I had hoped to spend the weekend kayaking the Olympic coast of Washington, but a powerful weather front was forecast to generate waves as high as twenty feet (6 m)—much too high to face in a kayak. Even on the more sheltered inland waters, where surf is not an issue, a small craft advisory would be in effect all weekend due to high winds.
No matter the forecast, it’s usually possible to find manageable kayaking conditions somewhere in Washington. I figured Sucia Island in the northern San Juans would be just sheltered enough that I could dart in and out without too much fuss.
Sucia Island can be a bit of circus during the summer. The island is so popular with yachties it can be hard for a kayaker to find a campsite.
Mid-October was a different story. There was only a single yacht moored in Fossil Bay and two more in Echo Bay. None of the yachties had come ashore to camp, so I was looking forward to a quiet weekend.
All of a sudden, and without any provocation whatsoever, one of the yachts began blaring folk rock from its speakers. These speakers must have been one of the chief selling points of the boat, because the volume and tone they produced had to be heard to be believed. Living up to the name, the mile-long sandstone walls of “Echo Bay” further amplified the music for the whole island to enjoy.
Even by yachtie standards, this floating rock concert crossed a line. The other yachties in the bay yelled at the audiophiles to turn off their music, and I added my own shouted objection from ashore. Justice prevailed, the music died, and tranquility was restored to the bay.
Kayaking west off North Beach, Orcas Island. From left to right: Waldron Island, Moresby Island, Saltspring Island, Bare Island, Skipjack Island, South Pender and North Pender Islands.
Looking southeast from Parker Reef toward Vendovi Island. From left to right, Lummi Island, Clark Island, Vendovi Island, Sinclair Island, Orcas Island.
Sandstone sculpture, South Finger Island. Like the nearby Gulf Islands and Bellingham Bay, many of the San Juan Islands’ shores are lined with spectacular sandstone formations.
View toward Ewing Cove through the gap between Justice Island and South Finger Island. Harbor seals clustered in this area by the dozen.
Campsite no. 42, Echo Bay. Though it’s often overcrowded during summer, this is one of the nicest parts of the island during the off-season.
Many of the winter seabird species had already arrived. During the crossing to Sucia Island, I saw dozens of Pacific loons, a species normally more common on the outer coast than the inland waters. The common murres had also moved onto the inland waters, although they were still mostly traveling in pairs rather than the large rafts they would form later in winter.
A few hundred yards north of Parker Reef, in the channel between Orcas Island and Sucia Island, I was astonished when a sooty shearwater came whipping past my bow. The sooty is the least pelagic of our shearwaters, but even so, it is an ocean bird, not a bird of the inland waterways. It is not normally found farther inland than the Strait of Juan de Fuca, yet here was one right in the middle of the San Juans.
A few minutes later, a flock of three more sooty shearwaters shot past, then three more, and then a flock of fourteen. Altogether, I saw twenty-one sooties during the crossing on Friday and then thirteen more during the return crossing on Sunday. This was the farthest inland I had ever seen this species, and to see it by the dozen was completely unexpected.
The second exciting bird I saw was a single horned lark, which flew up from the hiking trail between Echo Bay and Ewing Cove. Whenever one sees a lark-like bird in the San Juans, the hope is always for a Eurasian skylark. Skylarks used to breed on San Juan Island, having crossed over from Saanich in 1960. The population crashed during the 1990s due to habitat loss and pressure from introduced rabbits and foxes. Skylarks have not been seen on San Juan Island since the year 2000. Seeing a skylark anywhere in the islands in the year 2025 would be grounds to call the rare bird hotline. I hurried ahead to where this lark had lighted on an outcrop overlooking the water.
I had foolishly left my binoculars in camp to lighten my load for the hike, but I was able to creep close enough to ascertain even with the naked eye that this was not a Eurasian skylark but a native horned lark. Horned larks are by no means rare in Washington, but they are more common east of the Cascade Mountains than west. This was only my third time seeing a horned lark anywhere in the San Juans.
The final surprise birds appeared at the Orcas Island ferry terminal during my drive home. A flock of wild turkeys was foraging right in the parking lot as I pulled up in my car. Turkeys are not native to Washington, but the Washington Department of Fish and Game introduced turkeys to the San Juans in 1980 for hunting purposes.
At least in the case of Orcas Island, the turkeys got the better end of the bargain. Although hunting turkeys on Orcas is legal in theory, there is almost nowhere on the island to do it. Most of the land on Orcas is private property, and most of the private owners do not allow visiting hunters to enter their properties, nor do most owners choose to hunt their own properties themselves. Most of the large, publicly accessible tracts on Orcas are owned or controlled by Washington State Parks, the San Juan County Land Bank, or the San Juan Preservation Trust, none of whom allow hunting on their Orcas holdings.
This island-wide ceasefire has produced a veritable Zion for turkeys. Not only have their numbers blossomed, they have come to think of humans as their peers. The flock of eight at the ferry terminal paraded among the cars without a care in the world, even as people leaped out to take pictures with their cell phones.
Harbor seal, South Finger Island. The seals here are so inured to the passage of kayakers that this one went back to sleep as soon as it figured out what I was.
Short-billed gull, Echo Bay. The gull species I saw this trip were the short-billed, Bonaparte’s, glaucous-winged, California, and Heermann’s gull.
Glaucous-winged gull eating ochre sea star, South Finger Island. It was a struggle for this gull to fit even a small sea star down its gullet.
Downy woodpecker, Echo Bay. This tiny fellow was surprisingly hard to track down, clinging to the underside of a willow branch.
Pileated woodpecker, Echo Bay. The pileated is one of the most handsome and majestic of birds in our forests.
Pileated woodpecker holes, Echo Bay. The pileated woodpecker is noted for the large, rectangular holes it carves into trees.
Horned Lark, Echo Bay. The female, shown here, does not possess the feathered “horns” for which the species is named.
Wild turkeys, Orcas Island ferry terminal. Though these birds have become quite common on some of the San Juan Islands, I had not seen one here in over twenty years.
Many years ago, I had read somewhere of a set of initials carved into one of the sandstone bluffs on Sucia Island. The carving was the work of a surveying team active on the island in 1892. As a big fan of petroglyphs, I had always wanted to find the initials, but I could never remember which of the island’s long sandstone fingers to search.
To my delight, one of the non-profits that supports Sucia Island had erected interpretive signage near Fossil Bay explaining not only where to find the initials but also many other hidden landmarks, including Coast and Geodetic Survey disks and even survey data scribed into bearing trees. Some of the timber scribings were as old as the nineteenth century.
Brimming with zeal, I set out for Johnson Point, where the interpretive sign informed me I could find not only the 1892 initials carved into the sandstone but also one of the ancient scribed bearing trees.
Not for the first time, my quest for a petroglyph and a culturally modified tree came to naught. No matter how I combed Johnson Point, I could not locate either the inscription or the tree. I was somewhat hampered in my search by the rain, which made climbing the slippery sandstone difficult and dangerous. Perhaps a search on a dry day would yield better results, or perhaps I simply haven’t got the eye for archaeology.
The forecast wind arrived late Saturday afternoon, a day I spent hiking rather than paddling. I had hoped the mass of Sucia Island would buffer me against the wind, but I had counted on the wind arriving from a southerly or southwesterly direction. The wind that did arrive came from the southeast, and it blew right up Echo Bay into my campsite.
At thirty knots, according to the nearby weather station on Saturna Island, the wind yanked out the stakes that were holding down my tarp and sent the tarp whipping off into the rose bushes. Luckily, my dome-shaped tent shed the wind more easily than my sail-shaped tarp did, and the tent held throughout the night.
Eating apples at Mud Bay. Settlers planted fruit trees on Sucia Island beginning in the late 1880s, and some of the trees still produce delicious fruit to this day.
Fossil clams in Fossil Bay. Washington’s first and only dinosaur was discovered on Sucia Island in 2012, but the only fossils I found on this trip were clams.
Beach at Ewing Cove. Many years ago, Ewing Cove was one of the campsites on Sucia Island, but today the cove is restricted to day-use only.
View of Matia Island from the trail between Echo Bay and Ewing Cove. Washington State Parks rightly refers to Sucia Island as “a crown jewel among our state marine parks.”
The wind abated a little overnight, but according to the nearby weather stations at Saturna Island and Cherry Point, it was still blowing over twenty-five knots when I set out for Orcas on Sunday morning, with gusts registering higher still.
Twenty-five knots’ sustained wind can be a lot to handle in the channel between Sucia and Orcas. In August, a group of kayakers and their guide had to call in a rescue near here when they became overwhelmed by fifteen-knot winds. At twenty-five knots, the waves in the channel were rocking and rolling, especially near the bluffs off the southern end of Sucia, where the waves reflected off the cliffs to form disorganized clapotis.
To keep things manageable, I timed my passage of Parker Reef for the late morning, when the tidal current would be at a minimum. Luckily, the wind continued to abate throughout my crossing, and by the time I landed at North Beach, it was merely a breeze.
—Alex Sidles