After three days in Gwaii Haanas, I started making lists. Here is one of my lists:
Things that I brought that make me laugh:
1. tube of sunscreen2. shorts
3. sleeveless top
4. other tube of sunscreen
5. sunglasses
Here is another:
Things you should take to kayak in Gwaii Haanas:
2. bombproof tents 3. toque
4. three or more pairs long underwear
5. raingear
6. backup raingear
7. rubber boots
8. warm paddling gear
9. brimmed hat
10. warm layers (in addition to long underwear)
At this point of trip journal writing, I was squatting under a tarp in Slim Inlet.
It was about 4 p.m., and the guys (Sam, Bill, Frank,
Lee, Peter and Jim) had all retreated to their tents. We had paddled 45 km that day, because why stop paddling when it is pouring rain?
At least you’re covered from the waist down, and you can maintain hope that the wet will stop and tarp-hanging can be avoided.
(Hope springs eternal. For 10 days, Peter’s mantra was, it looks like it’s clearing up.)
And with that introduction, a full-length trip report. Note that the pictures make the weather look better than it was. And that,
early on day four, someone said, it can’t get any worse than this, so it must get better. This trip report is much the same: now
that the sniveling about the dampness is (almost) done, it can only get better.
We were eight, and our plan was to kayak Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve in Haida Gwaii/the Queen Charlotte Islands, British
Columbia, from Raspberry Cove north. We weren’t sure of the route, or even our final take-out, when we started – which was wise
since, with this group, every plan will change. And that’s even without the permanent repeat loop of the weather forecast on this
trip: showers, gale-force winds.
True to our plan, we made our way to Raspberry Cove via Doug Gould (of Moresby Explorers) and his zodiac. It sounds fabulous: eight
kayakers outfitted in oilskins zooming through a spectacular landscape via 350 hp of outboard motors. Sam and Bill willingly climbed
into the front seats. I made what was perhaps my smartest decision of the whole trip and sat behind Sam. See, zooming along in a zodiac?
Cold. Very wet. Raindrops hurt your face at that speed. But Sam is the biggest kayaker I know, and I could tuck into his rain- and
windshadow quite easily. If Sam hunched over, 
I would hunch even smaller. If he leaned to the left, I copied him. It was like a game of
Sam Says, except it was Sam Does. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and all that, and I’ve always thought Sam was great.
So, five hours or so of zoom, and two attempted drop-offs at sites that turned out to be occupied (Raspberry Cove and Ross Island)
had us dumped on a gravel beach across from Rose Harbour with our rented boats. The sun shone weakly for about 20 minutes. We set
up camp. Peter and I hung a tarp “just in case”. Oh sweet irony.
Here is a list of things we did that afternoon:
1. investigate inter-tidal life
2. hang a food rope (read: Sam hung a food rope, and I got him to hang mine too)
3. sit on the beach, without a tarp
4. retreat to Peter’s tarp when it started to rain
5. add Jim’s tarp when it continued to rain
6. cook under tarp
7. pull out first aid kit to tend to Jim’s blood-gushing nose when he slipped on wet rocks
8. keep rooting through first aid kits to find magic remedies for Sarka’s extremely sore back
9. add my tarp to the tarp shelter
10. sit under tarps
11. envy Sam, Jim and Peter their rubber boots
12. listen to weather forecast (rain, gale).
So, day two: our plan was to paddle out to SGaang Gwaii slash Ninstints slash Anthony Islands (depending on which map you look
at/person you talk to. It’s the UNESCO World Heritage Site at the southwestern end of Haida Gwaii slash the Queen Charlotte Islands,
and predates the creation of Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve).
SGaang Gwaii requires an open ocean crossing, from the southern
end of Houston Stewart Channel across some wide open to the full force of the Pacific waters. From Raspberry Cove, you need to time
the crossing to coincide with tides, too, since tidal currents in Houston Stewart Channel are about 5 knots and there are rips and
even eddies in spots. So, to catch the last of the falling tide, we were up at six. 
Well, according to Lee’s VHF, the gale was still
threatening. Worse, though Jim was satisfied with the patch job on his nose, Sarka – despite Tylenol 3 – had had a miserable night,
and was in more pain than ever. Instead of paddling, we watched Lee use the Coast Guard Repeater to call Doug Gould from the VHF.
Doug came through for us/Sarka, for within an hour, he’d arranged for her to be taken out on a Parks Canada-chartered flight from
Ellen Island, which was right across form us.
I hurriedly helped Sarka pack up, and Jim, Lee and Bill escorted her to meet the float
plane and then stowed her rental boat where Doug could pick it up the next time he was down in the area. So we lost one of our members
before I'd even paddled a stroke (reports later indicated that the plane’s crew took one look at bashed-up Jim and tried to evacuate
him too, but he was having none of that!) 
And the rest of the day? We sat under a tarp.
Actually, in the interests of typing fewer words, assume:
1. there was a tarp and
2. we sat under it
unless otherwise noted.
Mid-afternoon, Sam, Bill, Frank, Peter and I got restless (with the exception of Bill, none of us had paddled that day after all) and decided to bash our way through the woods for a diversion.
It was both wet and magical. Somehow, Bill and I got separated from Sam, Frank and Peter and got stumped by a creek two coves over. We started going upstream, and there was a great fallen log that would have made a good bridge but I refused because it looked slippery and a long way down if you – and I figured for me this was inevitable – slipped. We met the other guys and yet another one of the many, many not-at-all shy black-tailed mule deer on the beach at the other side (as an aside, Bill asked Kurt, our van-shuttle driver, “what do you need to get one of them deer?” And Kurt’s answer was “an apple and a hammer”).