Over President’s Day weekend, I took a chance on the weather and circumnavigated Gabriola Island. Wind on the middle day of the weekend reached twenty-five knots, too strong for comfort, so I took a weather day and visited some of island’s famous petroglyphs.

High on my agenda of sights to see was the Galiano Gallery, a famous sandstone formation on the northwest corner of Gabriola Island. The gallery is named for the leader of the Spanish expedition that discovered it in 1792, although Galiano was actually commanding a sub-expedition within the larger overall expedition of Malaspina. For this reason, the formation is sometimes known as the Malaspina Gallery.

I had recently become interested in the history of the Spanish explorations of the Pacific Northwest. The Spanish claim to sovereignty over this coast was grounded in the expeditions of Columbus and Balboa in the 1490s and 1510s. The first Spanish explorers claimed the entire North and South American continents on behalf of the Spanish Crown, but here in the Northwest, this was only a paper claim. For centuries following discovery, the Spanish were not in a position to occupy any territory north of Mexico.

By the 1770s, the British and Russians had begun pushing into Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. The Spanish Crown decided it needed to ground its claim in something more substantial than two-hundred-sixty-year-old words on paper. New expeditions were dispatched, most famously to Nootka Sound, but also, later, to the Strait of Georgia—which the Spanish explorers originally named Rosario Strait.

The Spanish explorers’ journals are replete with accounts of the difficult currents, dangerous wind, and confusing geography they encountered in the Strait of Georgia, all obstacles familiar to kayakers who paddle these waters today. The explorer Narváez, for example, setting eyes on Point Roberts for the first time, mistook it for an island—the very error I myself made the first time I paddled to Point Roberts. Across the two and a half centuries separating me from Narváez, across our barriers of language, culture, and education, still his mind and mine settled upon the same, erroneous conclusion.

I experienced a similar meeting of the minds at the Galiano Gallery. I had seen an artist’s sketch of the gallery in a translation of one of the journals from the Malaspina expedition of 1792. Arriving at the corner of Gabriola Island, I now laid eyes on the same sight as that ancient artist. Just as the artist had all those centuries ago, I encountered a pastoral scene in a peaceful bay. I hope that same scene endures for centuries still.

The Galiano Gallery is not the only attraction on the northwest corner of the island. Nearby are Entrance Island and Sandwell Provincial Park.

Entrance Island is home to one of BC’s twenty-seven remaining manned lighthouses. For many years, I’d listened to weather reports from Entrance Island on the marine radio broadcast. Finally seeing the place with my own eyes was like meeting a friend I’d only ever known through correspondence.

Sandwell Park is the site of a petroglyph. I knew nothing about it other than the bare fact of its existence, so I asked two locals I met on the beach. They had never seen the petroglyph and did not know its exact location. They were only able to tell me to look “somewhere east of the day area, and you can’t get to it at high tide.”

As if on a treasure hunt, I combed the beach, muttering these clues to myself, until I found the petroglyph. It depicts a hunter chasing an antlered animal, likely a deer.

Anthropologists say, based on the depth of the carving, that this petroglyph was made with metal tools, not traditional stone. Also, this petroglyph depicts a human form in profile, whereas traditional petroglyphs almost always depict human forms in front-facing perspective—only zoomorphs are depicted in profile. Finally, it is unusual for two glyphs to be placed in as explicit a dialogue as the hunter and deer are. Traditional glyphs do not normally interact with one another in such a linear fashion.

From Sandwell, it is a straight shot to the kayaking wonderland known as the Flat Top Islands. Although most of the Flat Top Islands are privately owned, they form a lovely, watery maze, perfectly scaled for exploration by paddle. Between Saturnina and Bath Islands are two tiny islands that are Crown land. Camping on these is permitted, so I set up shop on the gravel spit that connects Saturnina to the more accessible of the two Crown islands.

The next morning was my planned weather day. Wind did, indeed, reach twenty-five knots at Entrance Island, so it was a good day to stay out of the Strait of Georgia. Instead of battling the whitecaps, I headed through the tidal rapids at Gabriola Passage to Degnen Bay, there to search ashore for more petroglyphs.

There are over one hundred known petroglyphs on Gabriola Island, and new ones are still being discovered. Whereas most petroglyphs along the Pacific Northwest coast are on beaches, the majority of Gabriola Island’s petroglyphs are inland.

One of the best collections of petroglyphs is in the forest behind the Christ Church Gabriola. If it weren’t for a sign posted in the parking lot behind the church, I never would have found it, but a trail leads visitors to several clearings in the woods, where sandstone slabs prevent the growth of plants other than moss. Carved into the sandstone slabs are dozens of petroglyphs of all different sizes and motifs: faces, anthropomorphs, abstract designs, zoomorphs both mythical and realistic.

At first, the petroglyphs were hard to see, but the longer I looked, the more I found. Many are so eroded as to be almost invisible. Others are so bold as to be breathtaking. To have this magical place to myself all morning was an unbelievable treat. This is the right way to experience petroglyphs: to arrive by kayak, to search on foot, and to enjoy in solitude.

Back at the marina where I’d parked my kayak, I searched for another petroglyph reported to be in the area. Again, I knew nothing about its appearance or location other than some kind of petroglyph somewhere in Degnen Bay. I hunted all along the tidelands and uplands, by foot and by boat, a quarter mile in every direction. Just before finally giving up, I revisted a spot I had previously written off as containing only natural fault lines in the rock. Sure enough, there it was—a finned, skeletal zoomorph. Sitting low in my kayak, I had been unable to see more than its nose, which I had failed to recognize.

The hunt for petroglyphs took all morning. By early afternoon, the currents through Gabriola Passage were running the other direction. I rode back through to the Flat Top Islands, then headed down to Kendrick Island to camp. I could have returned to Saturnina, but this was a new area for me, so I wanted to explore.

The kayaking guidebooks speak highly of Kendrick Island, and justly so, for its magnificent views across the Strait of Georgia. However, the landing is terrible. There is no beach. Kayakers must come ashore across a slippery sandstone slab, which only gets steeper and more exposed to waves the lower the tide falls.

Kayakers travelling the south side of Gabriola Island face a conundrum due to the currents. The passes of Gabriola Passage and False Narrows, just four miles (6.5 km) apart, must both be transited, yet their currents run in opposite directions.

The most time-efficient strategy is to hit the first pass at or after maximum favorable flow, then battle the unfavorable flow at the second pass as it gradually subsides. Gabriola Passage is the faster-running of the two passes, so this strategy works best for a westbound transit, which happened to be my direction of travel.

I rocketed through Gabriola Passage on a six-knot ebb. Then, to work my way westward against the ebb through False Narrows, I took advantage of eddies near shore, with the occasional mad sprint around protruding points of land.

The bottom at False Narrows proved treacherous. Several times, I had to back out of shoaling waters to avoid running aground, even several hundred yards offshore. Powerboaters kept well out in the middle of the channel, but adverse currents in the middle of the channel were even stronger than the ones nearer shore.

At the final, most difficult point in False Narrows, I encountered currents too strong to fight. While I sat in an eddy, pondering what to do, a hailstorm blew in, forcing me to hunker down in my kayak to protect my head and hands. By the time the hailstorm passed, the current had abated enough that I was able to sprint around the corner and into sheltered waters on the far side of the pass.

West of False Narrows, I encountered dozens of giant log booms, the corpses of British Columbia’s once-proud forests, waiting to be fed to the mills at Nanaimo. Beyond this grim spectacle loomed a happier one: a series of magnificent cliffs, beckoning me back to Desconso Bay.

The camping options may be limited, but Gabriola Island is a gem for kayakers. The petroglyphs alone would justify making a special trip, and when you add the sandstone formations, the wildlife, and the strategizing with regard to the passes, paddling here is a constant source of delight.

—Alex Sidles