For the winter solstice of 2024, I wanted to do a paddle from Washington State across to BC and back. There would be less than eight and a half hours of daylight this time of year, limiting a kayaker’s ability to wait for favorable currents. There was also a grim weather forecast for the weekend, further reason to avoid more exposed areas such as the Strait of Juan de Fuca. In the end, I decided to paddle from San Juan Island to D’Arcy Island in the southern Gulf Islands.
Route map. A twenty-mile (32 km) day from Posey Island to D’Arcy Island and a seven-mile (11 km) day from D’Arcy Island to Roche Harbor.
Since I was launching from the west side of San Juan Island anyway, it was also the perfect opportunity to complete a longstanding project of mine: to locate the Lime Kiln Point pictograph. Lime Kiln Point isn’t particularly on the way to the Gulf Islands, so I made a side trip on the first day.
The pictograph at Lime Kiln Point is the only known shoreline pictograph in Washington State. There are a handful of petroglyphs, or rock carvings, at various places along Washington’s shoreline, but only one pictograph, or rock painting.
There are other shoreline pictographs in BC and other pictographs in Washington’s interior, far removed from the shoreline, but for some reason, the coastal nations in Washington produced hardly any pictographs along the shoreline in this state,
Today, the Lime Kiln Point pictograph has been all but forgotten by the world. I can find no reference to it online. I can’t even remember how I myself first learned of it. On my phone is a photo I took a decade ago of a page from a monograph I found in the University of Washington library in which the author describes the pictograph and how to find it. Unfortunately, I can no longer remember the title or author of the monograph, and the photo on my phone crops off the page’s running head where that information would be. I don’t know how I know about the pictograph!
My first hunt for the Lime Kiln Point pictograph was in 2014, during a circumnavigation of San Juan Island. I didn’t have my phone with me on that trip, so I could not consult the monograph for clues. Unsurprisingly, my aimless pokings along the shoreline failed to locate the pictograph on that occasion.
This time, I came better prepared. I studied the short description from the monograph until I practically had it memorized. As I approached the famous lighthouse of Lime Kiln Point from the north, I pulled out my phone and re-read the words:
Located on a vertical cliff of coarse light colored granite facing Haro Strait on the west side of San Juan Island, this is the only known pictograph site in western Washington. … The site has four designs: one a complete human figure with rays extending out of the head, another apparently representing a four masted sailing vessel with furled sails, and a third design that may represent a bow or stern view of the sailing vessel or possibly a highly conventionalized human figure. There is another area of pigment nearby that has faded beyond recognition of any pattern, and white spray painted graffiti “REBEL 77” unfortunately covers part of the first two designs. All of the pre-1977 pictographs are a faded red pigment trapped in the minute crevices of the rock surface.
As I paddled south, I scrutinized every “vertical cliff of coarse, light-colored granite” but saw no sign of any pictograph. This was only to be expected. Disappointment is the rule when it comes to rock art-hunting. Pictographs and their rock art cousins, petroglyphs, can be almost impossible to spot. Many times, I have paddled past known rock art sites in BC without noticing so much as a trace.
I had assumed that the “REBEL 77” graffiti would have faded into obscurity over the past forty-seven years. The secret to pictographs’ longevity, which can span centuries or even millennia, is that the iron and other minerals in the ochre pigment create a permanent chemical bond with the substrate, irreversibly transforming it into a new and differently colored species of rock. Cheap modern spray paint from a hardware store would not, I assumed, achieve similarly long-lasting results.
Then I saw it, just south of the historic lime works and visible from a hundred meters offshore: “REBEL 77” in bright white paint. Protected by a shallow overhang, this piece of vandalism had endured for nearly half a century and was now beckoning me toward the pictograph, which was much harder to discern than the spray paint was.
Rainwater running down the cliff face had temporarily darkened part of the rock, so I was able to make out only two of the three figures described in the monograph. The sailing ship remained easily recognizable even today, at least one century and possibly two since its creation. The “bow or stern view of the sailing vessel” was in even better condition, although like the monograph authors, I could not be certain what it was supposed to depict.
Kayaking south down Haro Strait. This time of year, the sun rises closer to the southeast than it does to the east.
Lime Kiln Point lighthouse, est. 1919. Although electrified and automated today, this lighthouse was still using incandescent oil vapor as an illuminant as recently as 1951.
Lime kiln tailings. Lime production here ended during the Great Depression, but burnt lime residue remains visible nearly a century later.
Historic lime kiln. Facilities such as this were ubiquitous in the San Juans during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but mercifully they are only relics today.
“REBEL 77” graffiti and pictograph, Lime Kiln Point. Graffiti is not widespread in the San Juans, so there is little doubt that the placement of this writing represents a deliberate effort to deface the pictograph.
Color-boosted detail of multi-masted ship pictograph, Lime Kiln Point. It is a testament to the craftsmanship of the artist that a piece painted in the age of tall ships and left exposed to the elements can remain so legible to this day,
Color-boosted detail of so-called “bow or stern view of the sailing vessel” pictograph, Lime Kiln Point. One of the many mysteries surrounding pictographs is whether their meaning was subjective to the artist and to each individual viewer or whether there was an objective, perhaps even canonical, meaning to the works that all viewers in their time would have understood.
Friday night, I staged myself on Posey Island for the next day’s paddle across Haro Strait into BC. My route was constrained by the requirement to check in with the Canadian customs office. Unlike US customs, which has transitioned to an app-based system for the clearance of boats, Canadian customs still requires boaters to present themselves at one of several fixed locations for clearance, even though the clearance itself occurs over the phone. The closest telephone reporting site was in the port of Sidney, so that is where I must head before touching land anywhere in Canada.
Saturday morning on Posey Island, I awoke to a breezy drizzle in the predawn blackness. The older I get, the less joyously I leap out of bed to greet such conditions, so I lay in my sleeping bag, listening to the weather radio, hoping, in a timid sort of way, that an adverse forecast would excuse my staying abed all morning.
The Canadian weather forecast for Haro Strait was full of dire wind warnings for the weekend. The American weather forecast for the same area (“northern inland waters”) painted a much sunnier picture. Being American myself, I figured the more optimistic forecast was probably the one that applied to me, so I took a chance and went for it.
Developments appeared to justify my confidence. On Saturday, I never saw any wind higher than fifteen knots. Conditions were so nice I took a straight shot from the customs dock to D’Arcy Island on the afternoon ebb, skipping an intended overnight stopover on Sidney Island.
Haro Strait is one of the most reliable places to find cetaceans. To my delight, a pod of half a dozen orcas crossed my path just on the American side of the international border in the middle of Haro Strait. Half an hour later, I encountered three more orcas on the BC side in the vicinity of Mandarte Island.
After enjoying the company of the orcas for a few minutes, I faced Sidney Spit. Although the spit dries at low tide, the tide was high enough at the time of my arrival that I was able to paddle across with a foot of draft to spare.
Arriving by kayak to Posey Island. Posey Island is the most easily accessible of any of the kayak-campgrounds in the San Juans, suitable for paddlers of any ability, including families with children.
Alex on Posey Island. Posey Island could not have been better laid out for kayakers if we had designed it ourselves.
Haro Strait south of the Gulf Islands. These are some of the prettiest kayaking waters anywhere in the world.
Kayaking southward down Sidney Channel. This channel was full of alcids, cormorants, grebes, loons, and sea ducks.
Pair of orcas, Haro Strait. I mistook the first spout for a possible humpback whale, but then a series of spouts and dorsal fins confirmed the presence of orcas.
Pod of orcas, Haro Strait. I watched the whales until they disappeared northward in the direction of Turn Point on Stuart Island.
Sunday was a different story. It turned out the Canadian forecast was not inaccurate but merely premature. The wind started up overnight and did not abate for twenty-four hours. There was nowhere to hide. The campground on D’Arcy Island faces southeast, right into the teeth of the developing gale.
At twenty knots, my tarp began luffing so loudly I could no longer sleep. At twenty-five knots, the tarp burst apart with a bang. At thirty knots, I was propping up my tent poles with my legs to keep the tent from blowing flat. At forty knots, the anchors of the tent tore loose and went whipping off into the bush, leaving my weight the only thing to hold the tent to the ground. I huddled in a corner of tent, pressed against the wall, hoping the nylon in the tent wouldn’t give way like the nylon in the tarp had.
It was so noisy inside the deteriorating tent I couldn’t hear whether it was raining. I could only identify periods of rain by the sudden chill of raindrops on the outside of the rainfly pressing against my back. I had to turn my weather radio to maximum volume to hear the forecast. The radio delivered the unpleasant news that the wind would not drop even as low as twenty knots until “early evening.” I resigned myself to a day of service as a human paperweight inside the world’s least inviting accommodations. Fortunately, I had brought along a Kindle so I was able to read all day as I huddled in my dungeon of misery. In the afternoon, the wind dropped below thirty knots and I was able to dart outside and re-anchor the tent.
Kayaking anywhere in such conditions was out of the question. Even the sheltered bay on D’Arcy was receiving three-foot waves on the beach, and things were worse in the middle of the strait.
I made the best of things and took short hikes around the north end of D’Arcy Island. I had selected D’Arcy specifically in the hope of encountering overwintering forest birds, but they had all gone to ground due to the wind. I had to content myself with the seabirds I had already seen elsewhere, especially the ancient murrelets, a species seldom seen from shore.
Rhinoceros auklet near Mandarte Island. The dark eye color identifies this as an immature bird.
Ancient murrelet near Mandarte Island. South of Haida Gwaii, this species is only present in the inland waters during the winter season.
Ancient murrelet diving. Like all alcids, but unlike other diving birds such as loons, grebes, and cormorants, the ancient murrelet flaps its wings for propulsion underwater.
Black oystercatcher, D’Arcy Island. Pairs of oystercatchers were present throughout the San Juan and Gulf Islands, including even on the dock at Roche Harbor.
Red-breasted mergansers, Sidney Channel. This species was the most abundant of the sea ducks, present in rafts of ten to fifty throughout the islands.
Common mergansers, Roche Harbor. The mergansers in the harbor were used to boats, so they tolerated my approach more closely than they normally would have.
Hooded merganser, Roche Harbor. It’s always a good day when you see all three merganser species.
By Monday morning, the gale had blown itself out, but another, even larger one was already on the way. I hurried back across Haro Strait while I still could.
I had anticipated a helpful boost from the morning flood, but if there was any help to the boost at all, it was lost among the various whirlpools and countercurrents that appeared unexpectedly in various places throughout the strait. Having had my fill of exposure to the environment, I tucked into the south entrance of Mosquito Pass rather than take the route outside Henry Island.
Kayaking at dawn eastbound across Haro Strait. Living as I do on the west coast, I am always a little bit disoriented whenever I paddle toward a sunrise instead of a sunset.
Kayaking northbound up Haro Strait. A chain of islands stretching beyond the horizon cries out for further exploration.
Clouds glowing in morning light over Haro Strait. Stratocumulus is the quintessential Pacific Northwest genus of cloud.
Kayaking northbound up Mosquito Pass. Unfamiliar with this corner of the San Juans, and knowing that I generally had to keep right to reach Roche Harbor, I mistook the mouth of Wescott Bay to the right for Mosquito Pass dead ahead and had to backtrack out of the bay once I recognized my error.
No one can ever complain about bad weather on a kayaking trip in December. On the contrary, I felt a sort of grim pride at having faced down a forty-knot gale suffering no mishap greater than the destruction of a tarp. The long-ago sovereigns of Haro Strait who painted the pictograph wouldn’t have blinked at such a trifling breeze. How can we moderns hold ourselves to an easier standard?
The real lords of Haro Strait, though, have always been the birds and mammals who make its waters their home. Even during the strongest gusts, the seabirds were out there foraging and flying and living their lives. As for the orcas, they wouldn’t even have noticed anything unusual going on at the surface.
—Alex Sidles