Exceeding Expectations: Best of Gwaii Haanas with Moresby Explorers
I'm Carol Cram, novelist and arts travel writer, and founder of Art In Fiction, a curated database of 2500+ novels inspired by the arts. Artsy Traveler contains affiliate links for products and services I personally use and recommend. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Please read the Disclosure for more information.
A smoldering fire smokes gently, the aroma of burning wood pungent and comforting. I’m at Ḵ’uuna Llnagaay Skedans, watching a Watchman named Reg lift his drum and with a few gentle taps on the painted deerskin, begin to sing.
The cadence is slow, the emotion raw. He sings of the protest in the 1980s when the Haida nation came together with environmentalists to take a stand against logging on the islands of Gwaii Haanas.
I remember watching the protest on TV back when the area was called the Queen Charlotte Islands. The islands have since regained their Haida name of Haida Gwaii, which means Islands of the People.
I gaze out at an ocean as blue as sapphires. The sun-drenched day is a gift from weather gods that normally shroud the islands of Gwaii Haanas in grey mists and drenching rains. When I close my eyes to focus on the song, I feel a warm wind on my cheeks and sense the weight of thousands of years of history in the voice of the Watchman.
Reg finishes his song and describes his drum and the meaning of the symbols and animals painted on it. He’s a member of the frog clan through his mother who was born in the interior, and Haida through his father. He shows us the eyes painted around the edge of the drum and tells us they represent his ancestors, who are always with him.
This simple statement sticks with me as I think of my own recently-passed family members. Remembering they are always with me is a comfort.
In this post, I share my experience on a four-day tour of Gwaii Haanas with Moresby Explorers, which operates out of the town of Sandspit in Haida Gwaii, British Columbia.
Full Disclosure: Moresby Explorers generously hosted a portion of this trip in exchange for coverage on Artsy Traveler. The views expressed here are entirely my own.
Table of Contents
- What is Gwaii Haanas?
- A Four-Day Tour with Moresby Explorers
- 1. Meeting Our Guide and Getting Suited Up
- 2. Visiting Watchmen Sites
- 3. Enjoying a Digital Detox
- 4. Engaging with History and the Environment
- 5. Riding the Waves
- 6. Spotting Wildlife
- 7. Deepening Connections with New Friends
- 8. Staying at the Float House and Rose Harbour
- 9. Exploring Beaches and Forests
- 10. Feasting on Gourmet Food from Morning to Night
- Conclusion
- Getting There and Away
What is Gwaii Haanas?
Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve, National Marine Conservation Area Reserve, and Haida Heritage Site is a culturally rich and blissfully remote area that amply rewards the adventurous traveler attracted to history, culture, and nature. It is located at the southern end of the Haida Gwaii archipelago, off the north-west coast of British Columbia and south-west of the Alaskan Panhandle.
When logging in Gwaii Haanas ceased as a result of the stand Reg sang about, the waterways of Gwaii Haanas were protected and are now managed jointly by the Council of Haida Nations and Parks Canada.
Access is strictly controlled through permits. Unless you are an expert kayaker or boater, your best bet for exploring this incredible area is to sign up for a tour with Moresby Explorers.
The company offers one-day, two-day, and four-day tours, with the four-day tour the best option if you really want to get a sense of the spectacular beauty and rich culture of the area.
A Four-Day Tour with Moresby Explorers
In four full days and three nights, you’ll traverse the entire length of Gwaii Haanas, visit most, if not all, of the five Watchmen sites, and have plenty of time for viewing wildlife, connecting with the history and culture of the area, and relaxing.
When I set off on my four-day tour with Moresby Explorers, I had zero expectations about what I’d see and do beyond knowing that the scenery would be spectacular and I’d learn about Haida culture and history.
This post distills my four-day experience with Moresby Explorers into ten highlights. I’ve presented them in no particular order because ranking them by impact is impossible. The tour was exceptionally well organized and managed; I honestly can’t imagine how it could have been better.
1. Meeting Our Guide and Getting Suited Up
Our captain and guide for the four-day tour is Amelia, a dynamo with a thousand-watt smile and competence to spare.
She takes charge of ten guests: two from the Lower Mainland (myself included), two from Ontario, two from Canmore in Alberta, and four locals from Massett on Haida Gwaii’s Graham Island to the north. Ages range from mid-thirties to almost eighty.
The first order of business when we arrive at base camp is getting suited up for the hours we’ll spend on the Zodiac. We each get a sturdy pair of gum boots, a huge pair of waterproof overalls, and a floater jacket.
The day is warm and struggling into them is a challenge. Surely it can’t be that chilly out on the water.
Spoiler alert: it is. The key to staying warm is dressing in layers. While on the boat, seven layers swathe my torso, which I’m happy to report is sufficient.
Boarding the Zodiac
Boarding the Zodiac from the dock isn’t too difficult, but wedging myself into one of the narrow seats requires more flexibility than I have. I get my gumboot clad feet stuck at an impossible angle and my legs, cased in semi rigid rubber, refuse to lift and separate.
Over the course of the next four days, I improve.
After we’re all settled in the boat, Amelia provides us with a thorough safety briefing. She assures us the Zodiac is the sturdiest boat afloat and can withstand seas up to ten meters.
“Don’t worry,” she reassures us, “We never go out in seas higher than three meters.” She pauses. “Maybe four.”
Four meters? I still think in feet and that’s getting on for 14 feet, which is seriously high. Fortunately, four days of unusually calm waters and gentle winds allay any worries about heavy seas. Only once do we encounter driving rain and choppy seas, and Amelia handles it with consumate skill.
2. Visiting Watchmen Sites
For centuries, Haida villages designated Watchmen to look out to sea and warn villagers if danger approached. After the smallpox epidemic emptied villages in the 19th century, the Watchmen had nothing to guard.
In the 1980s, the Watchmen program was started and now employs over a dozen people at five sites to care for the remains of Haida villages and interact with up to twelve visitors at a time on a first-come, first-served basis.
The Council of the Haida Nation with financial support from Parks Canada now manage the five Watchmen sites in Gwaii Haanas.
The Watchmen share stories and songs and keep the tradition of caring for the villages alive after almost two hundred years of devastation and decline followed in recent years by renewal.
We visited four of the five Watchmen sites. At each, we learned something new and gained a progressively richer appreciation of Haida culture and history.
Ḵ’uuna Llnagaay Skedans
Evacuated by the turn of the century, the village had once been a thriving home to several hundred families. They built their homes facing the sea, and even today, remnants of the homes and poles are visible if you know how to look.
A highlight of the hour-long tour is seeing a potlatch pole with thirteen rings cut into it, signifying that the chief who owned it had held thirteen potlatches. We learn about the people who once lived here, their building practices, celebrations, and customs.
Over the summer months, the Watchmen meticulously care for the village site and the beach access. Rows of white clamshells line grass trails. We’re periodically reminded to stay within them so as not to risk damaging artifacts that remain.
Collectors in the 19th century stole the vast majority of Haida artifacts, including mortuary poles and potlatch poles. Apparently, they were quite happy to take what the Haida had made while destroying the people who made it. In recent years, concerted efforts are being made to bring these artifacts back from major museums, but it’s a slow process.
A pole should stay in place for eternity, eventually rotting and falling on its own to go back to the earth, taking with it the spirit of the place that made it. Removing these objects to exist in temperature-controlled museums far from their source negates their original purpose.
SG̱ang Gwaay Anthony Island
The most famous of the five Watchmen sites, SG̱ang Gwaay, is designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
With our weather continuing spectacular, we are fortunate to tour it on the second day.
Our guide is Gavin, an energetic and passionate young man who escorts us barefoot along forest paths and boardwalks to our first view of SG̱ang Gwaay. Grey, weathered memorial poles and totems lean at odd angles, facing the ocean. On some, traces of the original designs are still visible; on others, the carvings are rounded and unrecognizable.
Gavin walks us from pole to pole, patiently describing each and encouraging us to really look for details.
G̱andll K’in Gwaay.yaay Hotspring Island
On the afternoon of Day 3, we visit G̱andll K’in Gwaay.yaay, where several hot spring pools sit above the beach. Everyone changes into bathing suits, sinks gratefully into the warmth bubbling up from the rocks, and gazes out at yet another stunning view.
T’aanuu Llnagaay Tanu
Our tour of T’aanuu Llnagaay with Grace provides yet another perspective on Haida culture. Grace talks about the natural world, particularly the herbs, plants, and seafood that sustained the Haida for thousands of years.
After harvesting the abundant resources during the summer months, the Haida could retreat to their snug longhouses over the winter to create art.
3. Enjoying a Digital Detox
An unanticipated highlight of a tour to Gwaii Haanas is the total lack of cell service. For four days, I’m not able to check my email or scroll social media. While I admit the first few hours are challenging, I soon grow used to being with my own thoughts for long stretches, only extracting my phone every so often to snap yet another stunning photo.
These days, it’s rare to find places where cell service is so limited. Even while walking in the jungles of Thailand with elephants, I was able to check email.
But with no internet for four days, I have nothing to get between my thoughts and the landscape around me. I find myself staring for long periods of time at the water, my mind for once quiet, like a car put into neutral and allowed to stall.
My shoulders slowly descend from their usual place up by my ears as my busy mind stops its relentless pursuit of what’s next, what’s next.
4. Engaging with History and the Environment
Over the course of the four days, we learn that the story of Gwaii Haanas is one of boom and bust, of cruelty and renewal, and of despair and hope. It’s a story that has been played out for centuries in all corners of the world where colonization has taken its toll on indigenous people.
But there is hope, and that makes a visit to Gwaii Haanas especially meaningful.
And side by side with the history is the landscape.
In all weathers, it rewards. Waterways sparkle in the sun one moment and brood under grey skies the next. Snow-capped peaks rise into pearly white clouds above an ecosystem teeming with life. The wind caresses and then blasts. A gentle mist explodes into a torrential downpour.
I take dozens of pictures, particularly on the first two days when the weather is unseasonably spectacular. Clear, sunny days are not the norm in Gwaii Haanas.
5. Riding the Waves
A great deal of the four-day tour is spent on the Zodiac, skimming across the ocean.
Normally, swells and currents make navigation through the waterways of Gwaii Haanas treacherous, but the sea is uncharacteristically cooperative during the tour.
On Day 2, Pacific swells to the west of Gwaii Haanas have flattened so much we’re able to circumnavigate the southern tip of the archipelago at Cape St. James.
Even Amelia has never traversed this route; that’s how rarely the weather cooperates.
Fantastic rock formations shimmer under a deep blue sky. A humpback whale flips up its massive tail and we spot several puffins. A rocky island at the cape squirms with sea lions. We slow down to watch them writhe and slither, and then as we pass downwind, smell them.
As the marine world whizzes past during the hours we spend on the Zodiac, the sky, sea, and land merge into bands of subtle colour shifts, particularly when the mists rise.
6. Spotting Wildlife
We see whales and bears, seals and sea lions, eagles and puffins, sea urchins and starfish, along with many more birds and tidal critters. We also see deer.
Amelia explains during one of our walks through the moss-clogged rainforest that logging hasn’t been the only threat to the environment. Although several of the forests are old growth, they look nothing like they did pre-contact. The forest, while beautiful, is in fact dying.
The reason? Deer. Over a hundred years ago, settlers introduced deer on Haida Gwaii, with devastating consequences. Trees that weren’t clear-cut by the logging industry fell victim to the voracious appetites of Bambi and his cohorts.
In pre-colonial, pre-logging, pre-invasive species days, the forests of Gwaii Haanas were impenetrable. Trees that were thousands of years old rose above thick masses of salmonberry, salal, and ferns. Getting through without serious whacking was next to impossible.
Efforts are underway to combat the deer problem, but it’s a slow process that will likely take many decades.
7. Deepening Connections with New Friends
Spending four days on a Zodiac and wandering through the rainforest with nine strangers quickly becomes a bonding experience. Everyone on the tour is relaxed and easy-going. We are doubly lucky that two of the people from Massett have expertise in marine biology, Parks Canada, and the environment that they freely share.
I now know how two bald eagles get married.
Relaxing on smooth pebbled beaches while chatting quietly with new friends and enjoying yet another snack (more on the food in a moment) adds immeasurably to the experience.
Here we are getting off the Zodiac, a process that gets increasingly easier as the tour progresses.
8. Staying at the Float House and Rose Harbour
We spend the first and third nights at the float house in the north of Gwaii Haanas and the second night at Rose Harbour in the south. Both offer simple bunkhouses with comfy beds.
Float House
The Float House seems to hover just above the surface of the water, mill-pond flat in the early evening golden light of our first night. I can’t stop snapping pictures of the mountains across the water, their mirror images perfectly reflected below.
The two cooks welcome us into the spacious downstairs where padded benches line one side of the room and a table next to a kitchen is set for thirteen: the ten guests, plus Amelia and the two cooks.
After dinner, people lounge on the front porch to watch the sun set. A dolphin swims past and dozens of jellyfish glow just under the surface of the water. I snap a picture of a lions mane jellyfish, a new-to-me sea creature.
On Day 3, we arrive back at the float house in the pouring rain. We’re soon revived by a hot towel thoughtfully provided to warm our faces before enjoying yet another scrumptious dinner.
Rose Harbour
This place is so special I don’t want to describe it, preferring to leave you with the pleasure of discovering it for yourself should you take the four-day tour.
What I will say: there is an outhouse with a million-dollar view, a sheltered bay facing the sunset, a gorgeous dining area complete with a stained glass window, and the rusted vestiges of a whaling industry that didn’t end until the 1960s.
9. Exploring Beaches and Forests
We spend about half of the tour on the Zodiac and the other half exploring beaches and forests, and visiting the Watchmen sites.
On a forest walk at Rose Harbour, we pass moss-crusted stumps and stones, massive cedars and spruce, and fungi the size of dinner plates. After several minutes, we stop at a long, horizontal, moss-covered shape resting on the forest floor. At first it looks no different from any of the dozens of fallen trees around it.
But a closer look reveals the hands of humans. The mossy shape is a half-hollowed canoe.
Between 130 and 170 years ago, a group of Haida climbed this same path, found the tree, felled it, and began to hollow it out, only to abandon it. The theory is that the smallpox epidemic killed the carvers before they could finish.
On that same walk, we also get to watch Amelia serenade a slug.
10. Feasting on Gourmet Food from Morning to Night
I’ve been on guided small group tours before, but never one where the food is so tasty and plentiful. Every bite is delicious, with the variety and flavor a testament to the skill of the cooks at the Float House and Rose Harbour.
Think barbecued chicken and oven-roasted beets, fresh green salads and asparagus in lemon sauce, a Korean feast at Rose Harbour complete with seared ahi tuna and kale pancakes, salmon en croute with roasted cauliflower and sautéed peppers, and scrumptious desserts.
In addition to three dinners, we enjoy hearty breakfasts each morning along with picnic lunches: crunchy quinoa salad, fresh whole grain bread still warm from the oven, hummus, and on the last day, an extensive charcuterie. Oh, and a generous supply of cookies and muffins for snacks.
You won’t starve.
Conclusion
If you’re drawn to wild places with deep histories and don’t mind surrendering your phone, your schedule, and your assumptions about what a day will look like, a four-day tour into Gwaii Haanas with Moresby Explorers will exceed your expectations.
Rarely is going with the flow so rewarding.
Just make sure you book your tour well in advance. Capacity is limited.
Getting There and Away
I flew direct from Vancouver to Sandspit, where I stayed overnight at Seaport B & B, the property owned by Moresby Explorers (its office is just next door) before being picked up for the tour. At the end of the tour, I was dropped back at the Seaport for a final night before flying home.
The Seaport B & B offers comfortable accommodations in rooms with shared bathrooms. A scrumptious breakfast is served each morning, and the ocean is steps way.
Several of the other guests had rented cars and were setting off to explore more of Haida Gwaii after the tour. If you have the time, I recommend doing so. There’s a lot more to see on Graham Island, including the Haida Centre in Skidegate, a short ferry ride from Sandspit.
Book a tour with Moresby Explorers on their website.
For more about what to see and do on Haida Gwaii, check out Go Haida Gwaii. And when you visit Haida Gwai, make sure you sign the Haida Gwaii Pledge.
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Carol M. Cram is the author of five award-winning historical novels inspired by art and the women who shaped it, the creator of Artsy Traveler, an arts-focused travel blog, the founder of Art In Fiction, a curated database of 2,500+ novels inspired by the arts, and the host of The Art In Fiction Podcast. She also authored 60+ textbooks on computer applications and taught at Capilano University for over two decades. She lives with her husband, artist Gregg Simpson, on beautiful Bowen Island near Vancouver, BC.