PART 4 - ROUNDING CAPE SCOTT
June 19th and 20th - Days 21 and 22- Port Hardy and Around
I reviewed the weather forecast for the next seven days to assess when there’d be a weather window to round Cape Scott and arrive in St. Josef Bay in time to meet the group from Skills Sea Kayak on June 26th. Tuesday June 21st seemed the best day to leave Port Hardy. I would have a falling tide in the morning, and a slight breeze from the southeast. That would allow me to cover enough miles, camp on one of the north facing beaches of the island and be within striking distance of the Cape. I called JF at Skills Sea Kayak to coordinate.
“When you round Cape Scott, be sure that the tide and the wind are with you. Otherwise, it can get really choppy out there. Best to go in the morning when the winds are light.”
“That sounds good. What about the swells? I saw on the forecast that they come from the Southwest.”
“If the winds are light, you won’t have to worry. But if there’s a strong northwest wind with a rising tide, the weather might be clear, but I wouldn’t want to be out there. That’s why you should go early when the winds are most likely to be weak.”
We coordinated a few other things, including picking up my kayak dolly which I would leave in Port Hardy, to free up room in the stern hatch.
With that done, I now had two full days to spend in town.
Port Hardy is not a big town, and I think I walked down almost every street. At the waterfront is a park where there’s a large obelisk and a tall totem pole to commemorate fallen Canadians in past wars. (WWI, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam.) The inscription at the base of each read, “Brothers in Life, Forever Together in Death.” I’ve noticed that Canada is keen to honor their war dead with memorials such as this one. Nearly every town large or small has a public square dedicated to the fallen.
I walked north beyond the park, and I noticed a strange scene. A bald eagle swooped up and down from the trees while being chased by a murder of some ten crows. The eagle flew close to the ground before rising up high and followed by another dive as though it was riding an invisible rollercoaster in the air. The ravens followed the eagle close behind screaming like hounds chasing a fox, and one of them came so close it almost nipped one of the eagle’s tail feathers. The eagle, however, seemed to act like it couldn't care less, and even slowed down to let the ravens catch up. I pointed this out to a local man on the street, and he gave out a laugh.
“Ah yes… it happens all the time. He’s taunting them, just to get a raise. The eagles fly right next to the raven’s nests, and it drives them insane. They’re like kids in the neighborhood who run after they ring your doorbell; always making mischief…”
I kept walking and suddenly noticed ,familiar smell.
“There must be a wastewater plant somewhere nearby.” I thought.
Sure enough, around the corner of the street and down a hidden dirt road was a package plant with a bar screen, aeration tank, and a clarifier. It took a photograph of it to show it to the folks back at work. It’s rarely the case that a town so small can afford a wastewater treatment plant, but it seems that Port Hardy must have obtained a grant from the provincial government. This type of infrastructure investment means that the town can afford to grow and develop. Any property the switches from a septic to a sewer network shoots shoot up in value. I would have liked to visit the plant but unfortunately the gate was locked, and no one was around to show the place.
Later that night I went to treat myself to a good meal. I found a pizza place downtown and ordered a large pepperoni pizza. It was a total disappointment.. The pepperoni slices were almost a quarter inch thick and soggy. It seems like there is one thing Canadians have inherited from the British; a tradition for making nauseatingly poor dishes. Even the fish and chips I’ve eaten on this trip have been so soggy that even an Englishman would have felt embarrassed if it was served in his country. T Why the English nations have such bad gastronomical talents is a mystery. Perhaps it is because their empire was so spread all over the world that rather than develop their own native culinary talents, they just appropriated those of the locals. A friend once told me that if you want good “English” food in London, then you should eat at an Indian restaurant. When I cycled through the Dolomites in Northern Italy I stopped in a local pizzeria where the owner only spoke German. The place was a hole in the wall, but their calzones were so delicious, that to this day I regret not taking a second one to go for the morning breakfast.
The next day I went to buy supplies for the journey. Not having to carry the kayak dolly in the stern hatch opened a world of possibilities of what I could bring with me. I chose to buy twenty-four bottles of Perrier as a treat. I would not be seeing the inside of a supermarket for at least the next three weeks.
Next to the supermarket was an outdoor store where I found a bear banger for sale and decided to buy a set.. “It will make mom happy if I tell her I have this with me,” I thought. I also bought a set of replacement gear bags to help with carrying things to and from the kayak.
I read on Google that the nearby settlement of Fort Rupert had a curling club. During my college days my roommates and I enjoyed watching the women’s curling competition during the winter Olympics on TV, and I thought it would be interesting to see what a curling game looks like in person.
I called up a cab, “I’d like to go see the Curling Arena in Fort Rupert.” I told the driver.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” I said, without even thinking why he would ask. We drove six miles and he dropped me off in front of a prefab metal building with a sign that read, “Fort Rupert Curling Club, GE Wilson Memorial Arena”.
“You want me to wait?”
“No worries, I'll be here for a while.” I said, and he drove off.
I walked across the dirt parking lot to the building entrance, and promptly discovered that it was locked. I saw someone on the street walking their dog.
“When do they open?” I asked.
“In the winter.” He replied.
“Oh…. I see….” I said, feeling a little dumb. Of course, they don’t play curling in the summer, why would I think that?
The rest of the afternoon was spent walking the six miles to Port Hardy.
June 21st - Day 23
The morning conditions were exactly as the forecast predicted, and I got on the water as soon as daylight allowed, to catch the falling tide and the slight tail breeze.
North of Port Hardy there are no towns or roads, and the beaches are only accessible by boat or trail. “I hope nothing happens that causes me to miss the group in St Josef Bay.” I thought. I had enough food and water with me for a bit over a week. If the worst were to happen, then I’d need to make a resupply stop in Winter Harbor on the Quatsino Sound, which is about a week’s paddle in fair conditions. The Hope, Nigei, and Balaklava islands form a narrow channel with the northern tip of Vancouver Island which is the last stretch of sheltered water before the coast becomes exposed to the swells of the Pacific Ocean. Today conditions were very benign. I barely felt the wind on my back, and the water was flat. However, I could imagine this place turning into a wind tunnel and would be completely impassable.
Halfway up the channel I met another kayaker on the water paddling in the opposite direction towards Port Hardy, and we stopped to talk for a few minutes. He was from Victoria and had been on a six-day trip around the three north islands and queen Charlotte Sound.
“The last few days have been very warm; I’d be sweating if I was wearing that.” He said pointing to my dry suit.
“Have you seen any bears?” I asked.
“Yes! I got a great shot of a black bear as he was sitting on a rock watching me pass on the kayak. I was as much of an attraction to him as he was to me.”
“Ok, I’ll keep an eye out for them. Any advice about the road ahead?”
“Yeah, don’t stop at the indigenous village on Hope Island. They don’t like outsiders. Had to get some water there, and folks were giving me the, “You’re not from here,” kind of look.”
We continued our separate ways after our chance encounter on the water. At Hope Island I noticed the first ocean swells rolling under the kayak. The swell period was very long, maybe 15 seconds, but it had a tall amplitude, and at the crest of the wave the horizon revealed other small islets far in the distance.
I stopped at Cape Sutil which marked the Northernmost point in Vancouver Island where I checked the readings on my GPS unit, “50.52 Degrees of Latitude North.” It read.
“Interesting,” I thought, “This isn’t even as far north as London. They are at 51 Degrees.”
The moderating influence of the Gulf Stream on the European coast makes their weather the equivalent of ten degrees further south. The weather here is more like what you’d experience in Norway.
My guidebook gave me a stern warning about Cape Sutil and the river estuary next to it. “Beware of the Nahwitti bar when the west wind blows against the ebbing current as it will form dangerous rips and overfalls. Only attempt to cross it in ideal conditions.”
I looked around, and the water was flat like a mirror, but the forecast called for westerly winds in the afternoon. The time was 2:00pm.
“I better not hang out here too long.” I thought.
The wind was not late for the appointment. The last six miles of the day to Shuttleworth Bight were paddled with great effort through chop and breaking swells and the rising tide.
June 22nd - Day 24
The west wind was strong the entire day, but the forecast called for calmer conditions to begin developing in the afternoon and last for at least the next three days, and I decided to take a rest day and wait out the conditions.
From here onwards there is very little to no phone reception. My weather forecasts came by VHS radio and most importantly my mom who sent me the updates through the Inreach GPS messenger. However, we should have trained how we would communicate before I left Port Hardy.
“Things will look better tomorrow.” She wrote.
“Mom, that doesn’t mean much to me. Tomorrow what time? From which direction is the wind coming, and how strong? Give me the wind forecast strength and direction for the next day from 5am to 8pm every three hours. That way I can decide if I go out on the water or not.”
“Ok.” She texted back followed by, “No Problem”
“Mom, please try to keep it all in one message as much as possible. I’m paying fifty cents per message on this thing. It adds up. Telling you this just cost me that much.”
“OK. No Problem, but don’t be so cheap, I just want to check up on you to make sure you’re ok.”
The falling tide exposed a wide halfmoon beach. At the far end I noticed the shape of two people moving near the water’s edge. I walked over to meet and struck up some conversation to pass the time.
Larry and John were two friends from Nanaimo taking a weeklong trip to hike the Cape Scott trail. They had started in St. Josef Bay and were on their second day. Larry worked as a freelance software engineer, and John worked for the BC Forestry Service before he retired.
“Those are very different professions.” I noted. “How did you two come to meet each other?”
“That is indeed a strange mix.” Said Larry with a chuckle. “Both of our wives work as nurses in the Nanaimo Regional General Hospital. This is how we can take a break from them.”
“Yes, camping and fishing.” Said John. “In fact, you won’t believe what happened yesterday afternoon. We were fishing by the headland, and I caught three good sized lingcods we were going to to roast for dinner. While I cleaned the fish, I noticed a raven on the tree watching me. I put the filets in a zip lock bag and hid it under a rock in a tidal pool so the smell wouldn’t attract bears. Didn’t think much of the raven and I went to take care of other business, and when I came back for the fish, I could not believe it. The bag was out of the water, and the fish were gone.”
“Looks like you were working for the raven. You caught the fish, you cleaned the fish, and he ate the fish. You’re not the first and won’t be the last person to get outwitted by a clever raven.” I joked.
“Have you guys seen any bears on the trail?”
“Not on this trip, but I can tell you a story about bears from my years with the Forestry Service. I was working on a trail when a female black bear came out of the bush onto the trail. Usually if you are loud and talk directly to the bear, they get the point and go away. But something was upsetting this female. She started walking toward me with her head low and the ears pointed back. Right there I knew she meant business, and I made a run for it up the closest tree. She had me pinned up there for a good ten minutes, before I noticed the cub waking about. I didn’t come down till I was sure they were both gone. It's the kind of experience you don’t forget.”
June 23rd - Day 25
The Cape is only about fifteen miles away but the tide was forecast to start around 8:00 am which would almost certainly mean I’d be paddling against the flow by the time I got there. I decided that the best thing to do was to camp at Nels beach, and round the Cape the following day. That way I would get a closer start, and would coincide my arrival there with the slack tide.
When I stepped outside the tent to begin packing, I saw the remnant of a strange encounter that happened during the night while I slept. There were deer footprints on the sand. One set was from an adult, and another much smaller in size, was made by a fawn. They had been walking side by side along the beach when suddenly the footprints became a tangled mess with skid marks in all directions as though the deer had been skipping and jumping. Intermixed with the deer prints were the footprints of a wolf, not a very big one, but it had claws that left grooves on the sand. Whatever happened in the night, the wolf must not have gotten the meal it had been wanting.
A short walk away I found the deer and the fawn, elated to be walking on the beach like a toddler.
I was done paddling at Nel’s beach before 10:00 am. On my approach I noticed several tents pitched on the sand, concluded that was the location of the campsite, and landed there.
The tents were two families from Winnipeg hiking the Cape Scott trail. There were about sixteen of them and they had seen me from a distance and for a while wondered what I was. Everyone was very friendly, except for one person. A man a bit older than me, gave me a fixated look that made me feel uncomfortable. When I was setting my tent, he asked me two times in a tone I didn’t not appreciate why I had chosen to camp next to them.
Twice I gave him the same answer. “From the water, the place with all the tents looked like the campsite marked on the map.”
True, I could have packed and camped somewhere else on the beach, but getting everything back into the kayak and paddling three hundred feet down the beach to please some guy acting like he had a gerbil up his ass felt like too much work.
In the afternoon I hiked the remainder of the Cape Scott trail to the lighthouse to see if I could catch a glimpse of the sea conditions around the Cape before paddling around it.
From Nels beach the trail to the lighthouse was about seven miles one way. It climbed steeply from the beach over a forested headland before arriving at tombolo. The bay facing north is called Experimental Bight, while the beach to the south is known as Guise Bay.
From the aerial images on Google Earth, I had the impression that the tombolo separating the two beaches was a low stretch of sand that could be easily crossed. I was surprised to discover that it was a tumbling dune field some fifty feet high. The trail had several steep switchbacks along the edge of the field where the tall grass covered the dunes in a kind of prairie.
My legs felt tired. For nearly twenty days I only exercised my arms, my leg muscles felt atrophied, and they made their complaints be known.
At the edge of the prairie , I noticed some wood stakes with rusty barbed wire that looked like the remains of a half buried fence. I asked a fellow hiker if he knew what they were.
“Probably a remnant of the old Cape Scott Settlement.” He said. “You’ll see a lot more ruins around the meadow by the Hansen Lagoon. Stoves, farm tools and even an old rusty tractor hidden in the forest. It’s kind of spooky, like walking through an abandoned cemetery.”
I checked my guidebook which did indeed note that there was once a village here in the early twentieth century. A group of Danish migrants attempted to make a fishing colony after the Canadian Government Promised homesteads for anyone of European descent who settled the land. Unfortunately, the winter storms were ferocious, there was no good harbor, and the Canadian Government never built the road from Port Hardy they promised. Eventually people got tired of waiting and gave up. The last settler left in the fifties when he was too old and could no longer make the trek.
The trail turned west into the forest of the Cape Scott headland. I continued on all the while making lots of noise and speaking my thoughts out loud so that if any bears were nearby, they would hear me coming and hopefully avoid meeting me. Sometimes I would even say, “Hey Bear! Make way! Don’t come here where I am at.”
That strategy did not work out as I’d hoped. Around a bend on the trail, I met a large black bear trotting along in the opposite direction towards Guise Beach where I had just been. He was a good 4 feet tall at the shoulder, and we both stopped immediately upon noticing the other about thirty feet away.
“Well, what do you want to do?” I asked the bear who seemed as startled as I was.
I started walking back slowly then started pacing forward while keeping a safe distance.
“Oh come on, if you keep walking this way you’re not going to like what I have for you.” I shouted, pointing the bear spray at the bear.
I stopped walking backwards once I reached a fallen log on the trail that would have forced me to crouch underneath to keep moving. The bear also stopped.
“I think you know the bush better than I do. How about you walk around?”
“I am not moving any more. You go the fuck around, damn it.”
We stood still for what felt like an eternity in this kind of Mexican standoff. Eventually I think the bear understood my predicament.
“He can’t go past the log.” He must have thought.
The bear veered out of the trail, walked through the bush while scraping his way through the foliage like a tractor clearing a path in the undergrowth, before veering back on the trail some ten feet behind me, and continued on with his day.
“That’s right you keep going your way.” I shouted at the bear like a small dog on his owner’s lap, but he completely ignored me. Later, after the adrenaline of the moment had passed I felt a chill run down my back thinking of what had happened. I just had a faceoff encounter with a bear!
When I reached the lighthouse, I spoke with the keeper about the experience.
“Ah yes. That’s the big bull. He makes the rounds on the trail nearly every day to visit the females. At low tide he goes down to Guise Beach to look for shellfish. He’s probably there right now. Sometimes he comes up here to the lighthouse too. I think he likes to drive my dog crazy. If you stick around until late afternoon, you might see him again.
“I won’t stick around too long then…”
Tom had been working as the lighthouse keeper for the past 23 years. “It’s steady work with 8 weeks of paid vacation. Plus, I can’t complain about the office view. It’s quite calm today, but you should see what this place looks like in a winter storm when the swells are building to 30 feet or more. I wouldn’t want to be out there… Tomorrow morning for you, you should be good on your kayak if you go with the falling tide. There will be a northwest wind to push you along.”
I looked at the sea from the top of the lighthouse. The wind was maybe fifteen knots from the northwest, the tide was rising and there was a lot of white chop on the water, but it was all really far away, and the base of the cliff where the swells would be breaking was obscured by a sea of pine trees.. There were a set of standing waves in the channel, but they seemed closer to the Scott Islands, much further than where I intended to be paddling.
“Yeah, not too good right now with the wind against the tide. The worst part is the Northern tip of the headland which you can’t see from here. That’s where the tide wraps around the Cape, and the waves get nasty. But in the morning, it will probably be fine.”
“I certainly hope so. I have to be in St Josef Bay in two days at most. If tomorrow morning is good, then it’s tomorrow I’ll be paddling the Cape.”
June 24th - Day 26
A thick fog rolled in during the night, and the view of the sea in the morning was a white out. From my tent I could hear the waves breaking on shore, but not see them. The tide was more than halfway out and, in another hour, or two it would be slack tide; the time when I hoped to be rounding the Cape.
My campsite neighbors were already up and warming up an oatmeal breakfast. I ate my morning five-minute breakfast meal of canned tuna, Chef Boyardee and a few scoops of Nutella. After packing my gear, I asked if anyone could give me a hand carrying the kayak to the water’s edge. The person who volunteered was the individual who’d given me the unappreciative look the day before.
We carried the kayak in silence, and after putting it down by the water he felt that he had to make his feelings known. “So, I have to ask this; out of the whole fucking beach, why the fuck did you have to camp right next to us?”
“I told you already. I paddled from the water, I saw the tents, and concluded that was the campsite, so that’s where I went.”
“You Americans are just so brash! Can’t you see I’m here with my family? How dare you just bust in and feel like you own the place.”
I took a moment to think how to answer. My mind had been focusing on the Cape. How rough would the waves be, would there be wind and current, would the standing waves be as big as when I sighted them from the lighthouse. I was not looking for an argument at that time and was also frustrated with my headlamp that was having moisture problems and would turn on or off on its own.
And now I was also irritated with this man’s overinflated opinion of himself, and his disrespect. I thought to say that he was a rare type, a Canadian douche bag, or that I hadn’t realized he was from the House of Windsor and I was transiting through Crownland. Instead, I spoke a dagger of truth that hit him hard in the gut.
“You know, it’s obvious you’re not like the rest of your family. I know it, you know it, they know it. It’s not a secret. It’s the first thing everybody notices about you when they meet you..”
What feelings were stirred inside him I do not know, but he did not speak another word to me again.
I pushed off the beach into the dense fog, the shoreline and the Cape headland were barely visible. Paradoxically, the closer to the Cape I got the less of it I could see as more fog rolled in with the swell. The fog became disorienting, and even with the compass to keep me going in the right direction, there was no way to know if I had paddled west far enough to clear the Cape.
Then suddenly, the sea changed from smooth rolling swells to a confused washing machine with waves coming at me from all directions.
“This must be the point the lighthouse keeper spoke about, where the tide loops around the headland. If I go on a bit more, I will have the Cape cleared.” I thought.
When the sea flattened again, I turned and paddled due south. I could still barely see any land, and the only way to tell I was far enough from the breaker zone was by the loudness of the waves crashing on the rocks.
Fortunately, the breakers did not sound like they were very close, and I was, however, more worried about another warning the lighthouse keeper had given me.
“Be careful with ships during the fog. The gap between the Cape and the Scott islands isn’t very big. Don’t go too far down the middle of the strait or you can get caught either from the front, or worse, from the back. You definitely won’t see the ship until it’s right on you”
My mind was reminded of that warning, when suddenly I saw a large dark smudge in the fog rapidly approaching me. It wasn’t a ship, however, but a large rock in the middle of the ocean, and it was I who was without realizing being carried by the current and the north wind in my sail at nearly seven miles per hour towards it. I made a hard turn east and averted the rock. When I looked at the GPS to check my location, I was aghast that the Cape was miles behind me already, and I was nearly at the mouth of the Hansen Lagoon. The rock I nearly blundered into also had a name, Strange Rock.
“Strange Indeed,” I thought. Certainly, I would not have been the first ship it scuttled.
South of the Strange Rock the fog finally began clearing and at the entrance to St Josef Bay I got a glimpse of the landscape I was in. Tall green mountains appeared briefly through the veil before disappearing like ghosts. Eventually the fog dissipated enough that the base of the cliffs became visible, and I could see that the crashing waves sounds which had worried me were not as big as they roared. much to my relief. This was an incredibly calm day on the Cape, at least in the morning.
When I landed on the beach in St Josef Bay, I took a moment to appreciate the completion of this milestone in the journey. “Few people have paddled around Cape Scott, and fewer still have done it alone.” I thought.
Still, I felt as if I had cheated. It had been too calm, too easy. Anyone could have done it in these conditions. The feeling of achievement was just not there.
“Oh, come on, don’t be so humble, you’re not that good. Give yourself the credit.” Said a voice in my head.
“You picked the day with the right weather, you picked the time with the right tide,, and you paddled it. What more do you want? Who do you have something to prove to?”
“Me.” I told the voice.
“You paddled it, and you were lucky. That is enough. Be happy with being lucky.”
