It starts with a road trip north into British Columbia with a kayak strapped to your rig. You launch at Port Hardy on the protected inside flank of Vancouver Island and begin your journey. Paddle out of Hardy Bay and head northwest down Goletas Channel toward the big island’s tip at Cape Scott. Continue south along the outside of the island for several hundred miles before paddling up a deep inlet to where your rig awaits, having been shuttled down from PH for you. You will have been in the field for a couple of months, all by yourself, and will likely have had the most extraordinary time you can remember.
One of the most interesting stretches of coast on the continent, it teams with coves and inlets and white sand beaches. Islands and islets dot the gentler waters after you round Cape Cook, while rugged capes and points challenge you further north. Upwelling cold water from the nearby continental shelf creates a rich, diversified sea life, and you will encounter most of it: whales, porpoises, seals, sea lions and sea birds – and fish galore, which you will catch and grill up over a little beach fire each night. You’ll have bears for company, particularly after a storm, when they amble down the beach and pick through fresh piles of seaweed, and if you’re lucky you’ll hear the wolves give voice, or find the track of cougar beside your tent come morning. You are beyond the long arm of civilized regulations out here – a glorious, increasingly rare thing – and you will camp where you will and leave it neatly behind. Your mission is solely to lead your expedition-of-one safely from Point A to Point B. The rest will accrue organically from that, obviating a nagging need to continually question whether you should be doing more to get the most of your experience.
We typically associate wilderness, particularly this side of Alaska, with deep backcountry and mountains – less often the vast oceanic demesne beyond the realm of human power (where it couldn’t get any wilder),and, less still, the dear few hectares of wild seashore we find this side of the fiftieth latitude. You don’t hear much about wild seashore – not because it isn’t an awesome place, but because there is dear little of it left. But BC is blessed with a wealth of it (still), a rare gift indeed.
Call the experience whatever you want – kayaking trip, wilderness journey, retreat, or one hell of an adventure – but treat it like an expedition. You will travel a long and challenging route by kayak, explore and live intimately within the wilderness, and have adventure in spades. Like everything in life, the attitude you bring to the experience will determine what you get out of it. In many ways it’s a self-regulating experience; anyone with the passion and the desire to come here and do this has already gone a long way toward their eventual success.
Making the Most of Midlife
It’s a good midlife alternative to buying a new sports car, tupping the neighbor or, everybody’s favorite, divorce.
Now in my sixties, I remember my late forties as a time to bust out and do something epic, something to assuage the elemental soul. And something that flat out needed doing if I were to ever become the person I wanted to be. A series of fortunate events (and a nose for the wild) led me steadily north from SoCal to NorCal to Oregon and Washington and the San Juan Islands, an ideal jump off point for the wild western coast of BC and the chance to undertake the first of several solo kayak odysseys.
One doesn’t need to chafe at the chronic undercurrent of angst generated from an overly civilized life to want to undertake this kind of solo odyssey, but it helps. In any case, it’s a good midlife alternative to buying a new sports car, tupping the neighbor or, everybody’s favorite, divorce. It is the type of journey your friends will try to talk you out of, and will be, in the end, incredulous for your having accomplished. Bottom line is you will forever nurture this passage in your soul as the legacy of an adventurous spirit. And it is surprisingly more doable than most people imagine, otherwise I would not be writing this.
Midlife crisis or just a long-awaited recess bell, middle age is the perfect time to make that once in a lifetime odyssey or personal quest. They say that some things are wasted on youth; this may well be one of them. For the young, life itself has the chrome of adventure.
Those still in family rearing mode or critical career phases aren’t likely candidates for this enterprise, of course, nor those who haven’t taken care of themselves. But for men and women with vision, strength, intelligence and passion in their forties or fifties, and with a bit of a break looming before whatever comes next, a solo kayak expedition may be one of the best decisions ever made.
Baidarka
You are alone, gliding in a very small boat along the edge of a very big ocean. You have seen no one for nearly a month except your resupply boat, the occasional tanker and one lone sailboat tacking across the horizon.
Allegedly, the germ for this kind of trip first occurred to me as I stood on the sidewalk of Telegraph Avenue in Berkley reading the latest issue of the Berkley Barb. It was the sixties, and I had dropped out of college in San Diego and high-tailed it to Berkley at the time of the People’s Park riots. The Barb had a feature that grabbed my full attention. It was about a coming-of-age-ceremony of a native tribe living somewhere in the vicinity of Vancouver, BC. The author said that upon reaching puberty, young men entered into a year-long ritual under the guidance of a tribal mentor. They began in the fall, searching out the perfect pieces of driftwood to use for the keel and thwarts of the kayak that the initiate would build. During the dark winter months, he would carve and lash the wood together to create the skeleton, or frame, which he would finish with a cover of seal skin. Come spring, he would begin training with his kayak, and by midsummer he would leave on a solo journey to circumnavigate Vancouver Island. The skin-on-frame boat was a baidarka, and the ritual was called: “Going on Baidarka.”
The strangest thing, though, is that while I could swear I read this account, I have found no corroboration of the story whatsoever and nary a nod to the experience of baidarka as a verb, of “going on baidarka”. There was no shortage of mind-altering drugs in the bay area at the time; maybe it was a product of that. The last dagger into the body of veracity was when I interviewed the baidarka kayak revivalist George Dyson in his studio in 1993. The blank look on his face when I asked him what he knew about a baidarka ritual spoke volumes. If Mr. Baidarka knew nothing of it, what was I to think? Frankly, it didn’t so much matter if it were true or not. The idea had firmly rooted in my mind and soul, and would eventually bear fruit of its own.
My Experience
Twenty-some years after my alleged exposure to the idea of Going on Baidarka, I met an extraordinary woman in the San Juan Islands who brought the journey a whole lot closer to reality. Not long after I’d met Pamela, she took me along with her and a large group of friends on a mid-autumn kayak trip – a pilgrimage, really – into the primacy of the BC coast.
The journey took the better part of a month. We ferried and drove north and crossed the coast range on a worn out logging road, reaching road’s end finally at the Government Wharf at Fair Harbour. We paddled our ragtag collection of kayaks together with a support skiff out a deep inlet before heading north through a mix of open water and small islands to, finally, a long sand beach many miles from the nearest civilization.
Even the hard times are ripe for insight and character growth, and there is a certain grace somehow in the transformation.
A freshwater creek issued from the forest, and we used it for drinking, filling our makeshift hot tub and chilling our food. We wore clothes when we felt like it, built big white men’s fires and drummed well into the night. Weather permitting, we paddled out to fish each day. At one point we caught so many salmon that we built a smokehouse out of driftwood and chinked it with seaweed to preserve our catch for stormy days. The rest of the time we did whatever we felt like. We hiked and explored, and played baseball and petanque with black plastic seiner’s floats we found washed up on the beach.
The experience was a real eye-opener for me, but I eventually realized that chilling on the beach for three weeks wasn’t exactly my MO; I needed more lateral movement to my exploration. There were hundred of miles of coastline to be discovered, and I was itching to get after it. I’d known it early on, the second day out, when we reached the interface of the North Pacific and I couldn’t stop grinning. Met by a vibrant open ocean with jumping salmon and spouting whales, rolling swell and booming waves – and the smells, my God! THIS was what I was after. At the most extreme and intimate level possible.
Circling the big island seemed the obvious solution. I had circled my home island a year earlier and liked the concept. I needed the month or so paddling up the protected inside, from the San Juans to cape Scott, to shake things down, buff up and acclimate. I figured the several months I’d take coming down the outside would sate my soul’s yearning. There was no question it would be solo.
The first thing, of course, was to find a smart way to go about it. While I had borrowed a sit inside kayak for that first trip and had no problem with it, I couldn’t justify the logic that it would be a smart choice for months alone on open water. And, frankly, I am the kind of person who likes the idea of riding a boat, like riding a mount, not wearing it.
I stumbled onto the Tsunami Rangers as I researched the trip. The Rangers use SoT boats for paddling in the surf zone in NorCal. I got in touch with Jim Kakuk, one of the Tsunami top cheeses, and he kindly shipped up a used double. It was very exciting to get the boat, and it brought home the reality of what I was intending to do. Jim had painted the deck in a stunning northwest coastal native design. It was just about 20 feet long with a seat belt and a large amount of storage room, including room for three fly rods. I rigged up a sail and gave it a quick test spin. Finally, one afternoon in late June, a small group of friends, well wishers and a local reporter joined me on the beach to bid me bon voyage.
Three months after setting out, I returned to the same beach where I’d started, surely more bedraggled and weary than when I’d left. But the spirit of the adventure was branded in my soul, and is with me still today – something I would not trade for any amount of worldly goods. Over the next five years, I made two more long solo kayak explorations, and while the trips were stellar, by the end of the last journey in Haida Gwaii, I was done with going solo. It’s as if I really wasn’t a loner by nature (arguable still, that), as if the experience had satisfied a deep need for primal bonding with ocean, beach, forest and, of course, myself. Since that last expedition in the late nineties, I have tripped north to the same haunts every year, but always with friends.
If You Go
Imagine: You are alone, gliding in a very small boat along the edge of a very big ocean. You have seen no one for nearly a month except your resupply boat, the occasional tanker and one lone sailboat tacking across the horizon.
Your tan and muscled forearms are streaked with salt, your world reduced to the fundamentals: fresh oceanic air, water, sand, rock. You feel the flames of new life burning within during the day and sleep the sleep of the dead each night.
On the water your mind is fresh and focused – paddling the North Pacific Ocean is like dancing with a clumsy giant! Awareness is everything; that, and knowing the habits of giants.
Ashore, the early morning sun turns your tent to gold and heats it quickly. You scuttle out naked to the creek and scoop fresh water for coffee. Walking back, your eyes drift south over a windblown bay to a smudge of cape in the distance, and you decide, simply: “too windy, not today”. And how sweet it is.
Ravens chase each other over the forest canopy with a swoosh of black wings. You lean back against a driftwood log on a steep pea gravel beach with a steaming cup of joe and bask in the heat of a newly risen sun. Your mind drifts easily between worlds and your other life seems a very long ways away. You have a day in paradise, all to yourself with no obligations. The last time you remember freedom like this was snow days as a kid.
There are plenty of grueling, tedious, frightening, overwhelming and painful moments on a journey like this; I can’t paint all roses. But even the hard times are ripe for insight and character growth, and there is a certain grace somehow in the transformation.
On a traveling day, it’s a full schedule. You’ll break camp and pack everything into dry bags and stuff them in the hatches of your boat. Sweep camp, suit up and finally push off the beach. If you’ve got surf, you’ll work up a head of steam and bust right through; more often there is an obvious route avoiding breakers. It’s a good idea to troll a fly for salmon as you go. Keep a sharp eye out for reefs and boomers and fog. Track your outs as you go along so you’ll know where to bolt ashore on short notice. Stay hydrated and fueled as you paddle, and if you haven’t caught dinner by the time you’re ready to head in, lower a jig and see what you can wrestle up. Once you hit the beach you’ll have to unpack much of the boat before you can drag or carry it above high tide line – one of the disadvantages of being alone. Then you’ll peel off your suit and make camp, pitching your tent in a propitious spot. Find your water source and haul water from the creek to fill a gravity feed filtration system (no more pumping), then prowl around to ‘sess out your scene.
It is easy to merge naturally with the energy of the sea and, consequently, feel more at one with it than at odds.
With only the fresh water creeks for refrigeration, you’ll be fishing often. Fly fishermen will love it. Any fishermen, really, will be thoroughly stoked. It brings the old fish-to-eat imperative back to life. You’ll develop a flair with grilled and pan-fried fillets and seviche ling cod. Forage in the tidal zone for barnacles when it’s too rough to get out to fish and save the freeze-dried meals for when it’s just too damned gnarly to leave the tent. Secure camp at night from wild animals, wind, rain and tide. Make sure to stay ahead of the curves – the moisture curve, the hypothermic curve and, on the water especially, the fatigue curve. If you don’t have the luxury of much sea kayaking experience, try to stay aware and be as prepared as possible for the unexpected – particularly on the water. Monitor your radio for storms or tsunami warnings. (I had one once, and the old red and white helicopeter was flying up and down the coast looking for me; file a sail plan with the Coast Guard and they’ll keep an eye out for you.) But in between all of that (and at the same time, really), that visceral, nouveau, yet long lost feeling of freedom to do whatever you want is intoxicating. As the body comes around to a demanding regimen and the mind throws off the dross of civilized imprinting, you may well begin to feel like Alexander Selkirk when they rescued him from an uninhabited island off the Chilean Coast in the early 1700s. A Scotsman, and arguably the primary sourcing for the story of Robinson Crusoe (written 15 years later), Selkirk was rescued four years after he was marooned, wearing goat skin clothing and having become expert at hunting and woodcrafting. Upon his rescue, Selkirk possessed what interviewers called: “a tranquility of mind and vigour of body.”
In addition to the training and study prior to your trip, you may want more time on the more protected inside waters of the island. To get that, launch further southeast at Port McNeil, Telegraph Cove or Sayward, or even Campbell River. The extreme example of this earn-as-you-learn approach is to start down in the San Juans. By the time you make it up to the open water at Cape Scott, you’ll be psyched and ready for the big pond.
Take your time where you feel like it, and cruise when your mojo rises. You’ll have roughly a couple of hundred miles to cover, and all the time in the world to do it in. You will discover pocket beaches that have seen nary a human track in many years and many larger, easier-to-reach beaches that see only the occasional visitor.
Unlike a river’s Class V rapid, the coastal ocean countenance has a wide range of looks. You can’t wait out a sea change in a rapid like you can the ocean. There will be times when any sea will be glass. Learn those rhythms, be patient and use them to your advantage.
They say about sea kayaking expeditions that you paddle when possible. There will be enough days when you can’t, and plenty of them will be sunny and windy and a fine time to do some beachcombing. Enjoy those beaches; they call it seashore for a reason.
Das Boat
Just as passion and determination are keys to success, so is the choice of boat. I recommend a big sit-on-top kayak (SoT), for this – something to travel in and out of the surf zone safely, that will haul your supplies and serve as a 20-foot life preserver. Not a kayaker’s kayak, but an adventurer’s kayak.
The great thing about an SoT is its simplicity, derived from simple sea-going craft like dugout canoes and, frankly, surfboards. With that simplicity comes confidence. If you go over, you hang on to your paddle (which is tethered to your boat) and jump back on. Water drains out quickly, and you’re good to go.
I grew up in SoCal where surfing was popular. While my buddies were hanging ten, I took a day-pack and a hand-line and paddled offshore to fish. The SoT style of boat retains that same integrity (floating object) of the long board. It’s bigger, with a hollow hull to carry all the gear, and with a shallow, molded cockpit and a rudder. It will paddle slower than a conventional style kayak; figure a couple of miles an hour unless you have something more like a surf ski (another form of SoT with a lot of scoot). Five to seven mile legs are typical for me, with the occasional short or long day.
Unfortunately, when it comes to SoT kayaks, what you’re looking for is hard to find. Namely, a serious big water touring boat. The market is dominated with recreational and utility fishing kayaks, and there are few models that will work for long distance, open water touring. Check in with Tom and Athena Holtey at topkayaker.com for specifics as to what is currently on the market, or shop for a used boat that’s a proven model. Read Robert Hess’ piece on long distance paddling. Or contact me in a comment to this post.
Preparations and Anticipations
On the subtler side, there are dangers closer to home than the breakers off Cape Scott. Between the time we say yes to a trip and the time we step in the water, it’s easy to psych ourselves out. For the first few months after the dust of research and evaluation has settled and the old green light is shining bright, I dwell only on the positive, the glorious, the heroic (if you will) aspects of the journey ahead as I can imagine them. This is the honeymoon phase and the time for love. And one of the sweetest, purest pleasures of the entire trip.
I might imagine bright coho cruising across the curling face of glassine breakers as I wade barefoot in the soup to double haul a bucktail and intercept . . . or the flaming oil drips off a fat salmon fillet grilling over my little driftwood fire, or tasting how oh so delicious a creek cooled beer would be after a day on the water, or smelling the tangy marine air pushing up my nostrils as I knife across a choppy bay. But at no point do I dwell on the dangers involved or the fears I could entertain.
Fast forward a couple of months, though, and reality comes into better focus. Now I mull over the dicey stuff again, the challenging scenarios, the skills I need to work on, that smart money dental check up, and all the myriad of details that need attending to (not to mention, thought up), but against all the minutiae, vagaries and anxiety involved with planning the expedition, I have those first few months of romance to bank against. When I project solutions in my head, I always apply a form of Occam’s razor to the process, logically deconstructing the most dire of dangers. Death from hypothermia: wear a dry suit or wet suit and shorten immersion time (self-rescuing with a sit-on-top has you out of the water in a fraction of the time of a sit-inside). And death by drowning: keep head above water with help from a PFD and a boat with a sealed, self-draining hull. As long as your boat doesn’t get away from you and you can get it back to shore in one piece when you need to, you should be golden. Frankly, the biggest danger out here alone is if you incapacitate yourself such that you can’t call for help. That’s a level of risk I can accept.
A solo ocean kayak expedition will elicit feelings you have never felt before, many of them subtle, many not so much. Difficult to articulate, they will run the gamut from near panic to deepest relief, from despair to rejoicing. My feeling is that the trip is highly doable and not as threatening as it may feel. Mostly it is unsubstantiated fear that creates the noise. Fear of the power, the intrinsic hostility to air breathing mammals, and the dynamic, if neutral, aggression of the ocean. Opening oneself to these fears will trigger a transformation. And after the clouds are burned away, it is easy to merge naturally with the energy of the sea and, consequently, feel more at one with it than at odds. The real dangers are present still, of course, but now we can distinguish between the real and the imagined, and this makes for a wonderful dance.
A last note: I’ve felt so strongly about this concept that I set up a simple commercial operation about a decade or so ago with the intention of assisting this experience for others. A kind of guideless guide operation – and a practical paradox, really. I’ve recently taken down the shingle, the spotty response over the years only pointing out the truth of what Ed Gillette told me years ago. When I asked if he thought it made much sense to get into this kind of business, he said, simply: “Solo kayakers are born not made.” That may well be the truth of it, I can see now; no doubt the inspiration to “go on baidarka” includes all the initiative required for someone to put it together and carry it out. As for being born to it, I can see that too. From a love affair with wild seashore – wild sea, wild shore – is such an adventure conceived.