Quadra Island July 19 - 25, 2026
Late evening view looking to the north from my campsite on my overnight kayak trip
July 19, 2026
Donna and I hiked to Newton Lake and then down to Small inlet and Wiatt Bay, a 8.5 mile RT hike. I had done it about 6 weeks ago before Donna arrived. It’s a beautiful hike but the first (and last) mile is pretty rocky rough terrain, and it’s pretty steep between Newton Lake and Small inlet. I was pretty beat by the end…I’d been awake since about 3 am…. A whale was lounging (sleeping?) right off of our place and I could hear him breathing, then he started tail slapping around 5 am (I’m not complaining, it’s magical).
A couple of days of low winds are projected (3), but it turned out to be 2, which just so happens to be the duration of my trip - a two day one night trip. Donna drove me to the boat ramp at the spit and I was paddling by around 10:30 am. I didn’t finish paddling that day until 8:30 pm, and a paddle of 27.5 miles. Probably the longest paddling day of my life. That wasn’t exactly the plan but A basically led to B, which led to C. I paddled up all the way to Surge Narrows, which when I got there was only flowing 3 knots on an ebb tide, so flowing to the northwest. I had toyed with going through, but slack was still a couple of hours away, and then I would be committed to staying that day as the next slack was late at night. Donna was pretty nervous about me going through (peak flows can reach 11 knots in the surge narrows), and it definitely is not something to be trifled with, but with good planning I’m confident now that I could make it through Surge Narrows and in to the Octopus Islands safely. But not this trip. I paddled around a few of the Settlers group of islands where there are strong currents due to their proximity to Surge Narrows, but other than some currents and turbulence I didn’t have any real problems there. I decided instead to push on and go through Whiterock Passage. I should have camped in the passage in an area that my map called an undeveloped campsite, but instead made the decision to push on the Rendevous Islands, the southermonst of which is a provincial park and has two campsites on it, one at each end. The one on the north end, where I thought I would camp was vacant but there really wasn’t a great landing spot, so I decided to push on the campsite at the southern end which I knew has a good landing, but when I got there it had a large kayaking group camped there. By now it was 7 pm and I’d been paddling 8.5 hours. I paddled further south all the way down to Whale Passage, scouting for a campsite along Read Island as I went (no dice). The campsite at whale passage also had a number of people camped, but I managed to make do with a tiny site for my tent on the back side of where everyone else was camped. By the time I lugged my gear up the hill to the site, and set up camp, it was after 9pm. I ate a peanut butter bagel, a few nuts and some berries and called it good.
The next morning I was on the water around 9:30 am, and made my way over towards Hill Island, and on the way saw two humpbacks. I followed them, and they ended up at Hill Island. I’ve never seen humpbacks cruise so close to land, literally only a few feet from shore. I got some photos and the followed them down to the south end of the island where at a small passage at the southern end of the island I got as close to a humpback as I’ve ever been. They rolled over and breathed as they moved across in front of me as I sat at the end of the gap no more than 75-100 feet away, maybe closer. It was an amazing experience! Since I had gone so incredibly far that first day I decided to just keep going south along Read Island and then across the channel to Quadra Island and down the shore to our place. 15 miles, and I admit I was absolutely beat when I got back. 42 miles in two days of paddling….not recommended, and a bit extreme even by my standards, especially considering I am 73 years old, but what an adventure - keep on exploring!
And unfortunately the photos are in Reverse order again.
Launch at end of Bold point road - steeper than it looks in photo - not recommended as a boat launch
So while I was having my whale encounter, back at the ranch, Donna was having an amazing Pacific White-sided Dolphin experience. A group of Pacific white sided dolphins hung around, frolicking, and I believe feeding on a school of fish for almost four hours, right in front of our place. Absolutely incredible. Donna took a couple of videos with her iPhone , including her best one which ran at a little over two minutes. These are all screen shots from that video.
July 23
July 24
Morning sunrise, early morning whale cruising by close, and neighbor Sandy over for dinner (no photos but a good time…we covered a lot of territory).
Morning sunrise in, of course reverse order.
Whale cruising by our place early in am
That morning I did our usual morning walk, and came upon Tim, a local Quadra loop resident, whom Donna has talked with a number of times…. An irascible right wing Canadian (yep, Canada has them too, but here they are the exception rather than the rule in the US). He had his dog on a leash, rather than off leash, and he told me just a few minutes away he had seen a wolf and her cub, that disappeared into the woods. I have always known there are wolves on the island but always thought they were on the northern less to not inhabited part of the island, but obviously they are in the southern part of the island too; after talking to a dog walker earlier in the trip, also on Fox Road who had rescued her dog, and said it had been attacked by a wolf a few years ago on the south part of Quadra, and then we had the earlier deer remains on the Kay Dubois trail. There are also mountain lions (cougars in the local parlance) on the island.
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