2022/09 Great Bear Rainforest - Canoona |
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Tuesday - Canoona
Despite having been up since 4am I had trouble sleeping. My CPAP seemed to be fighting me. Perhaps its electronics were incompatible with the town’s generators. Sandie had leg pains during the night and woke up feeling dizzy. This was not a good start!
By breakfast we’d stabilized enough to go on the day’s trip. Breakfast was a sensible buffet except for the insanely strong sea-salt seasoned bacon. We also had to pack our lunches into some cute little containers, something like stainless steel bento boxes.
Our boat for the day was skippered by Krista and our two guides were Justin and Ryan. Krista and Justin are locals. Ryan is also a photographer, a very good one. We were going to Canoona, about 90 minutes away, but for the first hour we didn’t see much except for fog. The sky above us was a shade of blue so we had hopes that the fog would burn off.
The Canoona River flows from the high country of Princess Royal Island and empties into the 
Inside Passage so we’d be sharing the passage with cruise ships and with BC’s and Alaska’s ferries. They are a lot bigger than us so it would be nice if we could see them.
Eventually the fog thinned and we could see great cliffs interspersed with forested bluffs, with occasional streams and waterfalls, including this splendid example.
Prince Royal Island is one of the locations favoured by the white bears, so we had hopes of this excursion. The mouth of the Canoona River is packed with rocks, a seething mass of rapids. The salmon may be able to get up there but our boat couldn’t, so we were going to use the two zodiacs to get to shore.
Sandie didn’t want to risk getting in and out of the zodiacs because of the danger to last year’s broken leg. Nor did Rowena, a lady with a badly sprained ankle. 
They both stayed on the boat with Krista, a wise decision as crossing the rocks on the beach and climbing through the forest around the river were much more dangerous than using the zodiacs.
The route through the forest was not a constructed trail. In a wilderness zone 
that wouldn’t be allowed. The route involved rocks, deep mud holes, and slippery tree roots, but only about 15 minutes long, as they’d promised. This brought us to the “first viewing area”, a collection of uncomfortable downed tree trunks. We did, however, have a good view of the river at a point where two streams came together.
Rather than blunder through the forest looking for bears we were going sit silently and wait for the animals to come by. 
Keeping a group of eight people quiet is difficult but our bunch was pretty good. Our first visitor was a large black bear, who was methodically working its way back and forth across the river.
The black bear moved out of sight after a few minutes. There were a few small birds in the water, bending their knees. 
These were ouzels, aka American dippers, looking for salmon eggs. Then this regal looking great blue heron posed right in front of us.
We were relaxed with some of us pulling out our lunches when the spirit bear came
into view in midstream and there was a scrambling, some dropping of lunches, and grabbing of cameras.
The bear was actually more of a cream colour with a hint of pink around the face and nose. Justin said it was a female.
She stayed with us for a couple of minutes and then went 
out of sight. We waited for over an hour but she didn’t reappear.
Ryan had been looking further upstream and had caught a glimpse of her and suggested that we move up to a second viewing area. That was a bit more difficult to get to with some very large steps up and down.
The river above that point was a steep, very fast chute, difficult for salmon or bears, so it seemed like we had reached the right spot. Then the bear went out of sight back towards our prior spot.
We had a couple of hours of moving up and down the route, more walking and climbing than I’d done in years. The bear was popping out of undergrowth and we were all getting some good pictures but I told Justin that my legs would probably give out soon. He said we were going back down, I made the jump to a rock I’d already traversed a half dozen times but this time it slid off the mountain and I followed it down, tucking in and rolling. They said it looked quite spectacular but apart from being covered in mud I was undamaged. Getting the right way up was a bit difficult though.
On the way back down to the river one of the ladies sat in a mud wallow and then when trying to clean off in the river her boots filled up with water. We all made it back to the boat without any more excitement.
Sandie had seen a black bear at the mouth of the river, probably the same bear we had seen. The spirit bear had not made it that far however. Shortly after this Krista had 
received a call asking her to assist with a nearby oil spill. A big oil spill could totally destroy their business, so they take them very seriously.
The offending vessel was the Pacific Yellowfin, a charter boat. Its fuel tank had leaked into the bilges and the bilge pump had automatically pumped the oil into the ocean. By the time they arrived the clean-up crew was already spreading absorbent towels on the spill, so they didn’t actually do anything, but hung around in case they were needed.
The ferry to Prince Rupert passed by. This is the ferry service we used on our way to the Yukon in 
2004. It wasn’t the ship we traveled on though. We had been on the Queen of the North. In 2006 the ship was heading south at night and failed to make the turn to the east of Princess Royal Island towards Canoona. It collided with Gil Island and sank with the loss of two lives.
By dinner time everybody knew me as the old guy that fell off the mountain. What made it more newsworthy was that our group had also been first to meet a spirit bear. And not just a glimpse; we’d been in intermittent contact for a couple of hours.