Six Days on Haida Gwaii: Queen Charlotte

We awoke Wednesday morning to the views below and breakfast in bed.  It was too much to resist; we decided to stay another night at the Spruce Point Lodge and to spend the day in Queen Charlotte.

Highly recommended by all the guidebooks and thus on our list of things to do was a visit to the Haida Heritage Museum in Skidegate.  It opened in 2007 to much ado, and contains a huge volume of Haida art and artifacts.

The museum from the shore.  A pretty impressive structure.

Dugout canoes in the canoe workshop

This Inuit art was traded with the Haida in a cultural exchange.

Haida canoes were the ultimate technology & very valuable; key to Haida maritime dominance (they raided a lot, and were compared to vikings).  They steamed the canoes with water & children's urine, which  gave them a more rounded shape at the ends.

From the museum we were off to spend some of the afternoon in the sunshine at a local coffee shop, soaking up the rays and the local atmosphere.  Queen B's was a great little place, until they overcharged us for our coffees.  (Note from Chad: an unfortunate part of being on the islands - many places want to squeeze what they can from you while you're there, rather than providing a good experience such that you'll return one day.)

That afternoon Chad also visited the pottery studio run by the owner of our hotel.  It's part of the'Art Walk', a suggested tour of local artists' shops and studios, which is heavily advertised on Haida Gwaii.

That night we stayed in to eat dinner (cooked on our campstove on the balcony outside our room) and drink a bottle of Bordeaux we brought back from Paris (in goblets thrown in the studio above).  Both were delicious.

There was a full moon that night.  I know I keep posting shots of the view from our room, but it was just so damn lovely!

Six Days on Haida Gwaii: Masset to Queen Charlotte

Although we had a great time in North Beach, as mentioned at the end of the last post we experienced a night of downpour, and awoke to a morning indicating that the day would be much the same.  We were lucky enough that at least the campsite has a fancy Haida-longhouse-looking shelter, complete with glassed in windows, through which we could watch the rain while we made our breakfast.  There we met some people from Vancouver who were on a two week bike trip whose stove had broken down mid-trip, showing us that we could definitely be worse off.  We were happy to share some hot water & stove time!

The forests weren't the stunning, old growth displays of magic that I had envisioned when coming to Haida Gwaii, but they are shockingly green and looked pretty damn cool on a soggy day (excuse the questionable quality of some of the photos, which are courtesy of our waterproof camera).

(Note from Chad: part of this might be our long residence in Vancouver & Vancouver Island, where coastal temperate rainforests abound.  We met people from the prairies who were astounded by the "hiking" opportunities, which to us seemed to be flat forest walks through mossy second growth - your standard Vancouver-type forest walk.)

Our first stop of the day was to visit the golden spruce itself, a fifteen minute drive on a logging road out of Port Clements.  When the tree was alive, tour busses used to travel up this road for tourists to see it.

Although most of the Charlottes have been logged, especially in the flat northeast, some impressively large trees still remain.  Perhaps we would have been even more impressed if we hadn't visited the crazy gigantic redwoods in California back in July.

The golden spruce!  Not looking quite so golden now that it has been cut down for years.

After the golden spruce was cut down, numerous attempts have been made to grow a new golden spruce from cuttings taken off the original tree.  This attempt has been growing for about ten years and has made it to a towering height of two feet.  It is surrounded by a chain link fence - security equal to the former military station on the north of Graham Island.  One of the problems with golden spruce grafts is that they tend to grow sideways, especially if taken from anywhere but the top of the parent tree - which isn't good for achieving early stage height.

A murky, murky pond full of humus - one of many on Haida Gwaii.  Unfortunately the water at North Beach, though allegedly potable, was a lighter version of this.

Our next stop of the day was a visit to the shipwreck of the Pesuta, the log barge seen in an earlier post that ran aground in 1929.  Not a being a diver like Chad, this was the first shipwreck I've seen in real life.  Definitely worth the little 10k round trip hike to the beach.

Sandy cliffs

The ship remnants (only the bow portion is left) are below high tide, in the middle of nowhere.  It seemed like something from the TV series Lost.

Um, yes.  We've been camping for a few days.  

On the way back we decided to take an alternate route along the river bank.  Which was cool, because there were so many salmon in the river we saw one jump every 10-20 seconds.  But not cool for the reason above.  Luckily for me that's Chad's food, not mine.

On the way back down to Queen Charlotte we made an obligatory stop at St. Mary's Spring.  Legend has it that those who drink from the spring will return to the Charlottes.

You may note there is no photo of me drinking from St. Mary's Spring, for the simple reason that the water was the lovely brown colour discussed above.  My theory is that I usually travel where Chad travels, so it was sufficient for just one of us to have a drink. (Note from Chad: only the rocks were brown, the water was pretty clear.)

Back in Queen Charlotte with a soggy tent and the chance of more rain, we splurged and checked into the Spruce Point Lodge.  It's in the 'quiet' part of Queen Charlotte (this being a town of 800 people, things can get pretty crazy...?).  We were treated to fantastic views and breakfast in bed each morning!

Low-ish tide

High-ish tide

We ended the day with dinner at the Ocean View Restaurant, recommended for its seafood by pretty much everyone we talked to on the island.  Chad chose to have salmon (sockeye), figuring it must be fresh after we saw all the fish jumping in the river that afternoon.  I chose... pasta.  Yeah, I'm still not eating fish.

The house wine was perhaps not the tastiest we've had, though Chad is exaggerating here.

Six Days on Haida Gwaii: Queen Charlotte to Misty Meadows

After over 1,000 kilometres from Mt. Robson and seven hours on the ferry, we finally arrived in Haida Gwaii on a cloudy August evening.  Our first night we stayed in Queen Charlotte City ("Queen Charlotte") on Graham Island (the North island), just a few kilometres west of Skidegate where the ferry docks.

First views of the "Misty Isles".

Welcome to Haida Gwaii.  This lady, of dubious friendliness, greets you at the Visitor's Centre.

A look out at the bay in Queen Charlotte.

Chad surveys the Queen Charlotte harbour.

The island is plastered with many types of signs protesting any new oil pipeline or tanker traffic to the region.  I have to say that I agree, particularly after travelling through those waters.

The next day, after a hearty breakfast prepared in the comfort of our hotel room, we headed up the island.  Our destination for the night was Misty Meadows campground in Naikoon Provincial Park, about halfway up Graham Island.

Blue cheese and bacon omelette, with blueberries and cheese bread with Chad's homemade Oregon Grape jelly.  Amazing what Chad can throw together with a kitchenette and a little bit of pre-planning.

Our first stop was Balance Rock, a large boulder left behind from the last ice age and balancing precariously on another rock.  Apparently some refer to the Rock as a centre of spirituality, though we didn't find much there.

Chad isn't trying to knock it over, we promise!

Tiny snails cling to the rocks on the beach.

We next made a random stop to check out all the driftwood on the beach.  It would be fair to say that it is bountiful on most of the island, and when it's dry enough can be used to build campfires.

On the road again, we found some deer alongside the road.  They are non-native, but their introduction to the island has been nothing less than totally successful (for the deer, not so much for those who don't want their gardens eaten by them).

Relaxing lunch

For lunch we stopped at a rest area on the beach, just off the main highway.  We sat there for almost two hours eating our lunch, drinking our tea, and reading our books.  A total of two cars drove by.  Believe me when I tell you that Haida Gwaii is quiet.

Tlell is a tiny community of 300 people on the way up the island.  We were lucky enough to hit their newly formed farmers market, which had about five vendors, and included these tasty looking potatoes.  We walked away with some organic lettuce for the night's dinner.

After checking out the Misty Meadows campground and ensuring there were lots of sites available (not a problem apparently even in the middle of summer, but we wanted to see for ourselves) we headed to the slightly less tiny (about 500 people) community of Port Clements (or "Port" to the locals).  Port is famous as being the home to the golden spruce, which was chopped down in an odd protest against logging several years ago.  The golden spruce was about 160 feet tall and one of a kind in that it had golden needles instead of green.  It was made famous by an excellent book by John Vaillant that I read on the ferry over to Haida Gwaii and Chad read while we were there; we both recommend it.

One of the other highlights of Port is its logging museum.

This is a stuffed white raven, also very rare, that died around the time the golden spruce was cut down.  John Vaillant remarked that between the golden spruce and the white raven Port Clements had cornered the market on freaks of nature.

A pair of caulk (pronounced cork) boots - with spiked soles - worn by loggers as they go about their risky work.

A preserved piece of the golden spruce.

The Pesuta, a log barge that was shipwrecked on the shores of Graham Island in 1929.  You can (and we did) visit the remains of the wreck.

Life jackets salvaged from the ill-fated Queen of the North.

Miscellaneous logging equipment is scattered around the grounds of the museum.  For $2, not a bad deal.

At that point we were done with wandering around for the day, so we headed back to Misty Meadows to set up for the night and walk the lovely beach.

Tent sweet tent.

Low tide - tides are huge in Haida Gwaii, often 7 metres or more

Next up: Masset and North Beach!