Whaler Islet to Tofino, July 17th 2009.


One last chance to get up early before going home and having to get up early in the morning. I launched in the fog and could barely see everyone else in camp from a few feet offshore. I set a compass course from the map and paddled into opaque white. The fog threatened to clear and left a circle of blue overhead from time to time. A circle of white, a fog bow, appeared to my right at one point. As I got close to Vargas Island I started seeing black rocks and cliffs through the mist. The fog cleared from around me, but left Blunden Island shrouded to my right.

For the rest of the morning I had a pleasant time rock gardening along the shore in warm sunshine. When I arrived at Ahouse Bay, I found it was a huge place with lots of camping opportunities. Arriving separately we would have had trouble finding each other here. At the very north end of Ahouse Bay I landed where an official camping sign warned of wolf and had lead me to a molded fiberglass pit toilet. Back on the water I found the rest of my group at the south end of Ahouse Bay. Right about then the fog started to come back.

We went around the south end of Vargas Island in a thick fog and became separated into several groups. With our VHF radios on we heard the two groups behind us trying to get back together. They landed on rocks, called out passing tour boats, blew their whistles, but never managed to connect until we all came out of the fog on the other side. We set compass bearings in the fog and as soon as we pulled away from Vargas we were in a bright sunny day again. We paddled across between Wickaninnish and Stubbs Island and to the end of the Tofino Peninsula.

Don Barch, who was still lost in the fog, had told us how wonderful the Great Cedar Trail was. This was a park near Tofino, only accessable by water. So some of us went off to try and find this. We had a waypoint for our GPS, but this turned out to be incorrect. We asked some locals how to find the park. They told us to go between two islands and turn right, but when we got there, the low tide prevented us from going any farther. We went around to the other side of one of those islands and still could not find the trailhead to the Great Cedar Trail. After a frustrating hour we turned back to Tofino and finally landed. Now the only frustrations will be packing up and the convoluted multi-stage trip home again.


All text and images Copyright © 2009 by Mike Higgins / contact