The Broken Islands

I'm going to let TL auto-resize the photos because some of the details can only be seen in the full size.

In August I got to go on a 5 day kayak trip in the Broken Group off of the west coast of Vancouver Island.

A map of our journey. Red is day one, yellow two, blue three, green four, yellow again five.

Starting from the Toquart Bay launch area, which is just a very flat and muddy beach we followed the red string on the map around Hand Island, Brabant Island, Dodd, Willis, and Turtle, then finally we camped out at Turret Island, totalling 18 kilometers. The first day was quite fun as there were strong winds in the channel that made 1-2 metre waves, however my brother who came along for the trip is not nearly as experienced of a kayaker as I am so the rest of the trip will revolve around his endurance and ability to survive in waves.

This is what our campsite looked like on Turret Island. Straight ahead is open ocean.

Each island is covered in the extremely dense flaura, with the ground covered in moss and ferns, and the treeline dominated by absolutely massive trees that none of my photos could put into perspective.

The islands are absolutely pristine, with gorgeous views and wildlife all over. The only blemish is the heavy fog that comes in during the night and does not always leave during the day.

Seals and salmon are found anywhere at random, and whales can be seen in the Loudon Channel or the open ocean. Unfortunately for us we could not go looking for whales because of our novice kayaking companion, but whales tend to be dull and smelly anyway.

Benson Island is a sacred island for the native people in the region, as they have supposedly lived there for 5,000 years. Now all that is left on the island are two wolves and a single statue of a native man surrounded by sea shells. We hiked across the island to demonstrate how much of a difference there was between the open sea and the tranquility of the islands, and it was night and day. Between the islands, swells come in long intervals, and are very short, as soon as you get to the open ocean waves become several meters high and come very rapidly, making it hazardous to swim in and obviously not for a novice kayaker. We explored the cliffs on the open side of the island and found a lot of asian junk, I even found an empty bottle of Pocari Sweat.

A photo from the safety of a channel to the open ocean, before us lies Japan.

Our diet throughout the trip was MRE military rations, cans of tuna, and meal replacement drinks. Each MRE was 1250 calories as a single meal, and they were filling. After eating one of those meals one felt like he would never have to eat again, probably because of how awful some of the food tasted.

In the meal, there is one hot dish, and the rest is cold. Each piece of the meal came in plastic brown vacuum sealed bags, and the "soldier" can use some other bag that reacts with water to generate heat and put one of his meals into it to have it warm. It usually took 20-30 minutes to warm up a meal properly, so the waiting for it after not having eaten for a long time made even the worst food taste delicious. It also helped that there were 1/8th ounce bottles of Tabasco to mask the taste.

There were even desserts included, cake or energy bars. If you got a meal with a cake in it, you were very happy. If you got an energy bar, you had to chew on hard packed sugar and carbs with the consistency of chalk. This was difficult as we had a limited amount of water to drink and thee bars made you terribly thirsty.

Me in the red kayak photographed by my dad, waiting for my brother to catch up.

Our next campsite was on Hand Island in order to make the last day trek as easy as possible, because the weather forecast predicted rain to come on the last days of our trip.

Because of how easy it was to access this island, there were many other people here as well. we saw the massive, loud, and obnoxious family that seems to plague every trip, but thankfully they left a few hours after we arrived. We also met a stereotypical Canadian environmental activist / feminist that was nice enough as long as you didn't bring up a touchy subject with her.

We managed to infuriate her with some of the conversation, she asked me what I was studying around the campfire and I said that I was going to take a break from school to perhaps work in the oil fields of northern Alberta, and she was livid. This is when we discovered that she was an environmental activist and she went on for many long minutes to describe how awful and miserable of a place it was there and that I should find other options.

To discover she was a feminist, my dad brought up a topic that he likes to talk about because it annoys him so much, which is female firefighters. I don't remember how many years ago this was, but the Canadian supreme court ruled that the firefighter training test needs to be changed to accommodate women because a woman failed the test by a margin of 15 seconds and that is discrimination. Hogwash says he, because if a building is really on fire, that 15 seconds is life or death, you can't lower your standards because of that.

This also made the woman quite angry, except this time she couldn't bring up any counterpoints of any real substance. She said things like "A woman can drive the truck or put the hose into the fire hydrant..." and various other jobs, but none of the arguments justified that a woman not fit enough to finish the original firefighters test was worthy to be a firefighter in the fire among'st the men who are fit enough to do it.

It is my opinion that if a woman wants to be a firefighter, she should step up to the ability of men.

Edit: To the same tests that men have to pass in order to be called firefighters.

The campsite on Hand Island.

The trip was a lot of fun, and by the end of it everyone was absolutely exhausted. Backs were sore, hands were blistered (for my brother), and skin was very badly sunburned.

I would recommend the trip to anyone wanting to try kayaking as it is quite easy so long as you stay in the safe areas, and it is extremely obvious when you are in an unsafe area so there can not be any confusion.

When you get back you can also find someone to buy salmon off of, which has to be the best tasting fish in the world. Nothing quite compares.

The Broken Islands

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