappeared. Rebecca was working on her sun tan back at camp on the sand bar. We had landed at high tide, making unpacking an easy task. Tides are big there, and we did the usual calculation/speculation and divining of high tide swash marks before siting tents half a vertical foot from where the midnight tide **should** reach. For insurance, we tied kayaks to drift logs, then stuffed ourselves with veggie stir fry and tapioca pudding. Wet tents dried somewhat, and then succumbed to a heavy dew overnight. Morning showed a falling tide, some ten feet below our tents, and a quarter mile **out** so we scrambled to grab the last few inches of water in the creek, floating loaded yaks and lining them down the tidal channel to salt chuck. Today we were to negotiate Fairbarn Shoals at the eastern extremity of Cumshewa Inlet, rounding the NE corner of Louise and entering exposed waters. These shoals are the terminal moraine left from the glacier once filling the inlet. They run a mile and a half along Louise and force shipping, even shallow draft vessels, into a narrow channel on the N side of the inlet. And, they grow kelp! We threaded and dodged bull kelp for an hour, now and then running "aground" on huge mats of the stuff, before rounding the top of the island, and hoving into view of Skedans Point. A few minutes later, and we had rounded the point into the cove serving Skedans village, one of the "official" stopping points for visitors to the Charlottes. Here, civilization descended, in the form of two sets of "guided" groups, competing for the attention of Laura, a young Haida woman who was the Watchman at the village site. We attached ourselves to the smaller group, and stood downwind in our stinky rubber (much as we could, anyway) as she detailed the history and function of mortuary and memorial poles. Sadly, the poles are soon to be "rescued" and propped up, cleaned up, and resurrected, as they have been at Ninstints to the south, obscuring the passage of time since the village was abandoned at the beginning of the twentieth century. A hurried lunch on the beach, made necessary by Laura's tale of "our bear," preceded a lovely two hours of leisurely paddling southward across Skedans Bay to Vertical Point, our home for the next three nights. This spot is one of my favorites in the Charlottes, and it gets a lot of paddling traffic, mostly folks on the "route" to/from Ninstints to the south. We shared the ample spit with six others, all on two- or three-week paddling adventures. Only the Feathercraft owners were obnoxious with their excessive pride in their expensive craft, and tales of harrowing seas. Everyone else was really down-to-earth, and very friendly -- a necessity when you all share the same small cove for the intertidal flush! One day we consumed with exploration of sea caves, limestone formations, and the gravel beaches of Skedans Bay, along with one of the Limestone Islands. Another we spent landbound by a strong north wind, motivating us to hike to the end of the Point, spying on fishing vessels (and two braver paddlers) fighting the twenty knot breeze and heavy seas. In the lee of the Point, Curt did a couple plankton tows to exhibit the rich microflora and -fauna in near-shore waters, while I tortured small rockfish with plastic worms. Alas, none were of eating size. On the third day, we scooted southward, in the lee of the Point, as the wind howled overhead, maintaining 20-25 knots out in the Strait, and leaving a few knots to our backs to push us into Selwyn Inlet on Louise's south side. Skipping past Nelson Point, Breaker Bay, and Dass Point, all at times shrouded with heavy seas when the SE wind blows, we re-entered relatively sheltered waters, the home of more damn jellyfish than I have ever seen before! Curt and Rebecca had names for the varieties. I just looked at 'em! A few more miles of westward travel, hastened by building following seas, brought us to a beautiful, unnamed cove on the outside of Rockfish Harbour. Gravel beach kissed kayak hull and we scampered over to the tombolo defining the S side of the cove, basking in residual sun, as Curt swam in the cove. Tents perched on two-inch gravel, sculpted "flat," while we gorged on Dave's Finest North American Bean Burritos and mercenary flan, courtesy of the Sandspit Super Value Grocery store and the Jello corporation. Morning was made HOT! as the suns rays focused on us, a consequence of the eastern exposure of our cove. Torpidly, we packed up, our progress made slower by a gargantuan breakfast of hash browns, corned beef, and fresh muffins. Heading west along the inlet, we stumbled upon an "eaglefest" surrounding the alpha bird, talons around a nice coho salmon. Looked like enough to share with the dozen others, but he/she was having none of that! Scooting across Selwyn, we entered Pacofi Bay, once the site of a huge fish cannery and sometime saltery, circa 1920 - 1940 in various versions, which finally burned to the water in WW II, leaving concrete seawalls and the most enormous boilers I have ever seen. A caretaker and his "runt" sled dog jawed with me in front of a 1990-vintage fishing lodge, vacant and in limbo. (Got a million Canadian bucks? It's for sale!) As his dog disappeared to chase a bear, we left to gunkhole the flats, and spy on a couple hundred semipalmated plovers screeking away and plumbing for bugs. The afternoon wore on as we moved north into Carmichael Passage, briefly visiting Trotter Bay and its trig cabin (old logging equipment festered in the shallows), then Lagoon Inlet (small bear scampered away from the shore as I neared its reversing tidal rapids -- I ran 'em!). Some nine hours after breakfast, we fought heavy head current through Louise Narrows to a small, rocky campsite at the northern extremity of the dredged portion of the Narrows. We scooped bear poop aside and debated bear avoidance strategy, picking a **really good** tree for our food haul line. The large bear we had seen swimming across the narrows a couple hundred yards south on our minds, we slept fitfully and awoke to **wet tents** again in the morning. With Dave's Powerful Cous Cous for fuel, we moved northward past salmon streams and acres of turbine snails into Gillatt Arm, past Barge point (named after an early settler, not a vessel) and soon Moresby Camp appeared three miles in the distance. Our horses could sense their stalls, and we put on a fine imitation of a kayak race (Curt won), skipping lunch to reach the takeout at two pm. Rebecca agreed we deserved ice cream cones at the Bun Wagon in Sandspit. And Dick's Wok Inn got some more of our dollars later -- love that seafood hot plate and special fried rice -- as we shared dinner with a dozen locals on BC Day. -- The commercial: A circumnavigation of Louise provides a slice of what the Charlottes were like, from old cannery days, through logging times of our fathers and mothers, and back to the time when Haida culture was at its nadir. This was my fifth trip in the Charlottes, and it had more "texture" and variety than the others I have made, which concentrated on the better-known, southern parts of the Park. It was less frantic, and more calming. I felt more at one with my surroundings, partly for the pace, and partly for the greater degree of isolation than I have found in the heavily promoted "official" Gwaii Haanas area. I recommend it. -- Dave Kruger Astoria, OR *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced/forwarded outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Sat Aug 12 2000 - 03:45:48 PDT
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