Wild Coast Magazine, Spring 2008

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By John Kimantas

It took two difficult days to kayak just the 35 kilometres from Port Hardy to Shushartie Bay. It shouldn’t have, but wind and sciatica nerves can conspire against you, as they did for my paddling partner and I on this late-August trip up Goletas Channel.

Tired and slightly injured, we hobbled into Shushartie Bay late on the second afternoon, with visions of my first trip here resurfacing. Four years earlier, in 2003, I arrived late in the day to scour the shoreline for a suitable camping spot. Finding none, I instead paddled back several miles across Goletas Channel to a campsite I had seen earlier in Bate Passage.

(A few days later a friend on a circumnavigation of Vancouver Island misjudged the tide level and woke up with inches of ocean-cold water inside his tent; my own distrust of the beaches here evidently paid off.)

The return trip in 2007 offered hope for better days for Shushartie Bay. As the trailhead for the new North Coast Trail it promised a campsite and dock – much-needed facilities, for kayakers let alone hikers. But our approach well before the official opening of the trail showed things had yet to change much. We found the trailhead, a rough swath uphill through heavy undergrowth, but with no beach or level ground on which to camp. We scoured the other intertidal areas around the bay, and finding nothing suitable, we backtracked to a pocket cove we had passed earlier just east of Shushartie Bay, glad for the nicely sheltered sand beach.

Once set up we bushwhacked our way into the forest behind the bay and found an old collapsed home of some type, a reminder that the area was once an active waypoint for the Cape Scott settlement. Wharf pilings still dot the bay as a more visible reminder of this past occupation.

We returned to the trailhead the next day to begin the North Coast Trail kayak-style: a combination of kayak camping and day-hiking, with our first task the portion known as Shushartie Overland.

Our first problem for our landing at Shushartie Bay became evident as three distant black blobs moved through the estuary. A trio of black bears were foraging in the low tide at the mouth of the Shushartie River.

“No problem,” I assured Leanne, my partner. “They’ll run as soon as they see us.”

We paddled to the trailhead where one young male bear was upending rocks in his search for food. I paddled up next to him, shouted a few times and whacked the kayak with my paddle to make some noise. The bear squinted at me once then returned to his search for grub, oblivious to us.

“No problem,” I assured Leanne. “He’s just one of those complacent bears. He’s not hostile.”

After he passed to a safe distance we pulled our kayaks up next to an abandoned camper, its purpose long past served. We traded personal flotation devices for backpacks only to have the bear return along the beach. He ambled to the top of a jumble of rocks, well within the comfort range, and squinted at us again.

“No problem. He’s not hostile,” I told my partner, who was still surprisingly considerate of my assurances. “He probably just isn’t used to people yet. This will scare him off.”

I took out my trusty bear banger, essentially a large cap on top of what looks like a pen, and pulled down on the trigger. The last time I tried this I was on a beach at Koeye River on the central BC coast with a bear standing on my kayak. The bear banger hadn’t worked, and I was lucky the bear wasn’t in the mood to claim his prize.
This time, though, the bear banger worked, sending a charge flying out onto the beach. A terrific gunshot-type blast echoed across the bay.

Thousands of birds in the estuary became airborne. Chances are, everything else on the beach took cover as well.
But our bear simply blinked at me, disappeared behind the rocks, then a moment later was on top of the rocks again, squinting at us.

At that point, what can you possibly say to a partner who is scared of bears?

The bear seemed to think better of a confrontation, though, and instead crossed into the trees to pass around us. And in a few minutes we were in the trees ourselves, getting our first taste of the North Coast Trail.

We found the proposed Shushartie campsite location in the trees on the hillside just above the rusting old camper. Spots for the tent pads and outhouse were marked by hand-written signs. It was a good thing we didn’t have a black marker, or trail builders would have returned to find sites marked for the spa, hot tub and pub.

We then headed into the overland, pushing through thick scrub before topping out into what appeared remarkably like a sub-alpine bog, with the typical stunted trees and marshy terrain. This was still early days for the trail, and the extensive boardwalk was still just piles of wood dropped in by helicopter. (The trailhead has now been moved north, avoiding the scrub in favour of old-growth forest with a viewpoint at the top – both worthwhile changes.)

With the easy overland portion out of the way it was time to paddle on to Cape Sutil. I first visited here in 2003 by kayak and was overwhelmed by the beauty of the beach. A long swath of sand covers the east side of the cape, and I landed here to find myself alone in a temperate, weather-beaten and remote paradise that seemed to share more with exotic tropical locations than would seem possible for the harsh climate of the north island.

So it was with some disappointment that I learned the North Coast Trail would be cutting through here. Foot access will mean more people, and ultimately degrade the isolation that helped make the area so fantastic.
But early indications are I needn’t worry. As we neared the beach we passed just a work crew on the far eastern beach. The rest was still as untouched as ever.

We camped outside the trailhead at the southern of the two main beaches; later two kayakers came in to camp on the beach north of the headland, but they may as well have been miles away. We never got close enough to share a word.

The cape, it turned out, made a great location as a base for the next two days, in part due to the stack of firewood left behind by work crews (for which we offer our thanks). We had two plans for our stay here – to hike west towards Shuttleworth Bight the one day and backtrack eastward to Nahwitti River on the next.

Of course, we had no idea of the ordeal in store. Our expectation of leisurely day trips was not going to happen.
On the first day our hopes of making Shuttleworth Bight dimmed as the hours passed and our progress lagged. The trail became a series of climbs up and down headlands with occasional drops to beaches, some requiring tough rock scrambles. We were blessed with only light day packs, but the trail still managed to wear us down. Hopes of making it to Irony Creek grew slim (it was only about 5 km in a straight line, but our progress was well below a kilometre per hour), so we decided to cut our losses and instead follow the beach around the cape back to our campsite.

This diversion proved to be about the most interesting part of the trip. There were some impassable headlands that required some bushwhacking, but it was a spectacular area dotted with untouched pocket beaches. The cape was once a fortified native village, bombed by the British and abandoned by the Nahwitti in the 1880s. It must have been a tough life, with the nearest creek some distance down the beach. The winters would have been particularly harsh.

Any chance of an easier hike the next day was dashed as we headed east to the Nahwitti River. The trail construction crew was busy putting the finishing touches to the tallest stairwell on the trail at Lone Tree Hill, but this was one of the few trail aids along a particularly difficult stretch. At one point we hauled ourselves about a hundred feet up a vertical dirt embankment, then stood on a narrow dirt ledge looking straight down the other side. And the rolly-polly terrain continued from there.

As we neared Nahwitti River the trail leveled out, making the remainder of the hike easy by comparison. We had lunch at the Stranby under the cable car, then returned to Cape Sutil and a well-deserved barbecue at our campfire.
Leanne’s sciatica troubles, complicated by sitting in the kayak, meant no chance of continuing our trip farther west. Our hope had been to continue on to the cape, but like most outings on Vancouver Island you have to settle for what you can achieve. In this case it was a fitting introduction to the trials and tribulations of the North Coast Trail. You won’t have to complete the trail for a visit to be worthwhile, but what a feather in the cap of those who do.

Copyright Wild Coast Magazine 2008.

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