We just got back from a great trip to British Columbia, with a lot of kayaking and some grizzly bear watching.
Grizzlies
We did a one-day boat trip with Sea Wolf adventures, from Port McNeill on the northern end of Vancouver Island up into Knight Inlet. This area is managed by the First Nations in the area, and they provide the trips. It was a big day, covering 145 miles by boat, and we saw a lot of bears, along with orcas, sea otters, dolphins and porpoises.
Blackfish Waters Kayak Trip
After a rest day in Port McNeill, we went on the Blackfish Waters Orca Kayak Tour with Sea Kayak Adventures. It was a six-day trip through an area known for sightings of orcas and humpbacks. We did see some orcas, humpback whales, sea lions, bald eagles, king fishers, harlequin ducks, but the kayaking and camping provided the most memorable parts of the trip for us.
I think this is the first time we’ve done a guided group trip. It was great! There were two guides and eight clients, which was ideal; I think the trip could have up to 14 clients, which I think would be too many. We enjoyed having all the planning and hard work done for us, and we enjoyed all the people. (We didn’t include any names, in case some of our fellow paddlers are fugitives… you never know!)
Daily paddling
We paddled each day, keeping to an easy pace (though opinions may differ on this).
I didn’t remember to track the paddling every day, and some days I didn’t start the GPS until after starting to paddle. I used Gaia GPS on my phone as well as my Garmin Fenix GPS watch, and they sometimes gave quite different mileage (as they often do). I don’t know which one is more accurate. In general, I think we averaged around 2.5 mph while paddling, including plenty of stops to look at things.
Day 1 (9/3/23): Bauza Cove to Little Kai campsite on Vancouver Island. 5.5 miles estimated.
Day 2: Little Kai to Swanson Island campsite. 7.2 miles by Gaia GPS/8.9 mi by Garmin.
Day 3: Tour around the west side of Swanson Island in the morning; Gaia 5.5, Fenix 6.1 miles. Also a short tour on the southeast side of Swanson.
Day 4: Swanson Island back to Little Kai. Gaia: 7 mi., Fenix 6.2.
Day 5: Little Kai toward Robson Bight and back. Gaia 8.5 mi, Fenix 8.7.
Day 6: Little Kai back to Bauza Cove. Gaia 5.4 mi, 5.6 mi.
The total comes out to around 40 miles of paddling over 6 days. It didn’t feel hard when we were doing it (except for a couple of days when my back started to hurt), but we were tired when we got home.
The weather was good. The only significant wind we encountered was a tailwind on the first day, which only added to the fun. We only had one brief rain, while we were in camp one afternoon.
Our last trip to British Columbia was in 2019.