Well the guys were up early so so was I. Again they fed me breakfast. They were going to fly out in the afternoon so all morning they would be getting their stuff together and cleaning up. A new crew would then be coming in. They also gave me a map of the road and terrain I would be going through which showed cutblocks and forest cover. They had just hiked the road the other day so he wrote down certain hazards and landmarks for me to use as a guide.

I got my boat inflated in the parking lot and started trying to attach the wheels. I really should have practised more at home. No problem because I was in a forestry camp and there was wood and supplies everywhere!

The problem was that when I filled my kayak with all my gear, the weight made the wheels rub the underside of the boat. So what I did was get strips of cedar bark from the slash piles and wedge this in between the boat and the wheel assembly, which lifted the boat a few inches to give it clearance. This worked.

Then I tried to get as much weight as possible behind the wheels so the boat would ideally balance on the wheels without me needing to lift the front end with a lot of force. This was mildly successful as there was only so much room behind the wheels.

I said goodbye to the guys and started heading up the road.

Things were great for the first hundred meters, then the road turned left and went up a steep hill.

I had to take out my heavy food bag and backpack and hike these up first because with that weight in in the boat I just couldn’t move it up the hill. I wasn’t heavy enough and my feet skidded on the gravel.

The hill continued on, then began to kind of look like it might level off, but then it continued on. And it continued on some more, and more, and more. Wow, what a way to start the portage. I wasn’t expecting this! Since I was starting at sea level and would be ending at sea level, my math skills told me that it couldn’t keep going up! Finally after about a kilometer it levelled off.

At one level spot I heard a lot of bird noise so I stopped to take it in. There were hummingbirds, and these always seemed to be around. They would come come check out all my bright colours, it must be like bling to them. I was also still above the inlet and I could hear ducks flying overhead since they seemed to fly inland sometimes. I’m not sure why, if they are going over to the next inlet or maybe a lake or pond. But at this spot there was also a Swainson’s thrush bathing me with its enchanting call that echoes through the forest, one of my favourite sounds. And then there was a couple of ospreys circling above. What a bird spot!

Female rufous hummingbird

I continued on after recording some of the sounds, which I will put up later when I get that option enabled (I know I always say I’ll do this but I will at some point). I could only go maybe 50 or 100 meters at a time, after which I’d have to take a break and switch arms and body positions. The boat was heavy and I was lifting a lot of weight. And the road started going down a bit too, which was nice. So far so good.

Oops. Sometimes if a wheel hit a rock the setup could be unstable. At this point I decided to filter some water from the adjacent ditch. It was brown but drinkable.

Fresh bear sign

I came upon some interesting mushrooms growing in the middle of the road. I stopped to take some photos and then I was startled by some strange animal noises just ahead on the road.

Soon I saw that it was a grouse.

It was acting strangely. If I tried to walk by on the road it would run out in front of me and cross over. It must have been trying to divert me away from its nest. I spent about 10 minutes trying to get photos of it.

I continued on for a while and then got a bit tired; it was early afternoon – sleepy time. And it was starting to rain. So I lay down in the middle of the road with my kayak drip skirt over me as I snoozed in the light rain and wind, and munched on dried mangos. I must have been there for an hour. I watched a bird come to drink from the puddle beside me, which I also did afterwards but I filtered it.

The road was flat and I was making good time.

I stopped at the first cutblock and ate more mangos. There was a steep little hill up from here. I made a video of me pulling my kayak up the hill.

My destination for the day was the big cutblock not far ahead. The weather looked like it would start closing in so I hoofed it. This is the view looking west from it.

My timing was good since as soon as I set my tent up it started raining fairly hard, at around 5 p.m. I waited out the rain for an hour and a half, snoozing of course.

I had a 15 minute break to get out my GPS, organize, and brush my teeth. I only ate dates for dinner as I wasn’t too hungry. I listened to the weather report and then the batteries were pretty much dead. I hoped I’d see some sun soon because that was the only way to charge them.

More hummingbirds came to visit me every 10 minutes. I love those guys.

I was a little worried about bears, with all the sign around. Fortunately though there wasn’t too much in this cutblock, and it was on high ground so there wasn’t too much to attract bears here anyways. My concern was that with the wind I wouldn’t be able to hear one until it was on me. But I took security in my little house on wheels. My stuff gives me security. When I lose control of my stuff, I get frazzled.

I reviewed my photos from the last few days. I noted that I use all four lenses (each on its own body – from wide angle to telephoto) roughly equally, so that was validation of my lens choices for the trip.

I could hear frequent planes off in the distance. This was a nice campsite with long views across the shallow valley to the “mountains” on the other side. I could see the weather as it came in and swept through.

And there was a beautiful fragrance permeating the air, the smell of sitka alder. This is a shrub / small tree that lives in higher elevation or cooler coastal areas. It has a wonderful scent. The olfactory sense is amazing at bringing back memories. I think there is actually a neural connection in your brain between scents and memories. Whenever I smell sitka alder it brings me right back to hiking the Joffre Lakes trail many years ago, along the Duffy Lake Road into BC’s interior.

This was the last fresh cutblock on the map, and I was figuring that the road quality would quickly degrade immediately afterwards since it wouldn’t have been maintained recently. That’s also one reason why I decided to set up camp here.

I was a little nervous about my upcoming trip but luckily I had two months of experience from the previous year to go by. I imagine if you were starting from scratch from here it would be a tad more intimidating.

The nice homey check-in counter. I just walked across the weigh scale into the back to talk to the pilot and go over maps. You don’t usually do that at most airports. And he trusted that I wasn’t going to blow the plane up so I didn’t go through airport security either! The benefits of small town…

All my stuff, 11 pieces and 180 lbs

Looking westwards to Vancouver Island. First we were heading southeast to Port McNeil to pick up some other passengers, then north across to the mainland on the “Sched” run, the regular flights they take all over this country to pick up / drop people off, kind of like a really expensive personal bus service.

Looking up Kingcome Inlet, where I had that awesome huge paddling day the year before (the halibut fishermen).

We crossed Queen Charlotte Strait and moved over the mainland. There are many lakes and inlets here and it is easy to lose track of where you are in the labyrinth below.

As we were preparing to land we passed by Huaskin Lake.

We dropped off a forestry worker at a logging camp way up the end of an inlet. He was going to be in for a few weeks, working on road building. The landing was quite interesting, as we circled the site and then banked hard to come in through the narrow inlet opening. One mistake, and we’re in the trees.

We took off the same way we landed and circled around to get height to cross the mountains as we headed northwards towards my destination. The other passenger was a sailboat cruiser on vacation from the UK, coming along for the sightseeing ride. Luckily for him we were going through some beautiful country to get me to my dropoff point.

We soon got to Seymour Inlet and then crossed up north to Belize Inlet. I was hoping to go for a quick tour of Long Lake but the weather up there wouldn’t allow us to safely make the pass over to the lake, so we just followed the dead straight Belize Inlet to the west, passing the raging tidal waters of Alison Sound as they swirled through the narrows.

The scenery was so ruggedly dramatic. I imagined a kayak down there. It would be totally insignificant. That’s what I would be for the next few weeks. This truly is an amazing place. I bet our sightseeing passenger was thinking I might be crazy flying into here alone with a kayak, and I was wondering that myself.

One of the many hundredds of raging waterfalls gushing into the ocean after all the rain. I don’t think water availability is going to be an issue for me this year!

I wanted to fly into that decrepit little dock I had lunch on in Mereworth, but that had disappeared, either by a storm or they took it away. So we landed at my desired destination anyways, the floating green forestry camp. I hoped they wouldn’t object to me just barging in like that.

There goes my ride. No turning back now.

There is something special about Mereworth. It has the feel of an unspoiled wilderness, even though there is logging around. The logging that goes on doesn’t overly spoil it, at least in my opinion.

I put my stuff on that dock in case the forestry workers didn’t take too kindly to me showing up. The land and road is publicly owned so I am allowed to go there, but the camp is private.

After getting my stuff organized a little bit, I noticed that my maps case was missing. I left it on the plane ! I had it with me in the seat so I could see where I was but when landing I put it on the floor, and in all the excitement I forgot it. Not a major problem as I had a new GPS with loaded maps, as well as Google Earth on my computer. Plus I knew the terrain well from studying it intensely beforehand.

The weather wasn’t too bad but it was threatening to rain with a bit of light drizzle, intermittent with sunny patches — typical unsettled weather. I knew someone was out in the bush because there were fresh tire tracks in the mud since the last big rain yesterday. So I sat on the dock and waited, with bugs flying around.

I watched a bumblebee on some clover in a crack of the dock and had another philosophical moment with nature. I mused about how the nature we see in cities is the same nature you get out in wilderness. Same bees, same clovers, same hummingbirds and dragonflies. There’s just more of it out here, and more variety. We are all part of the same thing, this amazing biosphere, the result of 4 billion years of progression of life on earth, the miracle that life is. Call it God, evolution, Bodh, whatever you will; it’s amazing. At heart I’m a scientist and far from taking away my wonder towards the world, analyzing things scientifically only strengthens the wonder. When you learn about how complex even the simplest bacteria or pond algae is, it’s hard to thereafter look down upon pond scum! The more questions science answers, the more questions it raises. There is ample room for spirituality within science. In fact science in no way precludes spirituality; believe it or not, the scientific method was actually founded upon it! Many people equate science with reductionism, determinism. And while that is part of the scientific approach, that’s not really what makes science science, and therefore people shouldn’t be turned away from it because some scientists are hardcore reductionists. I’ll write an essay about that someday when I can get my thoughts well organized enough.

I decided to grab my camera to take a photo of the bee, but then it flew off… and then the truck arrived. Two guys came down the ramp — Kevin, a long time local forester, and George, a forestry exchange student from South Africa, on his second day in the bush. Kevin noted how just that day he was telling George that soon the tourists would be arriving (presumably in their sailboats). They didn’t expect a kayaker to fly into their dock!

They invited me to stay inside their house which was very gracious. They fed me, gave me free internet and TV, and power! In return I gave George the video I took from my flight over because he hadn’t taken any video of that but he wanted to show people what it was like. They also let me use the sat phone to call Pacific Coastal and let them know I would be okay without my maps.

I also got the story on the forestry worker that was attacked by a grizzly two years before. They were working in a cutblock above the entrance to Wyclese Lagoon, and a bear had been hanging around for a few days. They ignored the warning signs and continued to come back, one day with tuna sandwiches. And for some reason they had no bear spray. Then I guess the bear decided it had had enough, and wanted their sandwiches. So it was definitely not an unprovoked or random surprise attack. That made me feel better.