Exploring Haida Gwaii

October-November 2002

This is an article from WaveLength Magazine, available in print in North America and globally on the web.
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by Neil Frazer

 

The Inside Passage and Haida Gwaii

Neil Frazer and his publisher Harbour Publishing have kindly allowed us to excerpt from his book, Boat Camping Haida Gwaii—A Small Vessel Guide to the Queen Charlotte Islands (2001). The book is written for boaters and paddlers, and is full of invaluable information on accessing and appreciating this magnificent archipelago. Highly recommended.

Though not technically part of the “Inside Passage”, the islands known as Haida Gwaii—literally Haida Country— provide magnificent boat camping. The two main islands are Graham Island in the north, and Moresby Island in the south. The southern half of Moresby is the National Park Reserve known as Gwaii Haanas. The reason for the “Reserve” in the name is that the Haida haven’t forgotten that they never ceded title to their lands—their land claims are still pending—and so the governing board of Gwaii Haanas is half Haida and half Parks Canada. The National Parks Act was amended to accommodate this level of joint management.

Though it does not yet appear on the charts, the name Haida Gwaii has come back into general use after a hiatus of two hundred years during which the islands were known as the Queen Charlotte Islands, or, within BC, as simply “The Charlottes.” The English explorer George Dixon may be forgiven for naming the islands after his ship, Queen Charlotte, as in 1778 he was not aware that the islands were inhabited by one people with a common language and culture. English explorers were more accustomed to Vancouver Island, where there were numerous cultures and languages. In any case, most Haida and non-Haida residents now prefer the name Haida Gwaii, because it conveys both history and a unique, if uncertain, present. Mariners are made happiest of all, as the name Haida Gwaii reduces confusion by twenty percent—now there are only Queen Charlotte Strait, Queen Charlotte Sound, Queen Charlotte Channel and Queen Charlotte City. In accordance with local custom, Queen Charlotte City is often referred to below as “Queen Charlotte” or simply “Charlotte.”

The creation of Gwaii Haanas, the National Park Reserve, makes a good story. By 1900, western diseases such as smallpox had reduced the Haida population to a tenth of its former size and spirit. Unable to save their lands from the saws of the Job Savers*, they watched while first Graham Island, then North Moresby, then Louise, then Lyell were cut.

*It’s worth remembering that the industrial loggers’ ongoing rape of Haida Gwaii was routinely justified as ‘saving jobs’. Nobody makes this argument for industrial logging anymore—the jobs vanished with the logs—but the same foolish argument is now routinely made for open netcage salmon aquaculture, an industry even more capital intensive and environmentally destructive than industrial logging.

Traditional Haida house at Yan Village, West entrance of Masset Harbour. Photo: Neil Frazer

By the 1970s Haida spirits had recovered, and as the Job Savers took aim at Burnaby Island, the Haida could see clearly the end of their ancestral home. Many other island residents could see it too, and as the Islands Protection Society, they stood together with the Haida. Seventy-two people were arrested in the subsquent protests, and worldwide attention created a pressure for a solution. The courts dodged the issue, and in the end Parks Canada was called on to administer a reserve that would not be logged—Gwaii Haanas.

The Haida aren’t always comfortable with this arrangement, despite being co-managers, but Parks Canada tries hard to do the right things here, and comparison of Gwaii Haanas with Haida lands in Alaska— clearcut to the water—suggests that a National Park Reserve was a very good idea indeed. Whatever your views on the Park, as a camper you have to love the people of Haida Gwaii—imagine finding 72 people willing to suffer the indignity of arrest to save an uninhabited island from logging! You also have to love Gwaii Haanas. “Place of wonder” is the English translation sometimes used, and visitors find no reason to disagree. The closest I can come to describing describing it is to ask you to imagine the southern half of Vancouver Island, in miniature, without roads or people.

GETTING TO HAIDA GWAII

If you have kayaks on top of your car, or a small boat on a trailer behind it, then your route to Haida Gwaii is by BC Ferry from Prince Rupert. The ferry docks at Skidegate Landing, at the southern end of Graham Island, and a few miles west by road is Queen Charlotte City with a public wharf, a boat launch site, a hotel or two, several B&Bs, and a good hardware/marine store right by the wharf. The marine fuel dock was still at Skidegate Landing in ’01, and there is another fuel dock across the inlet in the small boat harbour at Haans Creek.

If you are flying to Haida Gwaii on scheduled air service from Vancouver or Prince Rupert then you’ll be landing at the village of Sandspit, at the NE corner of Moresby Island, separated from Queen Charlotte by ten miles of road and a twenty minute ferry ride across Skidegate Channel. Sandspit has a hotel, an experienced kayak outfitter, and a fine new harbour for small boats (part of the deal that created Gwaii Haanas). Masset, at the north end of Graham Island, also has a fine airstrip though there is currently no scheduled air service.

There are, admittedly, other ways of getting to Haida Gwaii: big boats often wait in Larsen Harbour at the NW corner of Banks Island. They note weather reports from the lights at Triple Island, Bonilla Island and Sandspit, as well as ocean buoy reports from the North Hecate and South Hecate buoys. Lashing the crockery in place, they make the 55 nautical mile crossing to Queen Charlotte City, and sigh with relief when they get there.

For small motorboats, Hecate Strait is a lottery with bad odds, in part because the narrowest part of Hecate Strait is its northern portion and yet the east coast of Graham Island has no harbours or coves to give protection after you get across. The fact that the Masset Haida once routinely canoed across north Hecate Strait has not made it any less of a lottery; weather authorities regard it as the fourth most dangerous body of water in the world because of its shallow water, strong tides and rapidly changeable weather. Also it is worth remembering that Haida voyaging canoes resembled ships more than kayaks. For a kayak the odds in Hecate Strait are unacceptably low.

Masset kayaker Chris Williamson, using an old Frontiersman kayak, has twice attempted the 32 nm crossing of Hecate Strait from Stephens Island, west of Prince Rupert. On one attempt he made it to within ten miles of Haida Gwaii. Long flat-topped Argonaut Hill (54?3’N, 131?43’W) was visible on the NE coast of Graham Island when a change in weather forced Chris back toward the mainland; the light on Triple Island guided him to safety, as it has so many other mariners. Chris did succeed in a westto- east crossing from the NE end of Graham Island to Edye Pass at the north end of Porcher Island, but it was not an experience he is anxious to repeat.

It should be noted that Chris is not a person who is afraid of the sea; for one sevenyear period he lived alone on the remote uninhabited west coast of Graham Island, foraging daily by kayak, returning to town only once or twice a year to visit friends.

Dixon Entrance (about 35 nm wide at its western end) gives slightly better odds than Hecate Strait, to motorboats at least, but only if you are willing to bet your life on your engine as well as the weather. The Haida themselves regularly crossed Dixon Entrance, paddling back and forth between the NW tip of Graham Island and Cape Muzon (at the south end of Dall Island in what is now Alaska) and they often returned from trading voyages to Lax Kw’alaams (Port Simpson, near Prince Rupert) by coasting up Alaska as far as Cape Chacon, at the southern tip of Prince of Wales Island, and then turning south toward Masset. The route to Masset from Cape Chacon benefits from a large counter-clockwise gyre, stronger on the ebb near Cape Chacon and stronger on the flood near Graham Island.

Like Hecate Strait, Dixon Entrance is subject to sudden vicious winds, and one may have to wait several days for weather settled enough to cross. The Dixon Entrance crossing also has the added complication of taking you across a border. Nevertheless, these old Haida routes are still regularly taken by young Haida men who go back and forth to Alaska to court or visit (much to the annoyance of Customs officers on both sides) and we have used them five times in getting to Haida Gwaii. Masset schoolteacher Andy Ellis has crossed Dixon Entrance several times in his 14' fiberglass skiff, but then Andy once voyaged from Masset to Vancouver and back with a road map and compass as his sole navigational aids, thereby reinforcing a general suspicion that the youth of the nation are in dangerous hands.

At its southern end, Hecate Strait is nearly twice as wide as at its northern end, and nearly twice as wide as Dixon Entrance. Nevertheless, the southern Haida (the Skidegates, the Cumshewas and the Kunghits) routinely made this 60 nm-wide crossing on their way to raid their mainland neighbours or to trade in Victoria. I have a fear of Hecate Strait, and so the five times we departed Haida Gwaii we waited at Rose Harbour, at the south end of Moresby Island, for a weather forecast of “Moderate northwest; outlook: moderate northwest,” and then crossed directly to the islands of Queen Charlotte Strait, east of Vancouver Island, a distance of about 160 nm.

On our first such crossing the wind came up much stronger than expected and blew us to Triangle Island. That crossing made a deep and lasting impression on my mind: I subsequently bought a GPS and built a Jordan series drogue (sea anchor) which I have carried religiously ever since. On another occasion it was necessary to wait two weeks for the right forecast, as low after low assailed the southern part of Haida Gwaii. Our three other crossings were relatively uneventful 14-hour surf sessions.

I recommend you avoid this route unless your small vessel is stable upright when flooded and capable of lying a-hull in big seas; we took it because I wanted to experience, if only in a small way, what the great Haida voyagers must have felt. In the event, what I mainly felt was fear and then, after interminable hours, a happiness at seeing the tops of the Coast Range grow slowly out of the ocean like a line of old friends.

Stewart Marshall, never one to waste money on a airline ticket, paddled and sailed his kayak to Carpenter Bay (on Moresby Island) from Sointula (on Malcolm Island) a distance of roughly 200 nm. On a sanity scale of one to ten this route rates a zero for kayaks. Stewart succeeded partly because he has been studying the coastal sky for so many years that he knew the SE wind would last several days without strengthening, and would therefore blow him where he wanted to go. He also succeeded because he designed and built his kayak to sail and to sleep aboard, and because he has the kind of skill and luck which, if he were a gambler, would result in his being banned from casinos.

VOYAGING IN GWAII HAANAS

Most voyagers come to Haida Gwaii to camp in Gwaii Haanas, the National Park Reserve. Outside of Gwaii Haanas no permit is required for camping, but to camp independently in Gwaii Haanas you must first undergo an orientation and be issued a permit. The number of vessels and visitors in the park is limited, so it is best to make a reservation for a permit well in advance of arrival. In addition to permits obtained by reservation, six walk-in spaces per day are available on a first-come first-served basis.

Auklet, Neil’s trusty 17-foot survey vessel carries camping gear in dry-bags because all its storage compartments are filled with flotation in event of capsize. Neil is ‘in the same boat’ as paddlers, looking for a good campsite each night. Photo: Neil Frazer

Orientations are conducted at the Visitor Centre in Queen Charlotte City, located about a block east of the dock by road, at 8:00 am and 8:00 pm every day from May 1 to September 30. Orientations are also given at the Sandspit Visitor Centre, located inside the terminal at Sandspit Airport, at 11:00 am every day. The 1-1/2 hour-long orientation consists of a pleasant movie and a brief lecture from a warden. Big-boat mariners approaching from the south may be able to arrange to receive an orientation at the new Park Station on Ellen Island in Rose Harbour—radio ahead on VHF channel 6 for further information. If you are used to camping in parks then much of the material presented in the orientation will be familiar, but my personal experience has been that it’s worth going through an orientation again anyway, partly because it refreshes the memory and partly because it gives one a good chance to ask questions. The main goals are to leave the park in as natural a state as possible, and to keep food away from bears. Fires, while not forbidden, are discouraged.

Camping is permitted nearly everywhere in Gwaii Haanas, ex- cept for special areas that will be noted during your orientation. No-camp areas include most watchman sites and islands with notable Haida village sites, such as Anthony Island, Hotspring Island, House Island, Little House Island and Bolkus Island. They also include islands with seabird colonies such as Rankine Island and the Copper Islands. Disturbing birds during the nesting season will cause them them to abandon their nests, and outside the nesting season there’s a real danger of destroying nesting habitat because many of the species are burrow nesters and the islands are riddled with burrows. Dolomite Narrows is also a no-camp area due to the high concentration of bears. In practice, you will hardly notice these restrictions. With little recent logging, except for Lyell Island, Gwaii Haanas is full of gorgeous campsites. “Calendar camping” is the way my son expressed it, meaning that every campsite we found could have been on an outdoor calendar. I had to agree; after four weeks of camping the coasts of BC and Alaska, camping in Gwaii Haanas felt like a luxury vacation.

Most voyagers setting out from Queen Charlotte City choose the east side of Moresby Island rather than the west side. Both coasts are wild, but the east coast is warmer and drier, with more shelter and more wildlife than the west coast. Best of all, the creeks and inlets on Moresby’s SE coast give us clues to what the southern coast of BC must once have looked like before that area was settled.

The west coast of Moresby Island is an entirely different world than the east coast. As most mariners know, when things go bad on the water they go bad very quickly. My experience on the west coast of Moresby is that things are often bad to start with, and that they get worse even more quickly than in other places. Accordingly, the best way to see the west coast is to kayak from a mothership. You’ll have plenty of adventure even from a mothership.

VOYAGING GRAHAM ISLAND

If you are a kayaker beginning your voyage at Masset, or if you come to Haida Gwaii in a small boat from Cape Chacon or Cape Muzon, then you’ll need to chose between the east coast of Graham Island and its west coast. On either coast, the best type of vessel for voyaging is a kayak, and the second best type of vessel is a skiff with wheels so that it can be pulled up a beach out of the surf.

The west side of Graham Island is a wild lonesome coast. Its northern half consists of many long beaches separated by rocky headlands, and fields of boomers up to a mile offshore. There are a number of obvious campsites in the shelter of Langara Island, but in the 22 nm between Langara Island and Peril Bay there is little shelter from a SW wind and no shelter at all from a NW wind. If you’re in a vessel larger than a kayak, then shelter from SE winds is also difficult to find, because boomers will keep you so far away from land.

East of Masset, the north end of Graham Island is one long beach, known at its west end as South Beach and at its east end as North Beach! The NE corner of Graham Island is Rose Point, and the beach on the east side of Rose Point is known, appropriately appropriately enough, as East Beach. Deadly Overfall Shoal stretches eight miles out past the end of Rose Point, so if you are in a kayak then it is best to portage across Rose Point. In a fair weather NW wind, the east side of Graham is much calmer than its west side. Kayakers who can make surf landings like the east side of Graham very much, especially the northern 37-mile portion which is within Naikoon Provincial Park. Four-wheel drive vehicles use both North Beach and East Beach, but you will seldom see one. South of Tlell, where Naikoon Park ends, a main road follows the beach.

Masset Inlet and Juskatla Inlet make a pleasant change from open ocean paddling, yet with variety: Masset Inlet can be windy, and its western half has a climate more like the west coast of Graham than the east coast. The Job Savers are busy on the far west side of Masset Inlet—in the guts and feathers, as one industry wit admitted— most of the great trees were taken out in the 1950s. On the SE side of Masset Inlet, just west of Port Clements, is the Yakoun River which gives especially fine paddling in mid-August when millions of Pink salmon return to spawn; on parts of the Yakoun there are still a few trees with 3-4 metre butts. Port Clements is also the launch point for Kumdis Slough on the east side of Kumdis Island, a great area for wildlife viewing. The attractive south shore of Juskatla Inlet is a favorite with local paddlers, who launch at Juskatla.

Anywhere you camp in Haida Gwaii the Haida will have camped before. However, local paddlers are very respectful of village sites with any sign of former occupation, however slight, and go out of their way not to camp in such places. This is seldom a hardship, as Haida Gwaii has so many great places to camp.

For permission to visit old village sites on Langara Island or Graham Island call the Old Massett Village Council (250-626- 3337, fax: 250-626-5440). To visit old village sites south of Skidegate Channel, call the Haida Gwaii Watchman Office (250- 559-8225, fax: 559-8693). Voyagers in Gwaii Haanas may visit old village sites, but are asked not to camp in them.

When you visit Haida watchman sites, take your time. The Haida, like most First Nations, are naturally hospitable, and whenever we visited with watchmen who weren’t already busy with a crowd they invariably fed us something. My son thought this was wonderful, but I wished I had thought ahead and brought food items for them. Native hospitality everywhere on the northwest coast is based on the interchange of gifts, usually food. Fresh food items are especially welcome as the “baloney barge” brings new supplies only every two weeks. The watchmen, by the way, have been there every summer since long before the creation of Gwaii Haanas. There are several watchman sites outside of Gwaii Haanas and more are planned.

IF YOU HAVE ONLY A FEW DAYS?

When local kayaker Dennis Baran has limited time he paddles the Cumshewa Inlet area. It’s readily accessible via road to Moresby Camp. It‘s relatively protected from all winds except an easterly, which means that it can be paddled at nearly any time of year. It gives access to old Haida village sites at New Clew, Cumshewa and Skedans, with the advantage that, as this whole area is outside Gwaii Haanas, no permit is required to go there. It has patches of old growth at Cumshewa and Cumshewa Head. In autumn there are runs of salmon in Mathers Creek, Pallant Creek and Braverman Creek. Last but not least, the mushrooming is excellent, with world class Chanterelles.

How about interesting paddling on waters protected from nearly all storms, where there are many fine camps, and yet you are likely to be all alone even in summer? An often overlooked area is Masset and Juskatla Inlets, with a launch from Port Clements. There was no kayak shop at Port Clements in ’00, but Moresby Explorers can probably arrange a rental there. This area is a favorite of local kayaker Peter Lake who has paddled nearly everywhere in Haida Gwaii.

A truly expert open-ocean kayaker with a week to spend might consider paddling westward out Skidegate Channel to circle Chaatl Island. For this trip you can launch from Sandspit, or Queen Charlotte or Jake’s Landing, timing the tides so that the currents carry you through the East and West Narrows. There are good camps all through here: well-protected woods camps on the south side of Chaatl Island, and steep cobble beach camps on its north side. Highlights are the climate change between the east and west coasts, the poles at Chaatl Village, the dramatic west coast of Chaatl Island, and the addictive edginess of voyaging in outside waters. Kitgoro Inlet is a short side trip south.

Of course there are many more possibilities than the three just given, and if you flip through the book, you’ll find campsites within half a day’s paddle of every conceivable launch point. Three strokes from shore and you vanish into Haida Gwaii.

Boat Camping Haida Gwaii Neil’s book offers fascinating information and detailed maps of the most interesting areas in Haida Gwaii based on his four summers of research. Included are anecdotes about the people, history and wildlife of the islands. It comes with a handy coil binding and useful appendices. Harbour Publishing, 2001. ISBN 1-55017-256-5, softcover, B&W images, 174 pp. $29.95 Cdn Errata sheet available: http://www.soest.hawaii.edu/GG/gg_faculty.html

© Neil Frazer grew up in BC and is now a geophysicist in Hawaii. The photos and maps in this article are his.