"Orcas!" I said. Lexie and Caleb, our Sea Kayak Adventures guides, were asking me and seven others about our overall objective for a six-day kayaking trip. My co-paddlers and I were attending a night-before, planning-and-get-to-know-each-other session at the Haida-Way Inn in Port McNeill on the northeastern tip of Vancouver Island.
Photos courtesy of Paul Malboeuf
Day 1: We arrived at God's Pocket Resort after a bracing boat cruise through the Queen Charlotte Strait, on a tour organized by Sea Kayak Adventures, which has exclusive use of the resort for lodge-based sea kayak tours.
Kayaking British Columbia
Adventurers have punished their minds and bodies on human-powered odysseys for centuries. Every week, it seems another modern-day Thor Heyerdahl embarks on a feat that most of us can't even fathom, and often for the fame that comes with success.
While some people are content to simply watch killer whales, sea kayakers have a yen to experience them.
The payoff for investing a few days and a little muscle power can be huge, as another eclectic group of adventurers learned this summer in the fabled orca waterways off northeastern Vancouver Island.
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Carbon-free Kayaking in God's Pocket
By Lisa Monforton, Calgary Herald April 22, 2009
Kayaking British Columbia
Adventurers have punished their minds and bodies on human-powered odysseys for centuries. Every week, it seems another modern-day Thor Heyerdahl embarks on a feat that most of us can't even fathom, and often for the fame that comes with success.
Paddle alongside whales, sea otters, seals and porpoises while kayaking and camping around some of Canada's most stunningly beautiful and remote waters and islands in the Queen Charlotte Strait.
Outfitter Sea Kayak Adventures is offering two six-day kayaking trips in August into God's Pocket Provincial Park, Canada's newest marine park, founded in 1995.
Unlike many of the other kayaking adventures in the area, outfitter Terry Prichard swears that in this remote island archipelago" you won't see anybody else"--except, of course, your fellow paddlers, abundant marine life and secluded landscapes.
The trip starts in the town of Port Hardy on North Vancouver Island where guests will be taken by water-taxi into the park wilderness. Camp will be set up on secluded pebble beaches and, during the week, guests will be treated to days of paddling around the islands, steeped in aboriginal history and culture, exploring tide pools animated with sea stars and anemones as well as some trekking into the lush rainforests. All gear and the kayaks, which are made in Ladysmith, B.C., will be waiting at the drop-off point.
"We are carbon neutral," says Nancy Mertz, Prichard's wife and business partner. Though the outfitter is keen "to turn people on to non-motorized travel," says Mertz, the company realized the irony in that their guests usually have to travel quite a distance by car or air to get there. So when you log on to seakayakadventures.com,you can offset the carbon cost of getting there by donating to one of several projects, says Mertz, which includes native energy projects. Can't make it this summer? Sea Kayak Adventures also offers trips to sunny Baja in winter.
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"The trip went way beyond my expectations. It was so great. Everything about it is a wonderful memory - the nature is just spectacular, the guides were great fun and very knowledgeable, the camping and..."
