North Desolation: the wild pacific west (4/4)

on being where you are

Desolation Sound and the northern channels & fjords are probably one of the more beautiful places in the world. It’s a place where humpback whales and orcas breach, where waterfalls clatter into the sea, where the ocean is flanked by the white tops of mountains.

It felt like kayaking in the high alpine, except at sea level— not at all the scenery or vibe I usually associate with sea kayaking.

a Copeland Islands sunset: Tla’amin Nation land

When I’m daydreaming about sea kayaking, I’m dreaming of rocky islets of wildflowers and sunsets, and long sandy beaches. I want to feel shipwrecked, like Robinson Crusoe, with driftwood fires and wide open skies.

While Desolation Sound is short on sandy beaches, it’s rocky islets are world class.

Leaving the North Rendezvous Islet (an excellent islet) we headed south for Refuge Cove, the tiny general store and marina tucked away on East Redonda Island for some fresh food and a cold root beer.

In some ways, the west coast of BC is still very much the Wild West. Powell River, the nearest town to Desolation Sound, is connected to the rest of the mainland by ferry only. The complex networks of deep fjords and inlets have made it nearly impossible to sting a highway north.

Around Desolation Sound near Lund, it’s not uncommon to see most boaters with a beer in hand and a case by the foot.

With tourism becoming more and more often, and the town of Powell River pumping money into tourism campaigns, it’s easy to see the cultural pushback the farther north up the coast you go and the more people you talk to. The same as it is in scenic small towns everywhere, the tourism brings in money, jobs, nice restaurants, and change. The solitude seekers who moved to these pretty edges of the world are increasingly crowded by the very sorts of people they sought to escape.

our kayaks in front of Refuge Cove: Tla’amin Nation Land

Refuge Cove has none of that. Friendly staff members don’t seem to mind the sailors and yatchers from far off places like Seattle, and the mussel-coated docks have been plucked straight from Pirates of the Caribbean.

It was the perfect place for us to sit with our sodas and discuss our next move. The first 15 miles of our day had ended in us fighting a stiff headwind and waves into Refuge Cove. It was still 8 miles to the Copeland Islands, the windswept beautiful island chain in the North Strait of Georgia we’d hoped to base camp in while we waited for our resupply package to make it to Powell River. A closer campsite sat at just two miles away. But with the weather forecast for the next two days, if we didn’t make it around Sarah Point tonight, we wouldn’t make it for the next two days. The Copeland Islands are a better place to be windbound, with a protected 7-mile paddle into Lund— much better than an unknown backcountry site. With our food situation down to rice, beans, and oatmeal, access to Lund was appealing.

It was 4 pm, with limited food, a terrible forecast for the next two days, and 8-mile paddle against the tide, into the wind to the best campsite. What would you do?

Up here it’s light outside until nearly ten, and we decided to try and tough it out to get to the Copeland Islands.

Against the headwind and tide, it took a little longer than ideal, but we made it in around 7:30 pm, in time to set up tents, eat our last round of pasta, and watch the best sunset of the trip from a cloud of mosquitos.

The next day we were able to sneak down the protected Thulin Passage in the rain and wind to get fresh food, snacks, and cinnamon rolls from Lund. We spent the following day huddled under the tarp and in tents while it rained sideways at our little rock of an island.

Best sunset of the trip after a 23-24 mile day: Tla’amin Nation land

The Copeland Islands scratch most of my sea kayaking itches— they’re tiny, ragged islands with views of the wide open Strait of Georgia, mountains of Vancouver Island in the distance. They’ve got clear blue water, spiraling madrone trees, and beautiful views from the tent pads.

They’re also just a 3-mile (one way), protected paddle from Lund, making them an extremely beginner friendly paddling destination. There aren’t very many truly incredible beginner sea kayaking destinations by nature of the beast— most of the hard to reach places are beautiful by the same features that make them hard to reach, be that the katabatic winds rushing down from the beautiful mountains in inlets, or the windswept islands that are quite literally windswept.

Three days on the Copeland Islands was a change of pace from the trekking we’d been doing. It was really nice to take justified zero days without a trip to the hospital involved.

One of the biggest challenges in this trip has been the mindset change— for the most part, all of our previous trips have been guided tours, which are by nature a curated experience even for the guide. The goal of a guided tour is to have a good time, and leaving guests with a vacation-like experience. Even in guiding youth groups on longer trips, the goal is still a character-building experience, and the goals of the experience and the experience itself are both supported by and curated by an external organization (ie, your employer).

Me, looking confused in a kayak.

This kind of trip, or any expedition, isn’t like that. The goal is to get up and whenever possible paddle, even when it sucks. Because we planned and executed the trip ourselves, there has been no one to tell us what kind of experience it should be, and I don’t think we were all on the same page about the difference between a summer kayak trip and an expedition.

Honestly, I don’t think I really fully grasped the difference between a summer kayak trip and an expedition until we were grinding our miles into a month ago Powell River and my hands were bleeding.

Obviously, a two week medical delay really changed the nature of the trip. It was no longer safe for us to continue through to Alaska and grind our miles in a place without access to emergency medical care. Instead, the trip became more like a summer kayaking trip and less like an expedition— we were now out to see and enjoy a beautiful place; to camp on islets and enjoy the sunset.

The change of pace is cognitively dissonant: right around when I fully realized this trip is going to be more suck than fun and made my peace with it, the goal of the trip changed from grind through to Alaska to enjoy the place you are while you can.

I would like the opportunity to try and grind through to Alaska again in the future, and apply a lot of the hard lessons we’ve learned along the way so far, but I think the single hardest lesson I learned has to do with simply being where you are.

I’ve spent a lot of days of my life wishing I were somewhere else. Living in Armenia I constantly wished I was back in America, and after being sent back to the States with just days notice, I desperately wished I was back in Armenia. Throughout this past winter I wished so badly I was here, where I am now, kayaking and enjoying the summer. Now I’ve spent a lot of this trip wishing for home, dry clothes, to be in a place or situation that felt easier.

Now though, we’re at the point where we can see the end of our adventure, and from the perspective of looking back at all we’ve seen and experienced, I’ve been so lucky to have the chance to be here.

It’s really hard to be fully present where you are without wishing for another place. I’m not perfect at it, but the longer we spend out here, the better I get.