My visit two weeks earlier to the Wolfe Property had rekindled my long-held interest in kayaking the length of Hood Canal. Launching from Belfair State Park at the south end, I paddled over the course of two and a half days to Port Ludlow at the north end, a distance of some sixty-seven miles (108 km).
Route map. Campgrounds along Hood Canal are spaced either too closely or too distant to be useful, so I camped the second night on a beach beneath a bluff on the Toandos Peninsula.
Howe Sound in British Columbia is often erroneously described as North America’s southernmost fiord. Some tourism boosters advance even more overheated claims. In the words of one air-tour company, “[Y]ou won’t find a single fjord on earth below the latitude of the Howe Sound—which makes it a very special place indeed.”
Setting aside the little problem of South America and the hundreds of enormous fiords in Chile and Argentina, Howe Sound is not even the southernmost fiord in the Pacific Northwest, much less all of North America. Just across the border, in Washington State, Puget Sound and Hood Canal are both fiords. They were carved during the last ice age by the same protruding fingers of glaciers that carved the fiords of British Columbia and Alaska—and Chile and Argentina, for that matter. Hood Canal may lack the dramatic, plunging cliffs we picture when we normally think of fiords, but if we were somehow to drain out the saltwater, we’d see the family resemblance at once.
Like any fiord, Hood Canal can be temperamental when the wind is blowing. My first half-day on the water, from Belfair to Potlatch, was only fifteen miles (24 km), but the walls funneled the breeze—or perhaps I should say, canalized it—turning what would otherwise have been a crosswind of little fetch into a direct headwind of great fetch. The headwind kicked up an exhausting chop in opposition to the ebb.
I had forgotten my sprayskirt at home, and my drysuit was in the shop for repairs, so there was nothing to protect me from wave after wave after wave washing over the bow and dumping cold water in my lap. The fifteen-mile paddle took five hours, with me soaking wet the whole way.
Launch beach at Belfair State Park. Grandpa John generously drove me all the way down to the south end of Hood Canal and picked me up two days later at the north end.
Morning at Potlatch State Park. Most of Hood Canal lies in the shadow of the Olympic Mountains, but the cloud cover denied me a view of anything except foothills.
Cushman Powerhouse No. 2, est. 1930. According to the dam’s July 15, 2010 re-licensing order from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, “Historically, the Cushman Project has diverted nearly all of the flow of the North Fork Skokomish River from Lake Kokanee out of the river basin through a 2.5-mile-long tunnel to [this] powerhouse with a capacity of 81 MW located on the shoreline of Hood Canal, which adjoins Puget Sound.” 132 FERC ¶ 61,037. The pipes from the tunnel enter the powerhouse from the upper right of the photograph.
Kayaking north up Hood Canal. Olympic Peninsula to the left, Toandos Peninsula dead ahead, Kitsap Peninsula to the right.
Clouds pouring down Duckabush River valley. The clouds seemed to cling to the walls of the fiord, shrouding the hills in rain and mist while I stayed dry out on the water.
Sunset, Toandos Peninsula. The Toandos is the least developed and therefore most appealing stretch of Hood Canal.
My fear in coming to Hood Canal was that it would be sixty miles of paddling through suburbia. Certainly, the lower stretches, with which I was most familiar from decades of visits by car, featured long, depressing rows of waterfront houses. Farther north, away from the highways, up where I had never before visited, the houses thinned out. Trees and natural scenery predominated. No one would mistake Hood Canal for a wilderness, but it was more beautiful than I expected.
Even the wildlife surprised me. In the southern half of the canal, farthest from open waters, I encountered a handful of brown pelicans. This species is normally found on the open coast, not the inland waters, yet here they were in the most inland part of the canal.
Hood Canal often attracts transient killer whales, who come to feed on harbor seals and harbor porpoises. These prey species were abundant throughout the canal, so I was hoping for an orca encounter. None came, but I was more than satisfied with the frequent visits of the delightful little porpoises. On the Toandos Peninsula, a clan of river otters paid me a visit in camp just after sunset.
Harbor porpoises off Tala Point. The porpoises travelled in pods some two to six strong.
Red crossbill, Potlatch State Park. In some individuals, such as this one, the upper mandible crosses to the left over the lower mandible, while in others, the cross is to the right.
Killdeer, Potlatch State Park. This and the dunlin were the only shorebird species I saw.
Pigeon Guillemot off South Point. All of the guillemots but only about a third of the loons were in their non-breeding plumages.
Western grebes off Hood Point. Unusually, this species was more abundant than the horned grebe.
California gull at Blue Dot Sea Farm off Hood Head. Besides this species, the other gulls were the glaucous-winged, short-billed, and Bonaparte’s.
Brown pelican off Tekiu Point. I still struggle to accept the argument that birds are not merely the descendants of dinosaurs but should still actually be called dinosaurs…until I see a face like this one, which leaves no room for doubt.
One of the most notable manmade features of Hood Canal is the navy’s submarine base at Bangor. Bangor is the homeport for ten of the navy’s eighteen Ohio-class nuclear-powered submarines. The Ohio-class submarines are some of the navy’s largest warships. Only the aircraft carriers and the big amphibious assault ships displace more water. Two of the Ohio-class submarines at Bangor are armed with Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles, which currently carry conventional-explosive rather than nuclear warheads. The other eight boats at Bangor are armed with multiple-warhead Trident II thermonuclear ballistic missiles with intercontinental range.
Needless to say, the navy is very sensitive about what the sailors stationed at the base refer to as—and here, one must lean forward, raise one’s eyebrows, and lower one’s voice to an ominous baritone—“the assets.” The navy is keenly aware that various people around the world, for diverse reasons, take an interest in “the assets” and would not scruple to invite themselves aboard the base in pursuit of their fascination.
An entire battalion of Marines await intruders to the upland portions of the base, where the assets reside whenever they are not inside their missile tubes at sea. Waterborne intruders to the base confront a robust anti-boat barrier around the submarine docks as well as a flotilla of machine gun-equipped patrol boats. If the intruders are so foolish as to attempt an underwater incursion, the navy might just release its trained sea lions and bottlenose dolphins to “assist security personnel in detecting and apprehending unauthorized swimmers and divers.”
Thankfully, the navy did not sic any marine mammals on me, but they also did not allow my kayak to pass unmolested. I was a mile and a half (2.4 km) south of the base when an aluminum-hulled patrol boat came roaring out of the harbor in my direction.
I was impressed by this display of naval readiness. Kayakers are not easy to detect at a distance of a mile and a half. We are small and sit low to the water, we leave only the faintest of wakes, and we don’t show up on radar. These guys weren’t just sitting in a control room somewhere, staring at a computer screen. They were standing a proper watch.
The first boat blasted past me and took up position half a mile to my rear. As I paddled closer to the line of yellow buoys marking the base’s naval restricted area, a second patrol boat, which had been loitering outside the buoy line, motored over and began sharking me at a distance of thirty yards. The navy was clearly playing some sort of zone defense with its patrol boats, and now the sailors on this boat had to keep an eye on me while I paddled past their base at the snail’s pace of a kayaker fighting an adverse flood current.
The navy delights in conducting freedom of navigation operations to “challenge excessive maritime claims” asserted by other nations in various corners of the world. To assist our navy in supporting the freedom of navigation right here at home, I paddled up to the very edge of the buoy line and began taking photographs of the submarine base.
The sailors aboard the patrol boat were dismayed by this challenge to their excessive maritime claim. They squawked their siren. They flashed their lights. They came out on deck—where the machine gun was mounted—to remonstrate with me. They reminded me that if I crossed the buoy line, I would enter a restricted area. They asked why I was taking pictures of the base. They began taking pictures of me. I began taking pictures of them. What a merry parade we made!
It was, of course, none of the sailors’ business why I was taking pictures, which I reminded them when they asked. They glumly trooped back inside the cabin of their patrol boat, and we continued to crawl our way northward against the flood.
I could overhear the sailors’ radio chattering with what could only be the nettlesome directives of some remote, micro-managing superior, bursting with ideas as to how the sailors on the patrol boat should conduct themselves. Whenever I would alter course by a few degrees, they had to alter course, too. Whenever I would stop for a break or to look at a bird, they had to stop, too. The slow-motion pursuit went on for over an hour.
I doubted the navy was enjoying this freedom of navigation exercise as much as I was, so I was meticulous in keeping to the outside of the buoy line. Ordinarily, the navy does not play any role in law enforcement against civilians off-base, but at Bangor, the navy has been granted enforcement powers inside of the buoy line, pursuant to 33 C.F.R. § 334.1220(a)(4). I was not eager to give the sailors on the patrol boat an excuse to pluck me out of the water and put an end to my shenanigans.
When I finally reached the far end of the base, having singlehandedly restored freedom to the inland seas of the United States, I paddled off north in the direction of the Hood Canal Bridge. The patrol boat hovered at the buoy line, watching my departure in the manner of a dog who has just chased a mailman out of the yard. With a triumphant roar of its 300-horsepower engines, it sped off to resume its normal position in the navy’s defensive scheme.
“Use of force authorized.” The sign on the bluff is not a bluff. Pursuant to OPNAVINST 3120.32 § 4.7, the navy is allowed to shoot you as a last resort if doing so is the only way to preserve the integrity of the assets.
Explosives Handling Wharf No. 1, Bangor. The ballistic missiles are loaded into the submarines separately from the thermonuclear warheads, so that any handling mishap involving one does not also engulf the other.
Sail of an Ohio-class nuclear submarine. Each Ohio-class boomer can carry up to twenty Trident II ballistic missiles, and each missile can deliver up to fourteen thermonuclear warheads, for a maximum armament of 280 warheads per vessel—although the operational load-out under New START is usually only about a third of this.
Metal Shark Force Protection Boat—Medium with M240B medium machine gun. The sailors were professional and courteous—at least, as courteous as it is possible to be while bristling with weaponry and dogging my every move. I assume such competent mariners were not members of the crew who crashed their patrol boat into the anti-boat barrier and sank themselves the previous year.
Two other manmade wonders awaited me north of the naval base: the Hood Canal Bridge and the driftwood dragon.
A floating bridge over Hood Canal was first constructed in 1961, but it eventually encountered the same wind-canalizing effect I had encountered on my first day. In 1979, the bridge broke up and sank during a windstorm. A redesigned bridge opened in 1982 and has so far withstood the tests of time, tide, and weather.
As the third-longest floating bridge in the world, most of the Hood Canal Bridge is impassable to boats except when the structure retracts to admit the passage of large ships, such as the submarines at Bangor. Fortunately, there are also short trusses at either end, where smaller boats can simply pass beneath the non-floating portions of the bridge.
I had been unsure whether currents might behave strangely in the vicinity of the bridge. In the event, I simply drifted beneath the westside truss at about a quarter knot.
North of the bridge, I stopped at Hood Head to appreciate the driftwood dragon. I had only discovered the dragon earlier in the month, when Grandpa John and I took my kids camping at the Wolfe Property. This time, I landed at Hanson Point, the better to appreciate the full majesty of this sculpture: twelve feet tall, seventy-five feet long, original artist unknown, maintained for decades by the volunteer efforts of the community.
Approaching Hood Canal Bridge, west truss. In the background, Hood Head to the right.
Kayaking beneath Hood Canal Bridge. Vehicle traffic over the bridge generated a ceaseless roar that could be heard for miles across the water.
Driftwood dragon, Hanson Point, Hood Head. I don’t normally approve of driftwood sculptures on the beach, but even I must admire this spectacular dragon.
Mouth of Hood Canal. Tala Point to the left, Foulweather Bluff to the right, Marrowstone Island and Admiralty Inlet ahead.
Hood Canal was not capable of delivering the wilderness experiences I usually look for on a kayaking trip, but it did deliver many provocative encounters: dragons and dinosaurs, bridges and bombs, wind and waves, and a few precious stretches where it was just me, the trees, and a sky full of clouds.
—Alex Sidles