I awoke to spitting showers at 7 a.m. and rushed out to put the tarp over my tent since it leaks after several hours of rain and I didn’t know how long this would last.

I sat in my tent, bummed out listening to the steady rain and the drone from the poachers, until 11 a.m., but I stayed fairly dry inside. When it finally ended I came out for breakfast. The poachers were still at it.

It was muggy when the rain stopped.

I’ve seen a few of these. Someone’s been here surveying.

Looking up the inlet to where I would be going

It was a difficult put-in with the low tide about 10 feet below the bare rock above. It was tricky getting everything down but as usual, the barnacles amongst the rockweed gave me traction if I was careful.

More recent petroglyphs

They last a long time, surprisingly, in this wet climate.

I headed east, following the southern shoreline of the inlet, past hundreds of waterfalls of varying sizes tumbling down into the water. I filled my bottles. There were lots of little salmon along the shoreline, and they especially liked the places where sizeable streams entered. I stopped at one creek and had my floating lunch in the muggy heat — a Clif bar, dates, and peanut butter.

I dawdled along, as I only had 12 km to go in total to the forestry dock where I was sure there would be somewhere to camp. The water was flat and I had a slight tailwind.

A float plane went by as it flew up the inlet heading east. I figured it was going to the grizzly lodge, where I was also going. I hoped they took a photo of me, which would put my size into perspective. I’d see them tomorrow.

That’s the plane, that tiny dot just right of center, this time heading south after stopping at the grizzly lodge to the left, way up the inlet.

Old slide on the left, new slide on the right. I’m not sure how they start.

The tailwind picked up so I moved out into the channel a bit more to take advantage of it.

Finally the dock showed up after rounding point after point.

Perfect!

I went fishing off the dock right in front of my kayak.

This pregnant perch was just sitting there on the dock. I couldn’t figure out how it got there.

Within seconds of dropping the hook I caught a fish. I wasn’t going to keep any, I just wanted to see what was down there.

Yellowtail rockfish

Some other kind of rockfish, not sure which type

Whitespotted greenling

Kelp greenling. I lost my pliers trying to get the hook out out of its mouth. Oh well, they were only a few dollars and it saved me some weight!

I must have pulled up 10 fish in 15 minutes. It goes to show how prolific marine life can be, away from fishing pressures. That’s what the whole world was like not too long ago. Unfortunately no one from that era is still alive to provide perspective so we plod along generation after generation, accepting more and more degraded ecosystems as “the norm” because we know nothing different. Kind of a like the old story about being able to slowly boil a frog alive but if you throw him straight into hot water he will jump out.

One of the problems with rockfish fishing is that they come up from the deep and the drop in pressure causes their swim bladders to expand out their mouths. Then when they are thrown back they cannot swim back down because they are too buoyant. They get stuck on the surface and either die or get eaten by birds. The bycatch is very unfortunate. What we need, and some people are working on this, is a method to send the fish down to the deep on a weight, at which point their swim bladders will compress back down. Then they are released and can continue living and spawning for future generations. Unfortunately this is not used commercially. My hook went down to about 60 feet and they had no problem swimming back down from the surface. But if they come from 200 feet that is another issue.

A Sikorsky Sky Crane flew over heading south. They use these for heli-logging. They are very large and powerful choppers that can pick up entire huge cedar logs while they are still standing. The fallers go in and buck the the tree while it’s still standing. Then they almost cut it down, leaving a 1 inch line of wood in the middle of the cut to keep the stem standing. Then the chopper comes in and lifts the log off. This reduces breakage from huge logs falling to the ground.

They were up at 6 a.m. again to count fish, and I was up at 8:30. It was clear all night and sunny in the morning. I spent a few hours organizing my stuff. They started throwing rock bags into the holes in the fish fence which is not a trivial matter. They had to get the boat down the river, then tie it to a line across the river upstream. They would then inch it down to within a few feet of the fence and then pass the bags to John, who was on the walkway right above the fence and tethered off. He would then try to direct the bag in to the right spot, on the end of a rope, and when it was in they’d pull the rope through and repeat.

I decided not to do the portage from Triangle Lake to Smith Inlet. My knee was still pretty sore from the last portage and John didn’t recommend the bushwhack up to the road. I don’t think he realized how well I can bushwhack, but I have to say, I wasn’t really looking forward to it either. Plus I didn’t have a map of the area, although I could easily get it on Google Earth no problem. And I didn’t have any first hand accounts of the road so it could have been all brush covered at some points. Anyways, I just didn’t feel like it.

I made a few trips to carry my stuff to the dock. I was getting pretty warm hiking in the sun. Four round trips at 1 km each is 8 km. Pretty good morning workout! I had a bath in the lagoon.

Etienne saw a dying sockeye right beside the dock in about four feet of water. We ran for the net and scooped it out. Then they made it for dinner but I left without having any.

I filtered some drinking water from the lagoon since it tasted fresh. Apparently the surface 4 feet are fresh and it is salty underneath. It has a tidal range of only 20 to 40 cm at maximum. I discovered a little later when I drank the water that it wasn’t totally fresh, but still drinkable.

I departed the dock in beautiful weather, heading for the narrows for the 8 p.m. high tide, and I would hopefully be able to pass through earlier than that.

Looking back towards Long Lake

Wider view towards Long Lake

Heading towards Wyclese Narrows

Wyclese Narrows is in there somewhere. That little mountain is on the other side of Smith Inlet.

A heli cutblock above Wyclese Narrows. I wondered if that’s where the worker got attacked.

Looking east up the valleys as I approached the narrows. Second growth on the lower slope from old logging, and old growth higher up.

There it is — the narrows. It was going pretty good and I could hear the raging water so I decided to wait it out.

Thankfully, someone had already thought about that and tied up a log boom dock for me, but first I had to scare an eagle off. I waited about 15 minutes for the white water to die down, at around 6 p.m.

The unique salinity variations of the narrows stimulates some interesting algae growth.

Beautiful pond scum

Different pond scum!

I then went for a ride through the narrows. The actual narrows aren’t very long, maybe 100 meters. I used my GPS and it said I was going 8 km/hr, without paddling.

When I got through the narrow part of the narrows the ecology changed noticeably since we were now in mostly brackish water. There was mussels and barnacles and Fucus seaweed. There was also lots of seals and jumping salmon, and eagles too, which I hadn’t seen anywhere on the lake or lagoon. All the sockeye have to funnel through here.

As I had passed through the main narrows I went by this sedge beach. Looks like bear habitat.

What’s that I see through the trees?

Why, it’s Smith Inlet! I finally made it!

Looking up Smith Inlet. There was no one around except of course the poachers busy at work.

I turned west because there is a little island about a kilometer out that might present some camping opportunities. But it turned out to not be very good so I instead decided to just head east up the inlet until I found a suitable campsite.

I soon came upon some rocks which provided a sheltered pullout from the wind-generated waves coming up the inlet.

I set up camp and made some dinner, mulligan stew, whatever that is, with all the spices.

The tide came pretty close to my tent that night.

The birds like using this rock for shellfish-bashing.