HAIDA GWAII - AN UNPREDICTABLE LAND

(Friday, May 18, 2007)
After getting into our room at the Sea Raven Motel, we decided to sleep until check out time at 11 a.m. then go pay for another night so we could orient ourselves in this new place. We were both exhausted from our 30 odd hours on the Queen of Prince Rupert so after crawling into bed we quickly fell into a deep sleep.

Unfortunately, our rest was abruptly cut short at 10:15 a.m. when we were shocked out of our slumber by the sound of Sea Raven Motel staff banging the room’s door against the chain. Our startled exclamations must have shocked the staff right back out of the room. And although we were both extremely tired at the time, we are convinced that any warning knock or “housekeeping” call couldn’t have been much louder than a whisper.


Eric says:
I couldn’t go back to sleep, so I decided to pay for our second night at the hotel and go find some real, not powdered, milk for breakfast. Despite the rude awakening, I was excited to see this wonderland in the daylight.

Upon walking out of the motel room door I entered a sort of motel mish mash. There was garbage stacked against the walls, old furniture lying in the parking lot and the vinyl siding, (yes I said VINYL siding) was coming off in places. This can’t be, I thought, bewildered. We were led to believe that this place was like a real life Rivendell and not only were there no tree houses, but where in the world was Elrond?

Then I stumbled across a gathering of eagles, which blew my mind. You have to understand that despite growing up in B.C. I didn’t leave the city all too often, so to see a real eagle up close was something spectacular. I stopped in the middle of the street to watch then noticed that the locals weren’t even glancing at these mythic creatures. I realized that to see an eagle for a local on the Charlottes would be about as rare as seeing a capitalist in Alberta.


A brief introduction to the most populous settlement on the Charlottes

After breakfast, we walked around Queen Charlotte City (pop 960) and visited the tourist info booth, learning about the famous tours of Gwaii Haanas National Park, which covers most of the south islands. The park boasts many ancient Haida villages, one of which is a UNICEF World Heritage Site, and a variety of wildlife comparable to the Galapagos Islands. Scientists believe the area escaped the last ice age causing the place to grow old and wild and allowing various plant and animal species that couldn’t have survived elsewhere to develop here.

We also found out that the new Haida cultural centre wasn’t open yet. This was a major setback. We had heard how amazing the centre was and were really upset to find out that once again we had arrived before the season really got underway.


May long weekend celebrations and frustrations

The next day we decided to make the hour and a half trip north to Masset on the only paved road on the island. We got a ride to Skidegate (about seven kilometres from Charlotte City) and an informal tour of the village from our driver, before she dropped us off at the north end of town.

The ride to Masset would be the longest distance we had ever tried to cover by hitchhiking and we weren’t sure how hard it would be to get a ride. Rachel was also worried about being stuck in a vehicle with a scary driver for an hour and a half and possibly getting carsick. When we saw a beat-up, somewhat dirty truck heading our way, Rachel said, “I hope this guy doesn’t stop.” But he did, and lucky for us, was going camping at Agate Beach, which is past Masset. And since the truck only had the one cab, Rachel got to see out the front window, which helped curb her motion sickness, despite the shaking of the elderly vehicle.

We chatted with the older fellow and learned interesting little facts about the Charlottes, such as people can bag a maximum of 15 deer per person per season. The deer on the Charlottes are so small (their backs only waist-high to an adult) and so fearless that another local later told us all you need is an apple and a hammer to hunt them. We’ll leave the mental picture to your imagination.

Our driver let us out beside an empty dirt lot he said used to be a store. We soon located the new store and a campground (with flush toilets and running water and free firewood!) that was only an eight-minute walk from town.

We had made the trek to Masset in part because we had heard about Masset Days, a community festival/fair happening over the May-long weekend, so we walked into the remote village to see what it had to offer. Again we had been deceived.

The place had few paved roads, unsightly buildings and a military base that lay lifeless after being abandoned in the mid ‘90s. We went to take part in the festivities and buy carnival hotdogs only to discover that there weren’t any left. Our spirits were starting to crumble as we encountered disappointment after disappointment. We bought some cotton candy to let the sugar pick us up but instead we just felt guilty for eating so unhealthily.

We still had a wild card up our sleeve, though. Way back in Qualicum Beach, we met former Charlottes resident Bob Berge who gave us the name of a lady who owned a hair salon in Masset. He said that if we just went to her salon she would take care of us. We had great visions of being swept out of our campsite by this overly hospitable lady who would tour us around non-tourist places to experience the Haida culture in all its richness. We figured that through this woman, Haida Gwaii would finally open up into our own mystical wonderland where we would meet Indigenous chiefs and come home with unbelievable stories. Well, we do have good stories, and also a pretty wild imagination!

We approached the salon with anticipation and asked for our contact. An employee directed us outside to the lady serving food. There was our savior, selling burgers in front of her salon to festivalgoers. We approached her and asked if she was the person we knew her to be.

To make a long story short, we walked away with no promise of any cultural experience at all. Not only was this another huge disappointment, but somewhere in amongst all the confusion Eric had, in a flustered state, managed to volunteer our time the next day to help clean up the mess of serving burgers and fries when the festival was finally over. We uncomfortably walked down the road away from the salon bewildered as to how we had got ourselves into all this mess. I (Eric) must confess that this had to be the low point for me in our travels. I had really had enough of disappointments and awkwardness.

To cheer us up, we bought smokies and roasted them over the (free!) fire – our first campfire hotdogs since we started camping two months earlier. As we ate, the processed cheese oozed from the centre of the wieners where it had been injected and thus our day was injected with a small thrill. We reminded ourselves we had tomorrow to look forward to. We were planning to go to Old Masset (surely an easy walk as the tourist guide said it was only two kilometres from Masset) to check out a café. Its ad proclaimed the café featured good coffee and Internet and was even open seven days a week.


More disappointment

The next day we set off for Old Masset, but the walk seemed to go on forever. Old Masset was where the original Haida settlement had existed, then later as Europeans moved in, a new town was started called New Masset. We quickly discovered the villages were actually closer to five kilometres apart and that Old Masset itself stretched along for another two or so kilometres. Why couldn’t the tourist guide maps have scales showing actual distances?

As we trudged through the long village of Old Masset searching for the Haida Rose Café and its accompanying aromas of organic fair trade coffee, we got hotter and sweatier and wearier. Finally we found it, but not surprisingly it was closed, lock, stock, and barrel, despite the several ads announcing its openness, perhaps for the festivities in the neighbouring New Masset. AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGG!!!!!!! Talk about frustrating. After a short rest on the porch of our closed café we started on the journey back to our campsite.


An unexpected ride

Shortly after getting to the main roan, we heard the sound of an engine behind us and decided to try hitching. A woman picked us up in her brand new Nissan Titan that we quickly learned had been driven off the lot in Prince Rupert to replace the one her daughter recently rolled. Eric exclaimed at how terrible that was and she responded by saying, “No it wasn’t, my daughter was fine.”

After introducing ourselves we learned that our new host was on the council for the Haida Nation and was very involved in her culture and heritage and also very willing to educate us. Marlene took us with her to pick up her nephew’s soapbox racer for the fair events that were taking place in Masset. She then took us to her house despite her obviously busy schedule and showed us several artifacts that were a part of her family and explained the meanings of all the objects. Hats, paintings, canoe paddles, shawls, carvings and the raw materials they used to make it all were some things that she showed us. This was beginning to make up for the heritage centre being closed. We spent several hours learning about and experiencing Marlene’s heritage and that of the Haida people. She finally dropped us off in Masset and we thanked her for her time. What a treat after all the disappointments we had experienced. As she drove off, Eric turned to Rachel and said, with a look on his face like a child sneaking a cookie out of the cookie jar: “All we have to do now is avoid the salon!”

But, the islands weren’t finished with us yet.

We had been reading in the tourist guide about all the spectacular hikes on the islands and we were adamant that at some point in our backpacking trip we had to experience some real wilderness camping. This seemed like the logical place to do it. We read about a hike that began near Tow Hill (another 20 or so kilometres from Masset), called the Cape Fife trail. The path wound through 10 kilometres of forested wilderness and ended along East Beach. The guide explained that instead of going back through the forest, hikers could walk up East Beach to the most northeastern point of the islands called Rose Spit, then down North Beach all the way back to Tow Hill. Easy for a couple of seasoned packers like us, right? What happened in the next few days was probably the most dangerous situation we encountered in all our travels. By doing this wilderness hike during the final two weeks of our trip, we had unknowingly saved ourselves the best, or maybe the worst, for last ...