2014/06 Haida Gwaii trip - Port Clements |
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Showers were still rolling through. We passed Tlell and took a dead straight road through swampy forest across the island to the village of Port Clements, on the shore of the large Masset Inlet, almost an inland sea.
It was still raining. We found the campground, in the forest and close to the shore. We were happy to find that it was cheap and empty and had electricity, a good opportunity to charge batteries, especially when we weren’t driving enough each day for the truck to charge them. I had Sandie’s laptop along and its battery was now only good for 20 minutes before it needed recharging..
Monday June 23rd
It was still raining but the wind had dropped. I took a walk to an elaborate bird-viewing platform. It overlooked the Yakoun River estuary and the inlet, which was a sea of mud at low tide, with stranded tree stumps for scenery. No one had invited any birds. I walked the trail towards town and heard eagles and cranes but couldn’t see any through the dense tree cover. I’ve included the estuary picture here as it shows the sheer sogginess of the day.
It was still raining at lunch time, when we went into the village for water and for shopping at its only store. The pride and joy of the area used to be the Golden Spruce, a rare colour mutation, a tree 150ft high and 300 years old, sacred to the Haida and a source of tourist $ for the rest. It was cut down twenty years ago by a disgruntled mainland logger. He’s since disappeared possibly out of fear or maybe the Haida got him. It was a male tree so there were no seeds but the university had managed to grow saplings from a cutting and now one is in a cage next to the old church. The colour is nice but you’ll have to wait 300 years for the replacement product.
We drove out along the Queen Charlotte main, busy with logging traffic. We were headed for an old Haida canoe. Building such a canoe was a massive undertaking and involved felling a giant cedar, and then burning, steaming, and cutting to turn it into a sleek hollow log canoe. This one was abandoned during construction for unknown reasons; maybe it split.
The trail to the canoe’s remains was flooded and overgrown, a very wet hike, but there it was: the bow of a rotting canoe in a small clearing, towering over me, a spooky sight. Enough of the unfinished trunk remained for me to climb up on top and imagine propelling it through the waves.
The trail to the fallen Golden Spruce is still there, a good walk through a forest of massive spruces and hemlocks. It’s old-growth forest, spared from logging perhaps because of proximity to the famous spruce. The trail ended at the Yakoun River where the fallen spruce was already disappearing under moss and seedlings.