Quatsino Sound–Beaches & Bears

By Nicole

“Why are we doing this?”  Aaron peeked/glared at me from under his dripping rain hood as we motored along in the dinghy, dodging patches of kelp in the pouring rain.

Practically in answer to his question, a furry sea otter poked up out of the water to check us out.  We exchanged curious glances with the little guy, as he floated along on his back through the kelp.  He followed us around for a bit, popping up here and there and generally being adorable.  Due to the downpour, I kept the camera in my pocket, so no otter pictures, though.

The rain stopped soon after, and we landed the dinghy on a beach to walk on real sand.  Sand!  After all the rocks and boulders and glacial till of the Inside Passage, we’d been craving sandy beaches.
Foulie pants and real sand

The next day, a 30-minute dinghy ride led us from our anchorage in Browning Inlet to the village of Winter Harbour.  It’s more of a fishing outpost than a village, but we managed to get a few groceries (marshmallows for s’mores was top of the list).

We bumped into three of the boats we’d rounded Cape Scott with and had a nice time chatting while waiting for the store to open (Hours: 3pm-7pm – gee, how handy).  As it turns out, Allison from s/v Rosmond follows our blog (hi, Allison!).  What a small world…  We hope to run into them again soon.

The rustic village of Winter Harbour.

Winter Harbour’s post office, complete with a sweet old guard dog (Aaron gave him plenty of attention).

Remember when we were lamenting the fact that we hadn’t seen a bear yet?  Well, we saw eight black bears in one day here, including a momma and her two cubs.  I even managed to get  a decent picture this time.

 
Cute black bear cubs and their mother

Thus, I broke out my trusty bear bell again for our hike through the woods in search of a beach our friends Lance and Carol on s/v Syrah claimed was straight out of Mexico.  How could we pass up a chance to see Mexico in Canada?

The trailhead shown in the guidebook was guarded by a bear when we arrived (swell), but as it turns out, the book was wrong about the location anyway.  Farther down the inlet we saw the conspicuous Vancouver Island trail marker – brightly colored fishing floats and other flotsam tied to a tree.  Fantastic – but how did we get the dinghy through the muddy marsh when the water was only a few inches deep?  Good question.  Here’s your answer:

Mush, Aaron, mush!  Yep, I’m riding.

Fearing for our lives (who wants to be eaten by a bear?), we tried to be as loud as possible while hiking the trail.  It was so overgrown with salal, salmonberry bushes and assorted other forest shrubbery that some resourceful individual who tromped through before us (probably last year by the looks of things) tied pink surveyor’s tape to branches along the way.  In many places we couldn’t see the trail at all, so we picked our way from one piece of pink tape to the next.  It was getting late, and at one point we considered turning back.  But we kept hearing Lance & Carol’s voices in our heads.  So we pushed on. 

And this was our reward at the end of the trail:

Did not get eaten by bears hiking to Grant Bay

This West Coast of Vancouver Island stuff is pretty effing awesome.