6 Days in a Enchanted Island Chain at the Edge of the World

There's a chain of islands off the coast of North America wrapped in a peculiar sense of mystery. I've long noticed something strange happens when people speak about this place. The tone changes, the voice softens, as if searching for the right words to explain a place that can't quite be explained. For the next six days I'll paddle its waters and walk its forests, hoping to understand why so many say that it's raining today. Sitting here under my tarp with this fire and a big pile of wood is exactly what I needed. Feels like the lap of luxury compared to the last few days. I did a survival challenge in a moss hut I made, eating only what I could catch and forage. It was a wild and in some ways unexpected experience. There was a ton of bears, I mean a lot of them. In general they ignored me but as soon as I tried to get towards the good salmon fishing spots they started to get really protective. The feeling of being in competition for resources with an apex predator, kind of hard to describe. So needless to say I'm feeling a little tired and depleted right now but after all that yesterday I started this journey with a short but incredible paddle. I went up an estuary at high tide looking for fresh drinking water and I came across this bear who just laid down and just started to watch me and as I watched him it looked like a scene straight out of Jungle Book and I kept on thinking to myself this guy's name must be Blue. And to top yesterday off, as tired as I was, I came across a bunch of humpback whales. I'm feeling a lot of feelings right now. Tired, depleted. I'm very contentious to sit here by the fire looking out at the ocean right now but man am I ever excited to get started and I hear a big blowhole from a humpback whale right over here and it cruises 20 meters just right off the rock shore right here and into this bay. Just incredible. Never in my life did I expect that I'd see a humpback whale right off my camp in a canoe trip. That is so good. I was waiting over at this point over here and predicting that it was going to come back out of the bay or pass by me again. Right when I thought he was gone I walked back over here and lo and behold I heard him not 10 meters away from where I was just standing. I caught the tail end of him just a little bit but the whale is teaching me patience. Thank you for the lesson. Thank you for the visit. So grateful for this experience. What a way to start the trip. Well I've done it. Succeeded in my mission. I feel refueled and I am itching to get going tomorrow. Just indulging in a second cup of hot chocolate. With that, going to bed. Gonna wake up around 5 a.m. and get on the water hopefully around high tide and let the receding tide help assist me as I paddle out towards how far they are. Maybe it's a sign I should go this way and not this way. Take it as an omen. I'm gonna head in the direction of the whales. Whether I get closer to them or not, who knows. I'm surprised I can't hear. It's really hard to tell how far off they are because the other day I could really hear the bass notes. I can't hear it right now and it's so calm outside right now. I don't understand what's going on. I'm getting closer. What will happen is the humpbacks will breathe for a few minutes and then once you see their tail go up in the air, they'll kind of dive down and usually it's about for 10-20 minutes. Oh man, I'm starting to see them. Amazing. So I have to stay away about 100 meters which is fine for me and 200 meters if there's calves. Really exciting stuff. I just saw two of their tails go up in the air and that indicates that they're probably going to go down for about 20 minutes. So I'm going to go to around where I think they went down. It's really hard to judge distances out here. This is so exciting. I don't know how many times I'm going to say that but just incredible. Oh my god. GoPro in the water. I don't know how this works. Oh my god. looking up at me. Oh my god. Well that's it. Going home. Nothing more to see. Nothing more to do. It's been nice, really. We're at about low tide right now and the rest of this island right there, Talum Kwan, is a little bit less forgiving and there's a point that I want perfect weather to cross around. So I think I'm going to cross over the Selwyn Strait here. It's about two kilometers across. The coastline is much more forgiving and I should be able to get some water and I just have more options if the weather turns on me. Finished the crossing. It was about two kilometers. Pretty easy stuff. So you're going to land right here, have a quick bite to eat, looking for a fresh stream where I can fill up on some water. I called my buddy up who lives on the west coast and is on the ocean every day and asked him, you know, what things I should watch out for other than the tides and he said, oh you should really watch out for the whirlpools and apparently they can suck in a whole boat. I had no idea. I have to laugh about the potential threat of being sucked into a tidal whirlpool. I'm not gonna lie, I had a dream where I got sucked into a whirlpool the other night. It would be such a ripe subject for a myth. It's like a portal to the underworld in which some unwise seafarer crosses some unbeknownst threshold and is sucked into the underworld. I'm sure there's a bunch of great myths about whirlpools around the world. I'm sure there's Haida myths about whirlpools too. I really didn't understand it until recently, but how humans are animals of stories. It's so integral to the way in which we perceive and navigate the world. Stories about ourselves, stories about a tribe, stories about a nation, stories about the landscape around us and how we interact with it. It shows us how to live our lives and hidden meaning and tragedy. Yeah, well I guess they're just like seagulls here. I've seen more humpback whales today than seagulls. What do I even make of it? I'm not gonna get anywhere today. It's crazy. I'm in Breaker Bay which is the southeastern side of Louise Island and I'm about to do a crossing that's about 2.5 kilometers long to the eastern side of Taluquan Island. This will be the most exposed crossing that I do all trip if all goes to plan. The weather looks stable at least in principle. We got some darker clouds over here but there's not many signs that things are changing. Both the tide and the wind are coming from offshore so there's not really the chance that I'm gonna get swept out into the ocean. So I'm just gonna give it a go. I don't think I'm gonna get a better opportunity than this. I made the crossing without any problems. Waves were a bit bigger than they looked from a distance but isn't that always the case? No issue whatsoever. Now that I'm here though I've got to get around this point. There's mostly just breakers on this side of the island so I kind of gotta paddle another kilometer before I'm truly out of the clear. Kelp forests sure are a vibe. I would love to go diving right now. Over here to the left past this next peninsula is the National Park of Haida Gwaii, Gwaii Haanas. I couldn't make that work for this trip but there's still many more visits to do so that's for another trip. There's a lifetime to see and I don't even need to enter the park. Up ahead is Helmet Island. I love that you can easily tell why it's called Helmet Island. Headed into the Dana Inlet right now. Look at this little world. All these little worlds stacked on top of each other layer by layer. And all these guys are just as self-absorbed in their own little universe as I am. Kind of puts things in perspective. They're quite curious about me. this is the ocean. So far it's been like easy lake paddling. I really have to be careful not to drop my guard and be lulled into a false sense of security. Especially in a situation like this when I'm by myself. A few factors that I'm not particularly familiar with. Though they haven't really played too much of a part so far. The tides haven't been an issue. The weather hasn't been an issue. The waves haven't been an issue. All that could change. Just about at where I hope to make camp for the night. This is perfect. I think I had too much fun today. And I came into camp and I suddenly realized how exhausted I am. I think I paddled about 30 kilometers and came in pretty late. Still haven't talked about some of the reasons why this place is so unique. We'll talk about some of those reasons tomorrow. It's been a banger of a day. I'm gonna go special. Or at least there's strong theories to suggest why this place is so special. And I think a good way to explain it would be to think about the Amazon and why that's the most ecologically diverse place on the planet. And that's for a simple reason. Over the last couple hundred million years it's been the most geologically and environmentally stable place on the planet. And because of that the species there have been given time to develop into niches of niches of niches. Now you compare that to a place like Canada which has absolutely been decimated during the last ice age. Many people believe parts of Haida Gwaii largely escaped the worst of the last ice age. And that species here were allowed to exist where they weren't allowed to exist other places. So Haida Gwaii served as a bit of a refuge for some species during the ice age. And those species were allowed to develop in ways that they weren't allowed I think that's a shark. It's definitely not a mammal because it's thin as upright. It's got black tips. Well I spooked him. But it kind of looked like a shark to me. Small little guy though. The wind and waves have picked up significantly turning around this point here. Some white caps are actually forming in the bay there. I've been thinking a lot about my experience living in that moss shelter. I'm one when I'm in nature I love to move from place to place. I don't like to linger very long. But having an experience like that especially when you're foraging for food you really become in tune with the life in the area to a greater degree. Watching the bears move in and out with the tides. How much the eagles bicker with one another when the birds wake up. The jellyfish left on the shore. The squirrels in the forest. There's an incessant rhythm to it. It's one of those things the closer you were actually dredged back in the 50s or 60s whatever. Back in the logging years. So barges could come through here. But it is gorgeous in here. This clear turquoise water is just glorious to look down into. It's reminding me of a lake in here in the best sort of way. Big water paddling is nice but it's nice when it's intimate you know. Smell the trees a little bit more and hear the birds a old remnants of villages of the first peoples of this land. The Haida. I'm paddling here sort of having a vision of seeing wisps of smoke off in the distance. Cedar houses. Sound of children playing. People talking. A woodworker building a boat. There's something about Haida art that's so evocative. Just the lines. The way the characters not only tell a story but you get that feeling that they're looking back into your soul a little bit. Adds even more depth to the feeling of being in this landscape which is already The day after tomorrow there's going to be a lot of rain and wind for the next few days. And I came here and I had a goal in mind. I really wanted to climb the tallest mountain in all of Haida Gwaii. Mount Mooresby. So if I were to do that tomorrow would be my only opportunity. I thought it over. Paddling the extra distance just to make it happen for tomorrow is worth it. That's what I'm doing. That's why I'm paddling in the night right now. This is crazy. There's all this bioluminescence. I'm sure of it now. I'm having the hardest time capturing it. What a paddle. Traveled 32 kilometers today against tides and headwinds. Paddling into that darkness I couldn't help but doubt myself once or twice. There's no moon and there's a little bit of a cold offshore breeze coming. But as soon as I started to get that glow from my paddle strokes and the wash and then the wake of my canoe started to glow too. I've never experienced bioluminescence before and it was a paddle to remember for sure. Really glad I made it all the way here because I'm ready for tomorrow and the weather looks perfect to climb this mountain. Beautiful little trail in here. Super easy so far. Followed a bunch of logging roads most of the way in here so far and now we're starting our ascent. The slope is gradually upright now but very soon it's going to go very aggressively up. There should be a bunch of rope sections and apparently it's quite arduous. Got 1,200 meters of elevation to gain. Okay first rope section. Let's see how this goes. I like spicy food and sometimes I get frustrated when I go to an Indian restaurant or a Mexican restaurant when I say I want spicy. Don't give me the tourist stuff. You know give me the real spice but they still go soft to me. You know I can handle it. Well they say this trail was very hard and they didn't give us the tourist stuff. They they meant it. It's a hard trail. I'm always amazed how oblivious I am. Not that I'm blaming myself in any way but how is it possible not to be ignorant? There's just so much to know. We're up here in the alpine now and I know the Haida people who come up here and occasionally collect specific plants that only grow here. It is a trek to get up here. So what plants were they collecting worth the journey up here in? What do those plants do? Can't help but look around cluelessly. coming over this ridge and seeing this mountain lake and the west coast of Haida Gwaii and the pacific ocean stretching out it's just incredible. It's hard to describe the feeling I have right now. Telation and gratitude. I just feel so grateful to be able to come here and do things like this. The bioluminescence last night, the whale, the seals, and seeing the bears and the salmon moving upstream. What a truly special place.