We while away the day at Kitimat Lodge, drinking tea and eating up surplus chocolate bars. The weather is fair so we sit out on the terrace until our taxi arrives to take us on the 15 minute journey to MK Bay Marina. Here we will board our home for the next week – Cascadia.

She has a crew of 10 and there are 22 passengers in 12 cabins. We embark at 17.00 and our expedition leader, Phil, takes our photos. This is for ease of remembering who everyone is. Crib sheets are posted on the wall. What a great idea.

Phil shows us to our cabin – Salt Spring – which is larger and more comfortable than I had imagined and with a really good shower.

Shortly after embarkation we cast off and head for our first anchorage at Eagle Bay. En route we are given a safety briefing and talk on life aboard and what to expect. Then it is time for dinner. What a treat! The food is truly excellent and so appreciated after the super fried diet last week!

After breakfast we have our first excursion in the tenders to Gilttoyees Inlet. The tenders are brilliant and are like mini-landing craft with a flap at the front that lowers for ease of shore landings. There is a side door that makes boarding from Cascadia dead easy. So much more comfortable and stable than a zodiac.

The scenery is stunning.

We even catch a glimpse of a bald eagle.

We return to the boat for a photography briefing and light lunch, whilst moving to a new location.

The weather has improved and it is turning into a hot afternoon. We head for the Gardner Canal where our next outing is into Kiltuish Inlet in the hope of spotting bears. The tide is fairly low so we have to progress slowly up the creek so we do not run aground.

There are lots of pink salmon so we are hoping bears may appear. We tie up to a tree root and wait. It is very hot and mosquitos bombard us. Gulls rest along the shore and feast on salmon titbits. Disappointingly there is no sign of a bear.

Come morning, we head east and further in to the Gardner Canal. Yesterday’s sunshine has been replaced with grey skies and moody cloud hanging in the valleys.

We have a morning excursion at Rigby Reach, where we view a variety of waterfalls. There has not been much rain recently so their outflow is light. They must be truly spectacular in the spring when they are full of glacial melt water.

We catch a brief glimpse of a pair of otters scooting along the rocky bank. Seals play in the water below the waterfall above.

The weather has now really deteriorated and we don our full wet gear as it is raining heavily. We head into the mouth of the Kitlope River estuary. There we see a replica of the G’psgolox Pole, the original is also there but lies rotting in the forest close by.

The Gʼpsgolox totem pole was a nine-metre-high mortuary pole that was made in 1872 by the Haisla people on the shore of Douglas Channel in British Columbia, Canada. In 1929 it was brought to Sweden and the Museum of Ethnography. In 2006 it was returned to the Haisla people. In 2012 it was allowed to decompose, in accordance with the Haisla tradition for long-serving poles.

Wikipedia

The Gʼpsgolox totem pole is attached with a legend. It is told that, in 1872, a smallpox epidemic infected the people the Haisla Nation (located in the north of what is now called British Columbia), killing the vast majority of inhabitants. The leader of the Eagle Clan of the Haisla tribe, named Chief Gʼpsgolox, lost his whole family due to the epidemic, as well as many of his friends. The legend tells that the bereaved Chief Gʼpsgolox travelled to the forest and attempted to find help there. In the legend, he met with the spirits Tsooda and Zola, who told the chief to go to the edge of a mountain at dawn, where he would see his deceased loved ones and learn to heal those still living. In the legend, this is how Chief Gʼpsgolox complied and gained vital knowledge, learning the nature of the spirits, the Haisla spirit of continuance and transition. In appreciation of the spirits’ help, Chief Gʼpsgolox commissioned a nine-metre-tall totem pole with three figures. The bottom two figures commemorate the deceased and the top figure represents the Tsooda

Wikipedia

Our wet adventure continues but we all put a brave face on it….

The scenery is great but the unrelenting deluge makes it hard to appreciate. We disembark on a large gravel bank and see plenty of footprints of bears, moose, wolves and more. We are told to stick together as there is safety in numbers.

After a long and soggy afternoon I luxuriate in a really hot shower. I was soaked through despite having supposedly waterproof clothing. I shall be complaining to ‘Rab’ when I get home!

As we move to our night anchorage at Chief Mathews Bay, we pass rock wall paintings. I know little about them so shall need to read up when back home.