North of Vancouver Island, the British Columbia coast takes a turn to the north and gives up the protection offered by the island for the open coastal waters of Queen Charlotte Sound. The coast, including the often treacherous Cape Caution, becomes an exposed stretch of low-lying granite coastal hummocks capped by wind-worn dwarf pine.
Most boaters pass through here as quickly as possible. They dart from protected cove to protected cove, only when the conditions are ideal, glad to enter into the shelter of the northern section of the Inside Passage, where they're protected by an almost unbroken line of islands. Only a handful of kayakers ever venture to the numerous beaches that lie along Queen Charlotte Sound. Some beaches, like the one at Burnett Bay, are sprawling stretches of sand; others are hidden between weather-battered rock headlands and vicious offshore rocks. On a good day, kayakers will find relatively sheltered landing spots; on a bad day, the surf will roar down the beaches cutting off access to shore and making landing impossible.
My first venture into the waters here was on one of the bad days. On my third day of a three-month trip up and down British Columbia's coast, a southerly was whipping up sharp wind waves that pounded my kayak's stern. Rebound waves from the shore slapped at my flank, and a huge swell rolled in from the northwest. I battled through the tumult and into the relative shelter of Smith Sound to look for a place to land.
I examined various potential camping beaches looking for a clearing above the high tide line-places where I expected to find campsites but found nothing. Each beach ended at an unbroken line of salal and thick scrub.
I eventually pulled ashore at a gravel beach and made a tent area next to the tree line by stomping the rocks level over a drift log above where I calculated the night's high tide would reach.
At about 2 A.M., a wave slammed into the drift log and sent me scrambling from the tent. I cast a flashlight through the blackness out onto crashing waves. The breakers had built up through the night, just in time for high tide. I spent the next hour watching the waves pound against the log under my tent, hoping the ground I was camped on would survive the night. The water eventually began to recede, and although the rain fly of my tent was soaked with the spray, the ground had held.
Over the next three months, the struggle to find a suitable campsite became the norm. Beaches are rare on many stretches of the BC coast; and of the scant few, most are not well suited for camping. Every afternoon the question was the same: Where can I safely place my tent for the night?
I passed remarkably few other paddlers that summer, but for nearly 10,000 years, canoes were the main form of transit. Today's kayakers traveling the area share one basic need with their aboriginal predecessors: access to safe, sheltered, all-weather beaches; fresh water and-preferably-a level shore on which to camp.
Waterways with History
It's no small coincidence that most of the best beaches I found for kayak camping on the BC coast were once camps and villages for indigenous
peoples. At some of these sites, middens and the half-hidden depressions where houses once stood are still visible. In most cases, though, the history is almost invisible. Where a village once stood, you may find nothing more than a copse of alders.
The native peoples, or First Nations, may make their presence known again, as the BC government prepares to finalize treaties with 42 native groups, resolving an issue that has sat dormant for over a century. The first coastal treaty, ratified by the Maa-nulth First Nations ("Maa-nulth" means "villages along the coast") of west Vancouver Island in October 2007, came as a shock to many kayakers, as the agreement handed over 245 square kilometers of coast, much of it reclaimed heritage lands, with portions much-loved and much-used by kayakers. While recreational users of the land may grumble, it does correct a long-standing historic error. The Maa-nulth are being handed the tools for self-government, self-sufficiency and control of their cultural identity-elements that were missing because of the province's neglect in finalizing treaties over the last 125 years.
One of the Maa-nulth bands, the Kyuquot-Checleset (or Ka:'yu:'k't'h'/Che:k'tles7et'h' as it is written in the local orthography) gained title to all the Mission Group Islands, one of the most popular kayaking destinations on northwest Vancouver Island. Other islands like Amos Island, peculiar for its fossil-bearing sedimentary rock, and the Thornton Islands, a remote cluster used as a breeding colony for cormorant, storm petrels and tufted puffins, are also part of the deal. More Maa-nulth parcels are scattered around Kyuquot Sound, including at Fair Harbour, the most popular launch location into the region. Only a small portion of the main island, Spring Island, remained out of First Nations control.
The Maa-nulth treaty gives the First Nations additional rights beyond traditional reserve lands, most notably fee-simple status, meaning it can be bought, sold and developed with the Maa-nulth given municipal-like control.
