On Friday I was in Vancouver, on the phone with the water taxi company in Port Hardy arranging a lift across to the mainland. They said they could do it, but they were going the next day in the afternoon, on their regular run up to Rivers Inlet. They wouldn’t do it again until Tuesday.

So I took the Prius over to the Island that evening and my mom and I headed up to Hardy Saturday morning in the rain. We got to the water taxi place just in time and it turns out they couldn’t take me across after all. The weather was snarly and he wouldn’t go over to Seymour Inlet because he was rounding Cape Caution. To avoid the rough water you have to stay many miles offshore when going around the cape, because it’s shallow. He didn’t want to go up against the mainland with me.

So that was that, a bit disappointing. I asked around about ideas and no opportunities presented themselves down on the docks. My mom dropped me off at the backpacker’s hostel and that had a big huge room upstairs which was good for all my stuff. They suggested I talk to Pat over at Odyssey kayaks. I headed over there in the pouring rain and met up with him. He suggested I contact the float plane companies to see if I could get a lift across.

We also talked quite a bit about kayaking around there, and he gave me the story on that cougar over in Shelter Bay. Apparently there was a group of campers there and the cougars (siblings) were hanging around. When one girl went out for a pee, she got attacked. She screamed and kicked and the others came over and scared it off. It got away with her shoe but otherwise she only had scratches. So it turns out I actually was in danger there.

The next morning I booked a flight with Pacific Coastal at 3 pm and took another Prius taxi ride out to the airport. Luckily I knew everything would fit inside, because that’s what we drove up in!

In about 12 hours I should be on the water taxi across Queen Charlotte Strait to Bramham Island where I will pick up from where I left off last year. I only have 3 weeks this year, which I should be thankful for given all the work going on right now in the engineering biz with commodity prices up (I wonder why that is….)

I plan to go back up Belize Inlet and cross over to Wyclese Lagoon via the logging road, thereby avoiding that strenuous bushwhack which ended my trip last year. Then I’d like to go up to Long Lake if possible. One way or another I’ll end up in Smith Inlet where I hope to see grizzly bears, and after that I’ll kayak out Smith Inlet and around to one of the floating stores in Rivers Inlet where I hope to catch a boat back to Port Hardy so I can return to work as scheduled.

I have better video cameras this year, more of the little GoPro HD cameras. I also have proper underwater housings for them which means the underwater footage will be in focus. I also have a new, better looking PFD.

My Spot GPS locator website is the same as last time so you can follow along and get excited if I forget to press the button.

My Location