Six Days on Haida Gwaii: A Visit to Moresby Island

Thursday was our final day on Haida Gwaii, as we were taking the 11 pm ferry back to Prince Rupert that night.  We decided to spend the day on Moresby Island.  Moresby is south of Graham Island and the second largest in the Charlottes.  It has one town, Sandspit, which boasts an airport and a population of 300 people.

The 25 minute ferry ride from Skidegate to Alliford Bay was as close as we would get to a boat tour of the islands.  Even a day tour to the park in the south, Gwaii Haanas, was $200 per person; more than a little out of our travel budget!  We were lucky to have a gorgeous sunny day after a few days of on and off showers.

The only shot we got of Sandspit was of this gigantic fish statue.  But we did stop by the Visitors' Centre in their very nice little airport and make a stop at the local Supervalu.  On Haida Gwaii, a name brand grocery store is quite exciting!

Our main destination for the day was Gray Bay, which is about 23 km down a logging road on the east side of the island.  We found a user-maintained campground with just two vehicles in it, and a stretch of beach with no one on it for miles.  We spent the afternoon reading in the sun (yes, a common theme) and wandering the beach.  Chad even went for a swim.

We also dropped by Secret Cove, next door to Gray Bay.  Which is less a secret and more a well marked small bay.  Chad wandered to the cove while I captured the amazing greenery of the surrounding forest.

Getting back from Sandspit around 7pm, we finished our time on Haida Gwaii by making ourselves dinner outside the Visitors' Centre in Queen Charlotte and soaking in some last minute views before heading to the ferry.

That was the end of our time on Haida Gwaii.  Since then, when asked what we thought of it, our response has been that it was cool but not exactly what we expected.  It's not as magical and mystical as it might have once been, particularly with the depressed economy, the changes wrought by long-term resource extraction and the fact that it is like many other rural BC areas whose existence rests on logging and fishing (and the thin hope of increased tourism).  But it is a unique place and we had a good time there, appreciating the quiet and the calmness.  Maybe if we return we will be able to get further out into the wild areas.

Return From Haida Gwaii

[By Chad] The ferry to Prince Rupert left at 11 pm, but you have to be at the terminal by 9 pm to check in.  We got there at 8:45 and it was already chaos, despite the load being only a couple of hundred people.  Apparently this is a popular sailing time - and our ferry travelled faster than usual in order to make a connection with the Prince Rupert-Port Hardy sailing that left early the next morning, so crossing time was only about 6.5 hours.

While there are rooms available to rent on the ferry, the quicker trip meant we would have had at most 6 hours to use one, and they weren't consistent with our budget, so we decided to do as most people were doing and sleep between the rows of seats on the floor of the ferry.  Yep, nothing but first class for us!  Having sleeping bags, thermarests and earplugs made this much better than sleeping on the floor of Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport, but it could have been better; they started playing the movie "Thor" at 11pm with a loud speaker right over our heads; excited Haida Gwaii kids ran up and down the aisles screaming until finally a PA announcement asked parents to please control their children; and it was pretty brightly lit.  So we might have squeezed out 3.5 hours of fitful sleep - but props to BC Ferries for providing free coffee and pastries at 4:30am, just before arrival.

A quick trip on deck as we threaded our way through the channel to the ferry dock was pretty cool.  It was pitch black, but then the container ship terminal emerged from thick fog as we passed within a ship's length of it.  Eerily beautiful - the photo doesn't do it justice.  (If you are more than a couple of hundred metres from those lights, they disappear and it's black again.)

So 5:30am and we're on the road in Prince Rupert!  Yikes.  Sarah got behind the wheel, and we drove endlessly until Vanderhoof.  Our original plan was to stop in nearby Prince George for the night, but it was only 1pm and we really didn't feel like paying a bunch of money to stay in Prince George.  So I jumped behind the wheel and started my driving shift - through endless rolling plains of forest, and even the odd intense thunderstorm, broken only by a stop in Granville Coffee in Quesnel for pie and coffee, and for gas in Williams Lake.  The scenery got a lot more enjoyable around Lac La Hache, which helped us power through the home stretch and make it to the Frosts' place in Kamloops by 8:20pm.  Queen Charlotte City to Kamloops in under 24 hours - about 1300km in one day!  We gave our poor car a well-deserved oil change after that epic drive, which capped off thousands upon thousands of kilometres we put on it this summer.