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Day 1, Aug 12, 2021 ... mild panic attack on the plane due to uncertainty about what awaits, usual for me. Landing at Sandspit, North America was still in sight as a faint ripple on the eastern horizon. My plan was to regroup at the 501 RV park, 3km from the airport. The only transport was a shuttle to QCC, $20 to drop me off at the 501. Looking further I found a young woman Alex in the airport gift shop who offered to take my tote (18kg) there when she got off work at 4. So I left it with her and set off walking down the road pushing the bike bag on its skateboard wheels. After few hundred meters a young couple in a VW van took me the rest of the way. They live in Port Clements and rent vans to people. I might meet them again.
Alex delivered the tote. Digging through it at my campsite I found a notice from Air Canada saying they'd removed dangerous goods. Sure enough, the stove fuel was gone, limiting my dinner prospects. I pitched the tent, reassembled the bike and pedaled back toward a grocery store I'd noticed. On the way I passed an "adventure supplies" store (Moresby Explorers) which miraculously sells exactly the propane bottle that fits my stove. At the grocery store I bought a can of Stag chili, instant coffee, an abrasive sponge, a tall can of ale and some beef jerky.
Back at the 501 I went for a swim. The water isn't much colder or saltier than Howe Sound. The beach is pebbly and deserted, with waves I can hear from my camp.
I've had my dinner. I will set a phone alarm to wake me at midnight to see the Persid meteor shower which should be good because the sky is absolutely cloudless and there is no street lighting.
Day 2 ... my phone woke me up at 12:30am but my enthusiasm to see the meteor shower was near zero so after a struggle I silenced the alarm and went back to sleep. Got up at 7:30 and concocted a breakfast of powdered whole milk, whey powder, water and granola, which wasn't bad. The instant coffee was terrible, maybe because its best by date was last June.
The dew was heavy and the sun was still below the tree line so I didn't get the tent dried out and the bike packed until 9. Marge, the woman who runs the RV park said I could leave the bike bag and the tote for the 2 weeks in a shed with the understanding that she isn't responsible for them. My plan was to go south to Gray Bay, camp there overnight and then head for the ferry and Queen Charlotte village next day, picking up some cached items at the RV park on my way by.
The road out of town toward the south was paved for a couple of kms, then became gravel and potholes. It followed the shoreline close enough to see it now and then, to Copper Bay. A big UTV passed me and a litlle while later I saw it stopped at a place with access to the shoreline of barnacled and seaweedy boulders. The driver emerged from the bushes just as I passed, calling out that they'd seen a bear on the beach.
Copper Bay is a tidal estuary with dozens of shacks and some respectable cabins scattered along the shoreline and along the adjacent road, in a concentration suggesting an attraction that wasn't apparent to me. Marge, the rv park owner, says that they belong to Skitegate natives who go there in June to fish something, she didn't know what. (I learned days later that they go for the sockeye salmon which spawn up a creek there in September.)
The road took a turn away from the coast and headed into hills. Signs indentified spur roads and showed the way to Gray Bay. Eventually the downhills began outnumbering the uphills, bringing me to the sea again, at Gray Bay, 25km from Sandspit.
A sign with a map showing 20 campsites well separated along the beach also noted that there is no potable water. I rode behind the beach to the last campsite but found no creek. Only about four of the sites were occupied. I parked the bike in one and walked out onto the vast beach. The tide was low-ish; the sea lapped placidly on the sand 100 meters away. Two tiny figures sat on a log.
I had only the water in the bottle on the bike frame so I had to rethink my camping plan. Back at the sign, I went left instead of right and soon came upon an estuary that I'd crossed previously on a bridge. Squatting beside the stream I took a sip ... definitely brackish. That decided it: back to Sandspit and the 501 RV park. I drank most of my water and ate a few pepperonis and a protein bar.
On my way out I saw a sign by a path to a seductively named Secret Cove, 1 hr walk. The way looked ridable so I followed it, and it soon crossed over the estuary stream. I was already committed to going back to Sandspit so I didn't check it for taste, but it looked ok. The path suddenly deteriorated into a root-riven track which I foolishly tried to negotiate and almost immediately crashed because I wasn't used to the weighty paniers. I landed heavily on my back on a big root and skinned an elbow as well. For a moment I lay under the bike waiting for reports from extremities; evidently all was well. Any lingering thought of staying in Gray Bay wilted.
The ride back was uneventful, except I saw a line of wet bear tracks on the road, meaning I'd missed him by minutes. I stopped at the store and bought 2 cans of Stag chili, a toothbrush, a tiny basket of blueberries, a tall can of ale and an esquimo pie. Back at the 501 I went for a swim, washed the moss stains (no blood) out of my shirt, pitched the tent and made dinner - both cans of chili and half the blueberrries.
Day 3 ... The clouds that gathered yesterday afternoon brought rain in the night. It woke me with its pitter-patter on the tent fly but soon lulled me back to sleep, warm and dry in my thin shelter.
Last night near dusk as I stood on the beach phoning home, fifteen or so large birds flew by, one after another over a period of 20 minutes. They looked like eagles, not buzzards, but didn't have white heads. Another, clearly a bald eagle, followed after an interval. Some people I met said they were probably young bald eagles, which don't have the white head and tail until they're four or five years old.
Although the clouds hung low all day it hasn't rained. I was on the road at 9:30, heading to the ferry to Graham Island at Allisford Bay, 11km. It left at 10:30 with about a dozen vehicles. I was the only walk-on. It's got an open deck with three lanes for cars and the wheelhouse is on one side.
On the Graham Island side I turned left and pedaled several km to the outskirts of Queen Charlotte. A sign to a Visitors' Centre diverted me into a downtown area of a bank, insurance office, Canada Service, etc.; otherwise all the commerce is strewn along a single street that runs parallel to the shore. The Visitors' Centre was really a gift shop with local artisan items, but maybe the plump cashier had information. I didn't have a question at the time.
My phone directed me to the Bunkhouse Campground Resort, at the far end of town. Omitting "resort" would have been more accurate and it doesn't look like any campground I've seen. My first impression was that I really liked the operator because solar panels were everywhere and antennas of every kind poked into or crossed the sky. A pile of firewood lay against what looked like an elevated hydroponic garden. Somebody called out "hello!", emerging from a woodshed attached to a two-story house. He was about 50, a bit overweight in floppy jeans and a t-shirt with marijuana themes on front and back. He said, "hi, I'm Sid."
He seemed as impressed as I was that we're named the same. When we got over that he showed me the camping options and facilities. A low building attached somehow to the bigger one has a gravel floor, a smelly sofa, a wood slab table with some tree rounds around it serving as chairs and a sliding glass door with a sign over it, MESS, leading to an untidy workshoppy space; a door at the back with DORM over it reveals a large dim room with many curtained double bunkbeds on one side and alcoves on the other: a laundry room with washer and drier and piles of clothes on the floor (these are mine, he said, I'll move them if you want to wash clothes, $5 a load); a room with a shower over a drain in the middle of the floor, $5 for a hot shower; and a toilet and sink room. The toilet seat is transparent acrylic with Canadian coins embedded in it.
Then he led me through a damp labyrinth of bush to tent sites and finally to a sagging shed with a toilet and a shower, cold is free.
I'm the only person here, other than Sid of course.
We had an interesting antenna discussion, specifically that my 4m long monster yagi antenna is way overkill for transmitting across Georgia Straight; he said really it's for communicating with the space station or bouncing signals off the moon.
I chose a spot, pitched the tent, got changed out of my riding gear and pedaled back into town in search of lunch. I chose a Chinese-Western place and ordered sweet&sour pork with chicken chowmein, $18.75. It came speedily in a huge bowl which was way more than I could manage; in fact I began to feel unwell so I stopped eating and left with the remainder in a bag. MSG poisoning? It turned out to be an early stage migraine which worsened as I panted up the hill to the Bunkhouse. I took a pill and languished on the smelly sofa until it kicked in.
I've spent the afternoon reading "Entering Time" by Colin Brown which I found in a bookcase in the gravel room. It's an essay on three argillite carvings by Charles Edenshaw depicting Raven and Fungusman hunting vaginas. A bit over my head but it has fascinating background stories.
I finished my chifa, wrote this and now it's Sid phone home time.
Day 4 ... I think I got a few hours sleep last night. They were broken by nonsense dreams and intervals of true wakefulness, quite unusual for me. At 5am I steeled myself to go through the elaborate steps of exiting and re-entering my shroud, hoping a pee would release me into the deep sleep I wanted. It did.
I was on the road again at about 9:30, looking for breakfast. I'm having difficulty consuming enough calories; I think I need a big greasy restaurant plateful of eggs, bacon, beans and toast. On this Sunday morning in the whole town not a single place was open. I turned into the Visitors' Centre which has an outlook of the sound and broke out the powdered milk and granola. Another fellow sitting nearby was apparently in the same situation so I greeted him and sat down on his bench. He told me that he is with a small group of researchers contracted by the federal government to go to a small flat island near Hippa Island on the middle west coast of Graham Island, which is the more northern of the two big islands of Haida Gwaii. They will stay there for three weeks, long enough to capture a number of a certain small sea bird whose name I forget, attach a tracking device to each of them, wait a week then recapture them to recover the trackers. The birds live in burrows, which makes this possible, but they burrow deeply so some excavation may be required before reaching down into the burrow, up to the armpit. They are vulnerable to invasive species, eg, rats, which so far have not invaded. I asked half-jokingly if they needed any help. He said yes, but logistics and covid protocols limit the size of the group. He has been here several times, mostly for work and once for fun, always in summer, and could see himself living here.
We wished each other well and I set off for Skidegate to visit the Haida Heritage Museum, 7km on the way to Tlell. It was as impressive as the Museum of Anthropology at UBC, almost as big but more of a testament to the settler culture abuses suffered by the Haida. An awful fact: a smallpox epidemic in the 19th century reduced the Haida population by 90 percent.
My phone said 39 km to Tlell, "very steep hills" which clearly was a lie because the sum of uphills was only 85m. The museum visit had been quite lengthy so it was already past noon, time for more calories. I consumed a Pro Bar (330 calories), took a long pull on my water bottle, swung my leg over the bike and pedaled onwards. My MEC cycle touring shorts are pretty good ... no saddle sores yet.
The road followed the coast the whole way, no hills to speak of, and relatively populous with small farms, hillbilly shacks and well-kept residences every few kilometers. No cell service.
I was startled looking to my right out to Hecate Strait to see what looked like someone on a standup paddle board far out there, headed south. Zooming in with my camera, I could see now that it was a navigation buoy. Less than a kilometer further on I came to a faded Canada government hut enclosed by chainlink fencing. A box with a hole in the centre protruded from the sea-facing side of the hut. This reminded me of a visit to a lighthouse on the West Coast Trail which had tuba-on-steroids foghorns powered by a huge air compressor. The lighthouse keeper showed us an instrument that transmits light of some frequency and measures what comes back reflected by fog, if any. So I'm guessing that the buoy has a foghorn controlled by this device. (Days later in a conversation with a Coast Guard guy I learned that the "box with a hole" is actually a navigation beacon for vessels to find their way through a shoal that runs parallel to the shore there, several kilometers out. The beacon has three directed beams: red, yellow and green. If the sailor sees red, they should steer to port (left) to enter the safe channel; if it's yellow they're on a good course and if it's green they should steer to starboard (right).)
Warned by a roadside sign, I entered a region in which I should be careful to avoid hitting a deer for the next X kilometers. After some time I saw up the road ahead a sign with a deer sillouette, and I wondered how they decide where to put these signs; do they record roadkill locations and put the signs at event clusters? As I approached it, I saw the body of a deer beside the road, with flies buzzing over it but no stink yet. My hypothesis got stronger.
I stopped to refill my bottle at a roadside spring with a sign which told of a legend that they who drink the water here are certain to return to Haida Gwaii, beside another sign which warned that the water is untreated and may not be safe to drink. Just then a fit young woman pedaled by the other way with a super-laden bike, calling Hello, followed by another, the first cycle tourists I've encountered.
Eventually I entered the Tlell forest fire control area, and then after many more kilometers I passed the Tlell municipal boundary. I saw what looked like a cell tower so I stopped and consulted my phone to successfully locate a provincial park campground 7 km ahead. I've seen a fire station and one grocery store but no other indication that Tlell is a town.
I set up in a sheltered nook of the campground. Last night I realized that the tent I have is best suited to hot buggy climates, not cold windy ones, because under the fly it's mostly mesh and I can feel the breezes through my summer sleeping bag. This has changed my plan to camp on North Beach and Rose Spit, exposed to the howling gales of Dixon Entrance.
I cooked and devoured one of the dehydrated dinners I bought at MEC and then went exploring. In the late 70s near winter my mother and father stayed in a resort by the Tlell River, famous for its salmon runs. There was snow on the ground. My father went fly fishing one morning while my mother sat in bed reading, no doubt. The afternoon passed without his return. Darkness fell. No David. In the morning someone went out to look for him and met him coming back. I don't remember or never knew the details of how he got lost. So I rode down the road to the resort (I'm guessing, I saw no other) following the river, and felt foolish at the idea of entering and asking if they remember this event 40+ years ago, so I didn't. The road follows the river; how could you get lost?
So I turned back and rode to the place I'd got a cell connection earlier, near the Crow's Nest store, for my daily ET phone home. The woman at the cash register said that the antennas I'd seen were wifi and that I should go back to a certain place, Wiggins Road, where everyone goes to use their phone, so I did and it was true, there were people parked there yakking on their phones. The place was also remarkable for a high windrow of boulders piled between the sea and the road, with pieces of driftwood on the lee side of it. Imagine the storms that threw them there.
Then I came back to the camp ground, visited the beach, cooked another mess of MEC dehyrated dinner, wrote this, and now I'm going to bed to read more of Entering Time, kindly lent to me by Sid.
Day 5 ... Last night I lay in my shroud reading until almost dark. Recalling my difficulties sleeping the night before at Sid's Bunkhouse Campground Resort, I took a sleeping pill. I was already feeling the cold creeping in so I put on the fleece. The sea breezes filtered through the salal, the mesh tent and my sleeping bag, sucking my body heat away. I had dark thoughts of "dying of exposure"; would the sleeping pill lull me into eternity? I spread my cycling jacket over my legs, then a little later put it on zipped to the chin, over a turtleneck long sleeved shirt and the fleece. My bare feet were cold and I regretted leaving socks with my boots in the cache in Sandspit. I considered going outside again to get my cycling shorts to wear over the cycling pants I had on already but didn't think that would make much difference. In the fetal position I didn't need as much of the length of the sleeping bag so I could pull it over my head and breathe through a small opening. I don't remember falling asleep or waking up but I couldn't have been awake all of the time between 10pm and 8am.
I got up remarkably cheerful, considering, and right away fired up a cup of hot water. I could feel it penetrating my body like lights going on in a city, street by street. As I went through the packing-up motions (tent, sleeping mat, sleeping bag rolled up into little packages) I had a pot of granola, powdered milk, whey protein and water simmering on the stove. Carrying the pot too hot to eat yet I walked to the vast beach and sat on a log, looking out onto Hecate Strait, nobody in sight. I like the coarse sweet porridge the mixture becomes and might make a habit of it.
Tlell to Port Clements is just 21km and more or less flat so I pushed off without the usual glum thought of the labour and tedium ahead of me. Right away I came to an interesting place: a trailhead to East Beach, the 80km stretch of sand, gravel, boulder fields, rivers to cross, without a single headland, to Rose Spit, the northeast tip of Graham Island. Some other time maybe, since I drank at the spring.
The road seemed drawn with a ruler; from the top of each rise I could see several km of asphalt ahead of me. A headwind kept me geared down, slow movement with lots of pedalling. Gratefully I saw a sign to a day-visit park, Mayer Lake, so I turned down a gravel road for a couple of km to an expanse of lily-padded water. I needed water and I hadn't tried out the LifeStraw I had, through which you suck filthy water and take it into your mouth pure. The lake water was tea-coloured. I read the directions: you're supposed to prime it with "safe" water first, so I ate a Pro Bar instead and returned to the highway.
My phone said I was just over half way to Port Clements and the headwind let off so I passed the municipal boundary sign gratifyingly soon after and swept downhill into town. I'd decided already that I would sleep in a bed tonight. At the museum / visitor centre the young man looked at his phone doubtfully and pointed out a $235 B&B and a camp ground four more km past town. I checked out the campground. It was a grim dark place with gusts blowing through the trees from the surprisingly large, whitecapped Masset Inlet. I called the B&B and was almost hung up on when I said I wanted one night. We have guests for a minimum of two days, she said, with no suggestions of options. No way was I going to continue on to Masset, 42km and 285m of uphill. At the general store I looked in vain for a blanket or tarp to tough it out at the campground but the cashier hinted at a motel that might be operating, up by the gas station.
I found it. There was no sign of occupation in the row of yellow paint-peeling numbered doors. Antony Perkins could have emerged from one. A sign said Office at Back so I explored but found only a laundry room at the back of the building with an encouragingly busy machine. Next door at the gas station / restaurant I met four young men sitting outside near laden bicycles, who are from Vancouver and expect to have ridden to Agate Beach, another 25km past Masset, today, having started from Queen Charlotte this morning. I'm pathetic!
The gas station woman told me that the motel is indeed operating and that the office is behind the building behind the building. I went there, pleased to see a neon OPEN sign and knocked on the door. After an immediate frenzy of barking, angry admonishments and quite a long wait, it opened and an elderly man peered out at me. I said I would like a room. He said nothing. For one night. Silence. Just one person. He seemed reluctant, and the place was clearly empty. Finally he said $80 plus taxes. A middle-aged chambermaid bustled in carrying a vacuum cleaner, looked me up and down, said no, give him No. 9, the bed's a bit longer.
The room is much better than the outside looks. No heat, a TV from the 20th century but hot water and wifi. I'm bathed and shaved. The gas station kitchen next door operates from 7 - 3 so I missed lunch there but I'm looking forward to a big greasy breakfast. It's the only restaurant in town, except for a food truck on the highway past the scrap yard. I've just come back from there. We're closed, opening next Thursday, said a large face in a window of a double-wide. There's nothing in town, you know. You must be starving. I smiled yes and turned my bike away. She said wait, I'm making a batch of quesadillas, do you want one? Yes please!
Presently she came out with a takeout box and when I proffered a twenty she said that's ok, this is on me. You can have it on that table over there and leave your garbage right here.
So I'm stretched out on my motel bed, can't smell my feet and still have the taste of quesadilla in my mouth. Life is good!
Day 6 ... got a good night's sleep at the Golden Spruce Motel, up at 8am, huge artery-clogging breakfast at the gas station next door and on the road to Masset at 10:30. 48 km of gentle ups and downs, shooed several deer out of my way, saw a disturbance of ravens up ahead that dispersed as I went by, revealing a shredded red mess of flesh with a deer's head. I understand that deer here are an invasive species and have no predators.
At times the sun broke through high overcast, throwing my shadow beside me: the sillouette of rider and bicycle with a background of blurred pavement. I considered trying to capture this in a selfie but saw it ending in tragedy, or at least more road rash.
At exactly half way I stopped at Pure Lake, a shallow bowl of tea-tinted water not far down a foot path. The bottom sloped so gradually that I had to walk out 50 meters to be up to my knees, where I had a CPA bathe. I've coined this male term just now, based on a PTA acronym used by a partner of my sister's, Myd, describing a female method of non-submersive bathing: pussy, tits and ass.
The second half of the ride was more interesting because it gave glimpses of Masset Inlet, the long narrow body of water from the sea that expands at Port Clements to become a saltwater lake. Strong winds can come up it and the tide goes in and out so it's really an oversized lagoon.
I passed a sign warning of an 8% grade and groaned. Going down, however speedily, usually means you have to go back up again soon after, which on a laden bicycle is hard work, and for me recovering from an 8% grade would mean going down to the granny gear, or even getting off the bike and pushing it. But this time there was no payback, no hill to climb after ... I was near sea level because I was near Masset.
Right away a tsunami warning sign called attention to big white arrows on blue background painted on the power poles, pointing in the direction of safety on higher ground. I saw this sign in Port Clements too and imagined a huge wave rushing up the inlet. My understanding right now is that there hasn't been such an event in settler recorded history, but Haida oral history tells of a flood which was probably a tsunami. Wikipedia: "Along the western coast of Haida Gwaii, the (28-Oct-2012) earthquake triggered tsunami waves with a maximum run-up height at 13 meters in Davidson Inlet. In Mike Inlet, the tsunami was measured at 7.6 meters, making it the largest tsunami generated by an earthquake in western Canadian history."
Masset is bigger and more commercially developed than Sandspit or Queen Charlotte. I wonder why the main airport isn't here. (This has been explained to me: until recently settler economic interests centred on logging made Sandspit's central location more attractive. There is a smaller airport in Masset.) I pedaled into town past a marina of mostly small commercial fishing boats, then a business area and out the other side, following the east shore of the inlet for a kilometer or so to the Old Massett Indian Reservation. Posy and Jim's house is at the very end of the road. There were several large cardboard boxes at the front door addressed to Jim so I knew I was in the right place.
The house is constructed in the form of a Haida longhouse, with huge cedar pillars, beams and boards, two floors, altogether at least 5000 square feet. There was no answer to my knock on the door so I walked down around the side of the building by an ancient 15 meter long fishing boat propped upright by thick poles. A totem pole and a mortuary pole stand between the house and the beach. I could see Posy through a front window on the lower floor, seated at a table doing something. When I approached she looked up and recognized me, smiling. She beckoned me in and we hugged; she introduced me to a woman Leslie with whom she is working on a project that maintains Rediscovery, a camp for young people near Langara Island. I understand it's one of many efforts to sustain Haida culture in the ongoing climate of settler impacts.
Posy took me upstairs to meet Jim, her mother-in-law Joan and a young woman Raven who is apparently an apprentice. Raven and Jim were drawing on large sheets of brown paper taped to the floor under skylights, penciling details of a project which looked like it will be a triptych of Haida figures. (Raven explained to me later that it shows Raven - the Haida legendary being - in the legend Raven Steals the Light. They are designing it so that a numerically-controlled laser cutter will remove material from three sheets of stainless steel. The design has therefore to include structural elements that hold the Raven's parts - head, wings, body, feet, tail - together. The clever solution seems to be rays emanating from some perspective points, in the background.) In the single focus I have when being introduced to people I didn't notice that I was standing on the drawing until Jim pointed this out to me. At least you didn't tear it, he said.
Posy was going to drive Joan somewhere so I asked if I could accompany them. We left her at a clapboard bungalow in town and drove to the wharf where her friend Roger was to arrive in his 37 foot motor cruiser from Port Clements. I might have been on the boat myself if I had known to find him there this morning. Posy pointed to a house by the head of the wharf, saying that it is a B&B owned by Susan Musgrave, a well-known BC writer. This reminded me of a description in one of her novels of a popular menu item on the coast called KD cutlets. You throw a few boxes of Kraft Dinner into a pot with some water, ketchup and other available condiments and boil it until it becomes a thick porridge, then you form it into patties and fry them in oil. Yum!
Roger steamed into the harbour just as we got there. We helped him tie up at a float then sat in the spacious cabin talking for a while. Posy had a sliver deep under a fingernail and Roger urged her to go to the hospital to get it looked at. We drove to a liquor store to get beer, dropped Posy at the hospital and Roger drove us back to the house. The boxes on the front step turned out to be 150 kg of abalone shells from New Zealand which Jim asked us to put in a shed, safe from rats that like to gnaw on them. He cuts them into pieces and inlays them in big cedar panels as mosaics where they reflect iridescent blues, silvers and purples. I saw some of these next door in a 30m long semi-cylindrical shed of translucent white tarp, among other projects including larger than life sized hockey players in cedar with NHL sweaters and Haida motifs carved into them and elements of totem poles. Everything would need at least two strong men to lift or turn. A long meter-thick cedar log lay beside the work shed, ready to be transformed.
The upstairs of their house is a large space with a kitchen on part of one side, a stationary bicycle with a display to watch the mountain highway you're hillclimbing, a big balcony that looks out past the totem poles to Masset Inlet, a colony of sofas, armchairs, daybed, bookshelves and wood stove half way down the other side, the stairs to the lower floor and at the back end, beside the front entrance, were workbenches cluttered with tools of all kinds: a dentist's drill, photographic lights, power tools, works in progress. And in the centre under an expanse of skylights, the drawings taped to the floor. Jim's work is mixed in with the domestic elements of the home. Evidently Posy is ok with this, although Jim complained with a smile in his voice that when she uses some of his things she doesn't always put them back where she found them.
Downstairs is orderly maybe because it's more Posy's domain: bedrooms, two huge bathrooms with prominent bathtubs, double sinks, glass-caged showers and one with a sauna; a pantry/storage space of shelves filled with totes of household items framing a massive ornate antique safe with heavy hinges, a wheel to crank the bolts back and the combination knob. Since Jim sometimes carves in silver and gold, I imagine ingots inside. I've felt it indiscreet to ask. (I learned from Jim later that when he inherited it he had to go to other relatives to know the combination, and they stood over him expectantly as he opened it, but there was nothing of huge value inside.)
While I was exploring outside and sitting on the beach writing this and watching a bald eagle sitting hunched on top of a piling, uttering a complaining screech now and then, Jim drove to the hospital to pick up Posy.
Posy barbequed spring salmon in big slabs with sweet charred skin on one side, and made a salad with lettuce from the garden, local blueberries and pansy blossoms. All the while we talked about Pasley, Hermit, Rediscovery, our life stories, cross-cultural marriage issues, the long time it took Posy to integrate herself in the native community, the slower pace of life here compared with Vancouver, how her children will fare in the changing social and natural environments. After dinner Jim was snoring gently on the couch.
Day 7 ... already a week gone by. It's a grey day with drizzle and the far shore of the inlet is just faintly visible. I've barely been outside all day, holed up on my bunk reading and journal writing. Right now ALL of my clothes are in the washing machine. I hope nothing exciting happens before they're dry.
Posy summoned me to lunch. Her younger daughter Mary was there with her 6 year old son Carl and a couple that Mary had met, from Cooms a bit north of Nanaimo, here motoring around. Mary is an attractive woman of maybe 30, the twin of her brother Carl who committed suicide several years ago. The other woman, of the couple, has lost a brother too, very recently, so the conversation turned to grief and how they were dealing with their losses. The man of the couple and I stayed silent, just listening while Jim, Posy, Mary and the bereaved sister talked. They all cried from time to time except Jim held it together. He said he cried every day for a long time and felt it helpful, but Mary said hers started painfully in her throat and burst out unstoppably. She described how Carl came to her in dreams and felt some comfort in the idea that she would join him in the afterlife. They wondered why they hadn't foreseen his suicide. Posy said she understood that depressed people usually hide their thoughts of suicide because they don't want attempts to stop them, and they are so paralyzed by their depression they don't think about the pain they will cause the people who love them. Once they decide to end their lives they feel more peace, she said.
The other woman, who'd lost her brother, said he died without leaving any sign of the cause, and after two autopsies the medical authority recorded it as "sudden unexplained death".
Posy called off a plan to drive to Tow Hill this afternoon because a few things came up and besides, the weather is crap so there'd be no view. On a clear day you can sea Alaska from there. This morning Roger said he might take us somewhere in his skiff but that's not happening either. The forecast for tomorrow is better and predicts that the sun will break through on Friday so I think I will head south again that morning. As Pepa reminded me, guests and fish start to stink on the third day. Lamentably I'm ill-equipped to venture toward Rose Spit so that will have to be put off until my inevitable (according to the spring legend) return. Hiking East Beach from Tlell to Rose Spit and west to Masset would be a fun one.
A man named Miles came to discuss with Posy and her co-collaborator Leslie the water situation at the Rediscovery camp by Langara Island. He worked at Langara Lodge, a sport fishing camp on the island, for many years and has become the go-to guy when things go wrong at all the fishing lodges. Rediscovery hosts groups of teens and preteens who participate in a structured program involving 10 and 6 day treks respectively out of the camp, down the west coast, learning about the ecology, food foraging, bush skills and so on. Miles proposed that they look for water sources above the camp and bring water down with poly pipe to storage tanks, and described options for treating the water, ranging from simply adding bleach to the tanks, through UV exposure and ozone, to reverse osmosis filtering. He is very knowledgeable so I got a lot from being a fly on the wall of the meeting. He told me he had been operating a crane for repairs to the Tlell River Bridge today.
Roger came back with 3 15lb+ spring salmon he caught and Jim filleted them, showing me how it's done. He took the heads, spines and tails down to the beach, exciting the eagle community. The sky darkened with beating wings and shrieks reverberated into the house. Posy made a soup of salmon, crab legs, vegetables and seaweed, and a salad, for dinner.
Tomorrow I will ride out to Tow Hill and maybe further along the beach and back, or go by car with Posy if she wants to do that.
Day 8 ... sunny morning, cool but dry. Posy took me to Tow Hill, stopping at several places to show me houses she likes hidden in the forest along the road just in from the beach. Roger followed in another car, with a woman named Michelin, a tourist like me.
Tow Hill is a sharp bump in the otherwise flat landscape, about half way to Rose Spit, close to the end of the road. To go further means walking/riding/driving on the beach. A boardwalk path takes you up the hill to viewpoints in two directions: east to Rose Spit and higher up, west back to Masset and beyond. Waves of Dixon Entrance crash on the beaches and rocky stretches. The hill is 125 meters high. An interpretative sign said that it began as a volcanic plug two million years ago, and more recently glacial forces piled up material behind it, on the land side. On the sea side, sheer cliffs fall to the beach, which have been the death of 10 dogs tearing playfully through the salal, according to another sign.
There were a couple of groups of bikepackers there. l'm a little disappointed that I didn't ride out there myself because I would have tried riding on the beach. I knew that getting to Rose Spit would not be possible for me because I could not get there and back in one day, ie, without enduring a night in the draughty tent, but driving by car just half-way there and turning back was anticlimactic after my fantasies of journeying solo to the edge of the world. From Tow Hill I could just barely make out the end of vegetation on the long curve of beach, almost to the horizon, where the spit begins. Even at pavement biking speeds it would be a long ride.
After a food truck lunch Posy took me to the Maritime Museum in Masset. There was a picture of a cannery fish processing line with women in head scarves working, and one of them was Jim's mum, Joan. It looked just like a cannery I worked in in Prince Rupert in 1965 where a big girl flirted with me and called me an Adonis. The museum had models of Haida canoes, a display that explained how they were made, an intricate but fanciful model of a 5-masted sailing ship and hundreds of bits of settler bric-a-brac including a device for sharpening two-edged razor blades, like one that was in a bathroom drawer when I was a small boy.
Roger found a CD in the back of a book of BC history which had an interview of Isabel Sweeny, nee Bell-Irving, talking about Vancouver at the end of the 19th century. She was born in 1889. We played it on Jim's computer. She spoke of encountering a black bear and cubs at 16th and Granville, how authorities displaced families of native people from near the Burrard Bridge to Squamish and burned their houses, people in canoes selling berries, and the Vancouver fire. She hoped that the natives were compensated for being removed from their homes. Hearing her in the 2021 context and in the presence of a Haida chief was odd, but Jim didn't comment.
My plan is to make pancakes tomorrow morning, carbo-loading for the 70km ride back to Tlell, so we stopped at a supermarket (co-op) and bought bacon and sausages. I downloaded an audiobook and hope I can find bluetooth earbuds or wired ones, maybe in the hardware store, to make the kms fly by.
Day 9 ... awakened by Roger at 8:30. I thought he was impatient for pancakes and sausages but later understood that he assumed I was leaving Masset by air and might miss the morning flight if I didn't get on with it. Still, high time I was on my feet.
Everyone seemed to like the pancakes. After breakfast I packed up and everyone, Posy, Jim, Roger and Raven, followed me outside to my bike for a group photo and farewell. I swung onto the saddle and wheeled away. Hi ho Silver.
In Masset town I stopped at the Home Hardware to see if they had bluetooth earphones. They did. I paired the earphones with my phone, started the book and continued out of town.
Looking back, the day has been the easiest, yet I've travelled the most kilometers of the trip so far. I was well fed at breakfast, there were tailwinds, I'm fitter than when I started and the audiobook was engaging. I reached Port Clements in a surprisingly short time but I still missed lunch at the gas station again so had to be content with split pea ham soup and a coke.
Just leaving Port Clements, a car passed me slowly with someone in the passenger seat waving a blue cloth out the window which looked remarkably like my blue fleece. Putting this together, I realized that I'd failed to pack it and that Posy and Roger had driven 42 km to catch up with me. I felt like an idiot, and grateful because I really need it. Just minutes before I had been lunching at the gas station which is well off the highway so they could have missed me. Lovely people.
I was in Tlell in no time too. There was a crew working on the Tlell River bridge so I stopped to see if Miles was among them. The Haida flagman, Wayne, said he had some sort of accident involving diesel oil yesterday and wasn't here. We had a good long chat, not much traffic to flag, and among other things he told me that walking on the beach from Tlell to Tow Hill takes 7 days.
I set up in the same little bald spot in the salal back from the beach that I'd used before, on my way to Masset. This time I think I will be more comfortable because Posy has lent me a fleece blanket that I will line my sleeping bag with.
It wasn't even 4 yet so I rode my unburdened bike to the beach, thinking to look for a whale carcass I'd heard was near where the Tlell River flows into the sea. I carried it over the logs and tried to ride it on the shingle but the tide was still too high and there was little firm sand so I left it leaning on a log and continued on foot. The sun rarely passed behind clouds and the air was warm. Waves landing on the beach dragged round stones back into the sea with a toc toc toc resonance. I walked for three kms and stopped to talk with a family swimming who said that the whale was still a good way down the beach, this side of a wreck they pointed out to me, another km or so further. Tomorrow I mean to go to the trailhead of the East Beach to Tow Hill walk, on the other side of the Tlell River, and look for the wreck and the whale that way.
I walked back to the bike and tied my fleece-wrapped camera to the panier frame with a bungee cord. Almost back at my tent, suddenly my rear wheel stopped turning. I couldn't get off the bike in time - the seat is higher than I can touch the ground with my feet - and hopping right several times to try to recover my balance, I fell backwards into the salal. Fortunately there were no witnesses to this comedy. I expect I'll see a little blood when I examine my shirt later. Out of the salal, I saw that the bungee cord was wrapped around the back axle, hence no rotation was possible, and my fleece was a few meters back, without the camera. I retraced my steps on the beach almost to where I'd left my bike earlier and found the camera in its case lying on the sand beside the bike track. The fall into the salal episode was actually good because otherwise I might not have noticed the absense of the camera until too late, after the tide rose.
Back at camp I rehydrated the remaining half of the Kung Pao Grilled Chicken. The instructions say to pour a cup of boiling water into it and wait 12 minutes but that way it's still too crunchy, so this time I cooked it as a thick soup for 20 minutes or so and it wasn't bad.
Now it's 7:30. The sun is sinking behind the trees so I will retire to my shroud and read until I get sleepy, snug in Posy's fleece blanket.
Day 10 ... last night I was thinking I'd read one more chapter and then sleep. I heard footsteps on the path passing my campsite and then a voice said hello? I've come to collect the campsite fee, $18. A little peeved I pulled back three zippers - sleeping bag, tent and fly - wriggled out of my cocoon, retrieved the food panier containing my wallet hanging from a high branch, got the wallet out and handed him a twenty, saying I wish you'd come earlier. He mumbled an excuse and warned me that there is a bear with cubs in the area.
I slept much better than I had on the previous visit, thanks to Posy's fleece blanket. I could hear the faintest pitter-patter of drizzle on the fly when I woke, so I just lay there for a while more, thinking what I'll do today. Then some will other than my own roused me; without packing anything, I moved everything to a covered place nearby that has several big picnic tables, and set the granola/powdered milk/whey protein/water mixture on the stove with a low flame. By the time I'd packed and stowed the tent, sleeping mat and sleeping bag, it was ready.
Back on the bike, I rode to the East Beach trailhead, checking in with Wayne the flagman on the way. I wanted to see the wreck and the whale carcass. Now I was on the north side of the river. The trail is good with boardwalks over the muddy bits and stairs, and for a km follows a ridgetop that's like an enormous dyke, falling off to the river to the right and to a ravine on the left. At intervals I chanted HI HI HI HI HO HO HO HO like a first nations guy, to alert the bear in case she was around. There are lots of berries right now and often the bear poop is blue, from salal berries I guess.
The trail dropped down to the riverside and became a road, with tire tracks. Evidently you can cross the river there from Haida House, at low tides. It runs parallel with the beach for a km or so and then breaks through to the sea. Every few minutes I'd hear a disturbance in the water and sometimes see a flash of silver. I passed several people fishing, from both banks, casting lures. One guy had a little kayak he'd crossed the river in and a big salmon lay on the pebbles behind him.
I could see the wreck now, a cockeyed ediface about a km up the beach. Something complicated lay in the gravel this side of it, possibly the whale, but as I approached it resolved into part of the wreck, like a rib cage poking out of the beach, detached from the prow. This last took me some time to visialize as a prow, requiring me to walk around it. It has two thick-walled cylinders stuck through it which I recognized as the tubes that the anchor chains ran in. This gave a sense of scale, indicating a large vessel. 604now says "The 264-foot barge Pesuta was faced with a bad storm in the Hecate Strait on Dec. 11th, 1928. It was being towed by a tug boat when heavy wind struck both boats, causing the cargo and barge to crash."
I'd walked 10 km by the time I got back to my bike, then pedaled the 50km to Queen Charlotte, stopping to walk down to the beach to see the Balancing Rock, then detoured through Skidegate to look for an argillite carving for Pepa, and photograph an enormous dead tree with a massive eagle's nest in it and two bald eagles perched on branches. There was a young one on the ground below, shrieking plaintively ... failed first flight? I watched the ferry from Prince Rupert come in.
Now I'm back at Sid's Bunkhouse Campground Resort, in one of the bunks this time. When I asked him if I could do that, he hesitated and said ok, if you don't tell anyone, so I'm hoping any bedbugs have died of starvation since previous occupants, pre-covid.
I had a shower just now and when I took my shirt off I looked for blood from yesterday's tumble into the salal. No blood, but most of the back of the shirt was torn off. I rode a lot of the way today in just the shirt - I guess people were too kind to mention it.
Day 11 ... momentous day and I haven't even left Queen Charlotte village yet. My plan was to rent a kayak and paddle along the passage between the two big islands for a day, camp somewhere and paddle back. So after a granola porridge breakfast and an extended discussion with Sid who denies anthropogenic global warming and the benefit of covid vaccination, I packed up and headed into town. The kayak rental guy said that they don't have a single-seat kayak until Tuesday, or Monday evening earliest. I pondered this outside, went back in and paid a deposit for 2 days from Monday evening. Today is Sunday. It was still early so I went for a stroll on the floats in the small vessel harbour. Ravens were cavorting in the strong west wind, showing excellent flying skills alighting on piles and pursuing each other for scavenged food. The sky was cloudless. I exchanged greetings with a native guy who pointed to a distant hilltop and said that the view from Sleeping Beauty would be fabulous today. Unfortunately my boots are in my cache in Sandspit.
The Visitors' Centre opened at noon. Pepa asked me to bring her an argillite carving so I've been knocking on doors that have Haida Carvings signs and going to gift shops. Yesterday I went to several such places in Skidegate and today I figured I would have a look in the Visitors' Centre. A woman about my age tending the place had a badge which identified her as Skye and a fragment of a colourful tattoo peeking above the top of her blouse. She opened a case to show me some argillite things. I asked her if she knows an American woman named Betsy here in Queen Charlotte. In 1972 I worked in Bolivia in a health NGO with such a person and heard decades ago that she was living here. Skye brightened and asked Betsy xxxxx? That sounded right. She ran her finger down a column of the local phone book and reached for the phone. I said ask her if she was ever in Bolivia and if she says yes, ask her if Sid Tupper rings any bells. I could almost hear a shriek at the other end, judging by Skye's excitement. Betsy said she'd be right down.
She took me in her car up a steep zigzag of streets to her house. From the veranda the inlet and islands lay before us. We had tea and exchanged news about people we knew in the day, even people we know in common since then, like Posy, Jim and Roger. Apparently everyone knows everyone else in the islands.
I told her where I've been staying in town, at Sid's Bunkhouse Campground Resort and she frowned. She didn't have much good to say about him. In the Visitors' Centre where she has volunteered, she learned not to direct young women there, after reports that "he made them uncomfortable". People call him Ticket Sid because of his pride in the many technical qualifications he has, and they dress up like him at costume parties. Even Jim knows him, saying that guy can fix anything. Denialism aside, he has really improved my understanding of antennas, solar power and batteries, even if pedantically, so I'm voting in his favour.
I didn't meet Betsy's partner Lon who was out playing golf with another carver friend. He built the house, which is gorgeous. Several curved laminated cedar arches support the roof, symmetrically and with precision challenged by the layout of the house, in which as far as I could see no two adjacent rooms are on the same level. An endmost arch frames a large panel carving in yellow cedar in Haida stylizations of the sun, moon and a raven. I should have asked what legend it tells, but every wall and flat space had objects just as interesting so I got distracted.
She has been living in Queen Charlotte most of the time since first coming here in 1975, with episodes in Indonesia learning about batik, in an art school in San Fransisco, and teaching grade school in the East Kootenays. She met Lon at some early point and they did odd jobs until they both got work with Mac&Blo timber cruising. Suddenly they were making pots of money and built the house. Betsy has batiks, scarves, cards and prints selling in the Visitors' Centre and showed me her current interest in tapestries with felt that she makes. I had the feeling I was displacing time for that so after a couple of hours I left. She gave me a copy of Gumboot Girls, a collection of writings by women who escaped their urban roots to live in remote places on the BC north coast, with a bookmark left in her chapter and an affectionate note on the title page. I will read it tonight. Roger thrust it into my hands not long after I met him, urging me to read it but in the end I returned it unread because so much else was going on and I was using all my alone time journaling.
One of my objectives in coming to Haida Gwaii was to find Betsy, and I was sceptical I'd achieve it. The trip seems successful now, even though I failed to realize my other hope, to stand alone at the tip of Rose Spit and feel again intense gratitude for being alive.
A little soured by the reports of Sid, I looked at a couple of other campgrounds further down the road out of town. They were too windy so I preferred the bunk bed, higher cost and Sid's Trumpish opinions.
In the late afternoon a van pulled into Sid's yard. I didn't pay much attention because I was pecking at my phone, journaling on the smelly sofa, but I heard loud female laughter and conversation with Sid littered with fuck this and fuckin' that. An older white-haired woman, head down, scuttled across the gravel floor living room toward the toilet and later a younger, maybe 30, woman took the same route. Couple a broads crossed my mind, uncharitably. Conversations continued, just outside, with a miasma of marijuana smoke drifting in.
I came to understand that they are a mother and daughter and have left North Vancouver to live in Haida Gwaii, bringing with them a van-full of possessions which they unloaded in the yard and carried to some storage space provided by Sid. I never knew their names. They've been sleeping in the van, probably in the cab seats judging by the amount of stuff they have. The daughter already has a job. I soon reclassified them from broads to interesting people, because the daughter managed Sid so adeptly. She didn't engage him in his rants, just steered the conversation away when his assertions became indefensible, because there is no convincing him of anything, so invested he is in his "research".
She participated in the Fairy Creek old growth confrontations with the police and has articulate opinions about what they achieved. Sid of course views the protests as pointless because the BC government and economic interests are invincible. When I pointed out that the First Nations demanded and got a 2 year moratorium on old growth cutting, she said it applies only to some small area, outside of which they're harvesting ancient trees as fast as they can. Protest prevailed in the 80s in Clayquot Sound so I'm hopeful that it will again at Fairy Creek.
Day 12 ... following a leisurely breakfast and a lecture on battery maintenance by Sid, I packed up, said farewell to Sid and the girls and pedaled out to Skidegate to see what argillite carvings the Haida Heritage Centre gift shop has. Closed Mondays! I killed time back in VQC (Village of Queen Charlotte) until the kayak rental place, Green Coast, opened at 5. By 5:45 I was on the water heading west with intentions to camp at the Burnt Islets, beyond Lina Island, about 3 hours paddle. Sid had assured me that you can pass though a channel to the north of Lina Island, with Graham Island on your right. On my phone app map it looks dodgy. I had told the rental guy where I was going and we discussed my campsite options but I didn't say how I was getting there so he didn't warn me off. The other way, by the south side of Lina Island, is a bit longer and involves a greater distance from shore. Little whitecaps in the following sea hissed as the tide went out against it, making me nervous as I steered to keep the boat from turning broadside. So the north route closer to shore remained attractive. I squinted against the lowering sun and its reflection on the water straight ahead. When eventually I reached the channel I saw what wasn't apparent to me on the map: it meanders and you can choose to go by one of at least two tributary channels. Already the water was shallow. The one I chose soon led me to a place where I went aground and could go no further. I had to get out of the boat and was immediately up to my shins in mud which unwillingly let me go. I retreated to the other channel which took me further, but only to a rapidly diminishing lagoon as the water rushed out. The exposed mud flats ahead had a creek running into the lagoon and the mud made a portage impracticable. Everywhere in the grey oozing expanse, squirts of water shot as high as a meter in the air in exuberant bivalve orgasms. There was no turning back to take the south route because the tide had me trapped.
My phone rang just then; it was Pepa. How odd it felt in my semi-critical situation to be chatting with her so far away in distance and context. I switched to the back camera to show her: https://youtu.be/JTLQ7djKX6w
It was already 7:30, the time I'd planned to start making camp by so I looked at the flat places above high tide in view and chose one which seemed sheltered from wind. Grounding the boat, the first 10 meters toward dry land were super-suckers so I lightened it by removing the panier and dry bag and took them to the top of the shingle beach. Then I dragged the boat up there too and flipped it over in the tall grass. Rain is forecast tomorrow. I cleaned my feet and shins with grass as best I could.
The grass would make a marvelous mattress under my tent but I also saw a bear-sized slept-on patch just meters away and a prodigious pile of blue poo.
The sun disappeared behind the trees on Graham Island before I finished pitching the tent, etc., while my rehydrated Spicy Pasta with Sausage dinner bubbled on the stove. The air cooled suddenly. I ate standing up; I envy people who are comfortable sitting cross-legged.
Haida Gwaii has a big population of black bears. They generally avoid prople and only become aggressive if you appear to threaten their cubs or stand in the way of food. Common practice is not to have food in your tent and hang it in a container out of reach. I brought some light rope and a karabiner for this purpose. About 50 meters up the shoreline a half-fallen alder extended over the grass, supported by another tree, offering a hanging point. I must have thrown that karabiner twenty times before I had it in my hand again ready to haul up the panier of food.
The tide tables showed that unless I got up really early, the tide would be too low again for me to get out of the lagoon before noon. So I set my phone to alarm at 6:30 and settled into two hours of reading in my cocoon/shroud.
Day 13 ... at the crack of dawn I was breaking camp, no stopping for breakfast. My chances of getting out looked marginal. When I righted the kayak, I noticed that I had just one paddle; the rental guy had given me a spare in case one breaks. Thinking back, I realized that in my struggle to get through the mud I had left the paddle where I'd grounded and forgotten to go back for it. Expletives!
Well, I barely made it through; the tide swept me out of the lagoon into the channel. I could see little cat's paws over the shallows and paddled to avoid them, sometimes dragging the bottom of the boat on the stones. When I was clear I decided to go back to VQC rather than continue on the south route around Lina Island. The wind gets up between 11 and 6: if I did that I'd have a headwind all the way back. At 8am though it was a lovely paddle, flat calm, sunny - straight into my face again - windless, and no motor noise, as though it was Sunday morning. I took a route on the outside of the little islands off the town. At one point a series of big - maybe 70cm - perfectly sinusoidal waves appeared for no evident reason, not boat wake, broadside, rocking me wildly. I think they might have been a tidal phenomenon, like a tidal bore.
I passed a reef with two eagles on it eating something, watched intently by crows waiting for leftovers. Then I landed by the rental shop, far out on the tidal beach. The shop was locked but a group with a guide was suiting up for a paddle. Clouds had formed and a light rain began. I helped to carry a double kayak out to the water and got help to bring mine in. I texted the rental guy, admitting the loss of the paddle. I looked it up on Amazon.ca ... $1200! He said he thinks it cost them a little over $200 and asked me if $150 would be reasonable given its use over the summer, so I paid. He's not the business owner. I hope it's not a mistake.
I decided to head straight over to Sandspit on Moresby Island so after breakfast at a chinese restaurant and a quick stop at the Visitors' Centre to buy an argillite pendant for Pepa, a crescent moon in Haida motif with abalone inlay, I rode to the ferry. It cost $0.00 since it's Monday to Thursday and I'm a senior, on a bicycle. Woo hoo.
In the passenger shelter on the ferry I met a man who told me he's recently moved with his family to Masset from Terrace. He's a welder, does all kinds of specialty welding, like stainless steel, and people keep giving him salmon as well as his fee. More work than he can handle, big scarcity of trades here. He said his last job was with DeBeers, in the Northwest Territories in Canada, 4,000 meters underground in a diamond mine.
Now I'm back at the 501 campground / RV park, the sole resident. I looked into a one-day tour to Gwaii Haanas, a national park in the south of Moresby Island with pre-settler Haida village sites, but none is available tomorrow, so I might ride down to Moresby Camp, from where the tours leave. Or maybe not, because rain has set in for a few days.
Day 14 ... last full day in Haida Gwaii. Rain drumming on my tent greeted me when I awoke at 7am. I could think of no reason to get up except to relieve my distended bladder so I put up with it until 9, dozing, exploring the menu system of my GPS tracker and daydreaming. By then the drumming had reduced to pitter-patter and when I finally did emerge from my cocoon it was just a drizzle. I had a granola porridge breakfast and did a few things too tedious to read about here. Today's highlight was a visit to Sandspit Harbour, which is about a kilometer past the 501 toward the ferry. Marinas are almost as irresistible to me as graveyards; the boats are all kinds, sailboats, work boats, fishing boats, speed boats, motor yachts, tugs, landing craft, ..., and range from opulence to dereliction. The Canada Coast Guard has a facility there and a capable-looking red and white vessel on the outermost float. The front door of the building has a notice that says "No public access until further notice" but I rang the bell anyway. A fit-looking man about 35 opened the door with a friendly how are you. I asked him if he would tell me about the Coast Guard. Mostly Search and Rescue, he said. We get dispatched from the central SAR office in Victoria. When a guy says he's broken down near shore, they tell him to deal with it himself. If you ever feel you have to call for help, don't just say that. Tell them someone's medication has run out as well, or better still, say there are children onboard.
Another thing we do is environmental protection. If there's a Vessel of Concern, like a derelict, we make sure it's not going to leak oil, something like that, or be a Hazard to Shipping. See the Tsekoa down there on the far float? He pointed to a sizeable wooden vessel that looked tug-ish but had no towing hardware. I shouldn't say this, but that's a Vessel of Concern. (Earlier I'd been admiring its ravaged wheelhouse, smashed gunwales, rust stains and slovenly deck. Seaweed was thriving on the hull.) The guy's dock lease expired so we'll be taking action soon.
I asked what about human smugglers, do you get involved with that? He said no, the Navy and the RCMP do that.
He lives on Vancouver Island and works three weeks on, three weeks off. He recommended a walk called the Dover Trail, a 3km loop up the hillside and back, which he runs in about 40 minutes. There are culturally-modified trees by the path, with some bark stripped off, or test holes to see if the tree is sound enough to be used as a pole or shaped into a canoe.
I went back to the 501 RV park, changed from sandals to boots and rode to the Dover trailhead. For a hundred meters the path was slate gravel and lined tidily with boulders, leading to a beautifully built gazebo-like structure on the bank of a stream. From there the trail narrowed to just a trodden path climbing up the hillside. I walked for a while then turned back when the rain started again. I didn't see any culturally-modified trees but I did see ancient stumps and lots of mushrooms.
Day 15 ... adios Haida Gwaii. I emerged from my cocoon at 7. Three deer grazed unconcerned nearby. The sky was low overcast with brighter patches here and there and though it was not raining my tent was heavily beaded with water. While I stowed gear my porridge simmered on the stove. Disassembly of the bike and its arrangement in the bike bag took a while. I showered in case someone had to sit beside me on the plane, then lugged the bike bag and tote out to the road. In seconds a burly young woman in a pickup going in the other direction passed, reversed back to me and said if I were still there on her way back from the harbour she'd take me to the airport. Seconds after that, a double cab pickup stopped and loaded my things into the back. I admired the stick-and-poke tattoo of an octopus coiled around the driver's left forearm. He operates a fishing charter business in Sandspit.
The airport building has interesting displays of Haida Gwaii relevance. I could trace my travels on a 3-D relief map of the islands, about 3 meters long. Large models of bush planes that have served the communities for decades hang from the rafters and smaller ones of aircraft operating out of Alliford Bay during WWII are in view in a cabinet: a sub chaser and a reconnaissance plane. Newspaper clippings about a woman in the 50s who rowed an open boat solo from Seattle to Ketchikan promoted her book. The most exciting one for me was the story of the big salmon sculpture outside the airport which impressed me so much a couple of days previously. In the rain it gleamed as though leaping out of the sea. I learned from the blurb that the artist is none other than Betsy's partner Lon. No wonder their house is a wonder. A sculpture in Queen Charlotte of a whale rising vertically fin-high out of the sea with a similar copper-shingle patina is also his.
This trip has had its discomforts but also moments of elation I was hoping for. I wish I had recorded more, especially about the people I met, but on the other hand maybe I spent time writing when I could have been doing more.
I was surprised how easy it is to start a conversation there. You can't pass anyone on the street without their greeting, so it's no stretch to turn that into an opportunity to ask questions, like how long have you lived here, why did you come, and so on.
Incidentally, to meet the airline's requirements I rented the bike bag from a guy I found on pinkbike, a fascinating site full of mountian bike news, buy&sell, forum, equipment ads and event/trip reports.
If you have Google Earth installed, click here for GPS tracks of the trip.
Acknowledgements ... first I am grateful to Pepa who encouraged me to take this trip even though I know she preferred that I didn't. Decades ago my brother Charles gave me the bicycle that I rode. My cousin Reg contributed generously to the cost. Not least, three days with Posy and Jim in Old Masset were the high point.