After years of sitting down here in Seattle and hearing all about the thundering tidal races of the Discovery Islands, I finally decided I had to go up and see them for myself. I took a six day trip through the islands, roughly following a route laid out in Peter McGee’s Kayak Routes of the PNW Coast.
The trip took me through Surge Narrows and Hole in the Wall, and these were just as cool as I’d envisioned. I also discovered the Penn Islands, a real jewel of the coast.
Route map. The Discovery Islands comprise the southernmost portion of the giant archipelago maze that lies between the Strait of Georgia and Johnstone Strait.
Coming from Seattle, the drive was hellacious, involving a border crossing and two ferry passages: first from Vancouver to Nanaimo and then from Campbell River to Quadra Island. Google Maps promised me a seven-hour trip, but I knew better than to trust that estimate, so I budgeted an entire day’s travel to reach my launch point at Heriot Bay on Quadra.
That evening, I discovered to my chagrin that my intended campsite at Rebecca Spit Provincial Park was day-use only. There was a private campground outside the park’s gate, but it was closed for the season. I had nowhere to camp, and the sun was setting.
Not knowing what else to do, I drove down to Heriot Bay so I could at least look at the launch point for the next day and maybe find somewhere near the dock to pitch a tent. Luckily, it turned out the Heriot Bay Inn had a campground out back. The people there were even kind enough to let me camp for free. The strong ice storm that had blown through earlier in the day may have elicited sympathetic feelings on their part for tent campers.
I woke the next morning to a coating of frost on the tent, boat, and car, but the day dawned clear and bright and still, the kind of day that portended a great trip.
Still tired from the long drive the day prior, I decided to limit my first day’s paddling to only a few miles. A short first day would also position me well to take on Surge Narrows, which McGee’s guidebook says is all but certain death for the unprepared paddler.
I’d certainly faced tidal rapids before, but the legend of Surge Narrows loomed large in my mind. So, even though the weather was gorgeous and the ebb tide was pulling me along at an easy clip, I decided to do a short first day. I camped in the lovely Breton Islands.
Heriot Bay early on a frosty morn. Late March is a balmy camping season down south in Puget Sound, but it’s still a little early here in the Discovery Islands.
Kayaking toward Breton Islands. North of here, the mountains march all the way down to the sea.
Approaching Breton Islands. Here, nature dominates the view, not the works of man.
On the beach in the Breton Islands. The landing here was one of the easiest in the Discovery Islands.
It was my misfortune that the high slack tides all occurred in the middle of the night on this trip. I needed ebbs to head north, but that would have involved paddling in the dark. If I waited for dawn, there would only be a few hours of ebb left before low slack.
Due to this unlucky timing, I decided to tackle Surge Narrows in two stages. First, I rode the tail end of the ebb up to the narrows at dawn, then pulled over onto shore for six hours and waited out the flood. Then, at afternoon high slack, I darted through the narrows and headed for the Octopus Islands to camp. To my delight, there was a school of Dall’s porpoises swimming by to welcome me.
The Octopus Islands didn’t have good beaches, but they were the kind of islands that are the most fun to paddle: small, closely spaced little islets. The water here was totally calm, despite the roiling, narrow passages to the north, south, and east.
Entrance to Hoskyn Channel. The magnificent Inside Passage stretches from Puget Sound, Washington all the way to Glacier Bay, Alaska, and it looks like this the whole way.
Waiting for tide to turn at Surge Narrows. I tied off my boat and went hiking for a few hours.
Exploring near Octopus Islands. What few human habitations existed here were mercifully screened from view by the forest.
North of Surge Narrows. At slack current, it was a trivial matter to transit the narrows.
Octopus Islands. Some of the passages in this island cluster were so narrow and shallow I had to get out and walk my boat through.
The next day, the major feature was Hole in the Wall passage. McGee’s guidebook warned this would be a “serious undertaking,” but I decided to have a little fun with it. I planned to ride the last two hours of the ebb northeast through the channel. I thought this tail end of the ebb would produce currents fast enough to be enjoyable but not so fast as to be above my skill level.
There were two surprises in store for me, however. First, the current turned out to be even stronger than I had expected. Even two hours before slack, the current was rushing so fast I could hear its roar from my camp in the Octopus Islands a mile away.
Second, it turned out that Hole in the Wall ebbed southwest, not northeast. When I got to the channel, it was blasting through the narrows the wrong way. I had assumed that because Surge Narrows ebbs north, Hole in the Wall would ebb northeast, but that was not the case. This error illustrates the problem with using a tide table instead of a current chart.
Luckily, I had chosen to arrive just two hours before the tide turn. It wouldn’t be long before the tidal rapids stopped and the way opened up for me. I parked myself by a wall in an eddy and waited in the drizzle for two hours while the ebb exhausted itself.
At low slack, I paddled through Hole in the Wall and set up camp on South Rendezvous Island. I donned rain gear and walked out to the end of a rocky point to look out at my beautiful, wild surroundings.
Kayaking toward west entrance, Hole in the Wall. Without a map, even a major feature like Hole-in-the-Wall would be hard to locate in this maze.
Waiting for the tide to turn in Hole in the Wall. To shield myself from the powerful currents, I tucked in next to the eponymous wall, which was covered in marine life.
Transiting Hole in the Wall. The rainy weather only added to the homey, Pacific Northwest atmosphere.
East entrance, Hole in the Wall. I worried an accelerating current might create unsafe conditions before I could escape the channel, but the acceleration was only gradual and the currents remained gentle.
View from South Rendezvous Island. The placid surface of the water was broken only by gentle raindrops.
In the woods of South Rendezvous Island, I discovered two honest-to-God culturally modified trees. I’d read about these things for years, but this was the first time I’d ever seen them in real life. These two were by no means ancient—I would estimate the modification at no more than two decades old. Still, they seemed like a vestige of a way of life far older than our modern civilization and perhaps more durable.
Back on the beach, a flock of trumpeter swans migrating north flew right over my head at an altitude of only a few dozen feet, honking their mournful cries. They, too, seemed like a vestige—of something older than man himself.
Culturally modified tree, South Rendezvous Island.
Swans over South Rendezvous Island. These beautiful creatures traversed in minutes a route that took me days.
I wrapped up the trip by paddling to the Penn Islands in beautiful weather. The Penns were a lovely little archipelago, somewhat reminiscent of the Cone Islands in Washington’s San Juans, except the Penns were larger and suitable for camping.
On the high ground of one of the islands, I found a campsite that was so surpassingly lovely that I didn’t leave for two days. Why would I leave? The sun was shining, there were courting harlequin ducks, red-breasted mergansers, and oystercatchers on the shore nearby, and there was not another human soul around.
In the mornings, I would listen to the woodpeckers calling to each other between the islands by drumming on trees, and in the afternoons, I sat out in a grassy patch with a Kindle and read science fiction stories.
Kayaking south down Sutil Channel toward Penn Islands.
Beautiful campsite in Penn Islands. There’s nothing more pleasant than sitting in the sun beside the water, looking up at snowy mountains.
Landing beach, Penn Islands. Launching from here was a breeze.
This was the kind of kayaking I like the most: the kind that doesn’t even involve much time in a kayak. Finding this peaceful, isolated spot in the Penn Islands would have been worth the drive all by itself. There was nothing for me to do but sit around reading, birdwatching in the forest, and brewing myself endless cups of apple cider and chai. It was wonderful. If I’d had the food supply (and lack of responsibilities back home), I would have stayed there happily for a week.
But after an all too brief two-day campout, it was time to get back to real life. I rode a flood tide back to Heriot Bay in the afternoon, camped one more night out back of the inn, and left for home before dawn the next morning.
—Alex Sidles