Gate Creek and Windy Bay

We had a long day of paddling ahead of us - about 20km. We packed up for a 7am hot breakfast. Packing up takes a long, long time. Especially the first time. While you have an enormous (comparatively) amount of space in a kayak, it all has to fit in these little skinny tubes in the front and back of the boat. The guides commanded all the center hatches in the two doubles for all the food including an incredible amount of fresh fruits and vegetables, a two-burner cook stove, and all our plates, bowls, cups, serving platters, etc. We were well taken care of. We were each given a 20 and 10 litre dry bag for our clothes and anything else. Since Sheryl and I did not bring any beer or alcohol, we also had another 10 litre dry bag for our stuff. Plus our tent, sleeping pads, sleeping bags, little folding chairs, and our tarp. We succeeded in getting it all in with only a small flesh wound on my knuckle as I tried to stuff in the last item. Ouch.

Paddling a fully packed double kayak is a lot more work too. We paddled south along the east side of Lyell Island past some exquisite landscape. We spied sea caves and surprising number of gorgeous and inviting beaches. We saw a rhinoceros auklet, ancient murrelets, marbled murrelets, pigeon guillemots, cormorants, and lots and lots of eagles. A game developed with all rules and points was made up by Jill - she is the tour company’s owners son. She was a hoot. We saw harbour seals and deer.

We did encounter scant other boats, but honestly, it was generally just hours and hours of soaking in this green, green land. It was wild and spiritual. I found myself overwhelmed by the beauty and that I get to be here. Here floating/working my core muscles pushing through the water. It felt satisfying.

We weren’t sure if we would be headed down into our campsite and backtracking to the Watchman site at Windy Bay or not. With the higher winds forecast for the afternoon, we (really our guides) decided we would just stop in on Windy Bay before setting up camp. I was thankful to be in our double. It has lots more power and even though I usually didn’t take breaks, Sheryl could.

Windy Bay is the site of a grand standoff between the Canadian government with a logging company and the Haida people and their allies during the late 70’s and 80’s. The company was given the go ahead to do what they had been doing all over the west - clear cutting every available tree from Lyell Island and also further south. . It was a fight for the soul of the place and involved protests, lawsuits, arrests and lots of media attention. In the end, the Canadian government and British Columbia signed an agreement (from my last post) that doesn’t agree on whose land it was but did create the Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve - hence this incredible wilderness was kept unlogged.

We got into Windy Bay before lunchtime and waited a bit for the previous small group of visitors to finish up. Gordon, the Watchman, was a bit, well, bored. He kinda let it slip that this was his day off and repeated himself a few times. That was ok. He showed us the Legacy totem pole erected on the site along with the Looking Around and Blinking House - a long house erected in 1987 to help house the protestors. Today the long house is not inhabitable - something about the structure and the ubiquitous rat population that frequent the place. Interesting.

We had our picnic lunch onsite and then did a short hike to a ginormous spruce tree. It was nice to stretch my legs after a few hours in the kayak. It was so pretty - moss always gets me, and there was just the thickest most luxurious layer all over the land. It felt devine under my soft paddling shoes.

Getting into Gate Creek was a quick paddle down Lyell Island to set up our camp for the night. Sheryl and I picked a soft pad of moss in the forest to set up our tent and I (as usual) laid out our pads and sleeping bags for our good night’s sleep.

Our first full day out on the water paddling and setting up our campsite. It felt wonderful.Read more