“Paddle hard left,” Suresh’s voice fought to be heard through the foaming, crashing surf. “Nose in behind these rocks . . .”
The shouts from Alan and Tony on the shallow beach were lost in the rumble of surf-spun pebbles. Spray washed the salty tide marks off my spraydeck as we grounded the laden kayak, flinching at the sound of scraping fibreglass, relieved to be ashore and upright. We quickly popped our dripping spraydecks, as the landed crew dragged us further from the reaches of the North Pacific. With the final double kayak landed, nine colourful paddlers exploded onto the steep beach—some scouting for the flattest bivouac site, others rummaging for slings and harnesses.
As I sat awkwardly among the ocean-smoothed logs, my voice lost in the roar of the petrol stove, I began making hot drinks and dinner. I shouted to anyone, “Could someone pass me a water bag please?” Then, “And if anyone has a pan handy . . .”
Then I was silent, overwhelmed by a sense of helplessness as I watched the others like busy ants unpacking kayaks, stringing clothes on trees to dry, splashing the salt from their skin with fresh water, constructing bivouac sites—the jobs that needed doing were endless.
I considered who I could ask to pass me a dehydrated meal pack, carefully looking for someone who looked less busy, and trying to catch someone’s eye. The stark reality of having no wheelchair and nothing but my arms to drag myself around the rocky beach was glaring at me. The issue was not just lack of independence, but total dependence on the rest of the team. It felt uncomfortable. A dread rose in my chest.
“What if the circumstances I’ve chosen for the next three months are too much . . . not just for me, but for everyone? What if carrying heavy kayaks as well as Adi and me up and down beaches every evening causes someone damage? What if it all distracts from enjoying the wild beauty of the coastline we are all so excited about exploring?”
I glanced at Adi, and we caught each other’s expressions. His face spelled similar thoughts.
“Bit of a shock to the system this, hey?” I commented. He nodded agreement. We didn’t need to articulate it any further.
I decided the solution was to get super organised. I must know very clearly where every piece of my equipment was, which dry bag it was packed in, and where in the kayak it was stuffed. The next morning, I prepared a small dry bag to keep between my legs whilst paddling, with all my essentials for the day and warm clothes to keep me going for a few hours after landing—that way I figured I could be self sufficient at least for a while.
We awoke to white water. The surf was crashing into larger than expected boulders, revealed by the retreated tide. We decided it was too risky to try to launch in the surf. We sat around a smoky fire, Suresh popping anti-inflammatory pills, his back already shouting with pain after an awkward lift the evening before. It was a harsh reminder of the importance of being systematic and careful while lifting, as he contemplated how fit he was to get in a kayak that day.
I was worried. “Still 1,000 miles of harsh wilderness to go and we’re already struggling only a day from Vancouver!” By lunchtime the wind dropped and Suresh’s back warmed up.
We arrived in the haven of Smugglers Cove. The calm deep green water beckoned us to explore among its rocky islets and convoluted shore. Within minutes we’d lost each other. It was probably a combination of eagerness to find a good camp spot for the night, mingled with a desire for space and peace from our group of nine that scattered us in separate directions. Whatever, our teamwork was a shambles, and when we woke the next morning and discovered two kayaks missing (later found along the shore, breached on sharp rocks), we realised we needed to tighten up our act and have clear roles within the team. That night, we’d left the two kayaks unsecured and they’d floated out with the tide. We’d been lucky to find them.
Enjoying the warmth of the June sun on our bare skin, and the opportunity to dry our surf-wetted clothes out, we didn’t notice the tide creeping further away, exposing a shelf of gloriously slimy mud. It was a hard lesson for us; Adi and I watching as the others slipped and sunk knee deep in the sludge, precariously balancing the kayaks on lifting straps, white knuckles clinging tightly at either end. Finally it was my turn. I bummed from my grassy patch into the blue canvas seat, being careful not to sit on one of the four handles in each of its corners. In position, four of the team grabbed a handle each, and on the count of “3” lifted me up. We began staggering towards the mud, the two at the back tripping over the heels of the two at the front.
“Let’s do diamonds,” Pete called.
Doing diamond’ had quickly become the term for rotating the seat through 45 degrees, so that those carrying were staggered in a diamond shape and not tripping over one another. Like royalty in a sedan chair, it gave a much smoother ride, with less chance of my bottom grating on a barnacle-clad boulder. That morning though, there were no greasy boulders or barnacles, just deep mud!
“So a bit more foam here for lumbar support you think?” Suresh asked, pulling off threads of congealed fabric tape holding the chunks of foam and plastic together that constituted my postural support. The support had ‘wings’ made from an old windsurf harness, re-employed as lateral support that fastened together with a strap across my front.
“Yeah, my shoulders are slumped forward, giving me bad posture and a terrible back ache between my shoulder blades. A bit more lumbar support and a few centimetres off the height of the whole backrest might help.”
The previous day my backache had been piercing, and ripped upwards through my neck to the back of my head. I doubted my ability to continue with pain that searing, but I held a glimmer of hope in recognising that the pain was posture-related and therefore hopefully changeable. As soon as we stopped paddling and I could lie back, the pain instantly disappeared.
Suresh hacked into a chunk of foam pipe lagging and cut a strip the right length to fit across the lumbar area of the back support. With no use of my muscles below chest level, I was a “wobbling weeble” without some support to at least a few inches above my waist
I set out the next day with the modified postural support, and the relief glowed from me when at lunchtime, no back pain had appeared. I felt amazed that a few centimetres and a piece of pipe lagging could have such a profound effect on easing my pain!
Balance and posture were major considerations for Adi and me. I had chosen to paddle a double kayak, as I didn’t trust my ability to balance in a single kayak in the inevitable choppy seas. Adi, a semi-professional kayaker prior to his injury and now paralysed from the waist down, had better balance than I and felt confident to paddle single. Both of us had our own versions of posture support, and one of the aims of the trip was to research the optimum design of these and other bits of equipment useful to wilderness adventuring.
A star feature of these pieces of equipment was the ‘Field Toilet.’ Without use of our legs, it was impossible to hover over the tideline and from rocks in quite the same way as everyone else in the team. The prototype of the Field Toilet (basically a bottom-shaped plastic seat with a strategic hole in it, padded and mounted on four short legs) had to be crucially positioned each morning—preferably within the tideline for rapid breakdown of ‘processed’ porridge and dried vegetables. Once it was too close to the sea and the tide came in and sank Adi and the toilet into a swirl of sand and water, accompanied by Adi’s muffled expletives drowned out by the waves and rolling shingle.
A week on the water and our progress was good. We were only about six days paddle from Port Hardy at the northern tip of Vancouver Island. Dent Rapids, where the whole of the Sound is channelled through a rocky gap of only a few metres, hadn’t been as tricky as we’d anticipated. Careful reading of tide tables and good timing had seen us happily drifting through Dent in flat calm water—no sign of its infamous whirlpools and tortuous currents. Our drift brought us to the friendly grassy community of Big Bay, the drone of float planes reminding us of the lack of roads. How much we take for granted!
We received a warm welcome with fresh-from-the-oven chocolate muffins, heaven to our taste buds after even a week of relative culinary deprivation. The sun dried our skin and clothes into a salty, crusty state, making it all the more delicious to feel that washed away in hot showers. We felt satisfaction, comfort, and accomplishment.
This feeling was soon shattered.
Adi had discovered a small pressure sore on his backside, the result of a tiny pebble that he had found in his kayak seat that evening. He’d unknowingly sat on it all day. Depending on its depth, we knew it could have serious consequences for the trip ahead.
It was a stark reminder of the diligence demanded when one’s body is largely lacking in sensation. Even a rough trouser seat seam could be enough to damage the skin, lead to a pressure sore and jeopardise the adventure of a lifetime. And our journey from here would, after Vancouver Island, become more remote with no space for error or avoidable risk.
After some tough decisions, and a kind offer from Kerry the baker, Adi decided to take some time out and meet us a few days later. Kerry took Adi under her wings and gave him a home to recover in while the rest of us paddled on. It was sad saying goodbye, even temporarily, as we paddled out of the friendly haven of Big Bay and headed northwards towards the Johnstone Strait, renowned for its tormenting headwinds.
Our days fell into a routine, the rhythms dictated by nature. The early wakers on the team would entice the rest of us from our bivvi bags with drinks of hot chocolate and bowls of steaming porridge, the latter a lucky dip of chocolate chip nuggets or bland greyness. Half-asleep bodies would stumble among the log jams, gathering scattered equipment from nestles in the beaten tree trunks, stuffing kit into dry bags and generally mingling quiet morning moments, one of the rare opportunities to sense solitude in our team of nine, with kayak packing. Our launch was ruled by the time of high-tide, our exit from the water also ruled by the time of high-tide. We had learned. Trying to carry heavy-laden kayaks across the wet sand, mud and boulders of a low tide was neither fun nor worth the risks. Bound by the tidal rhythms, our days expanded into close to 12 hours of paddling, quickly followed by close to 12 hours of exhaustion and deep seaweed-surrounded slumber.
There were days when I felt fantastic, feeling the connection of my body, boat and blade, cutting through the water with ease, flowing—that ‘peak state’ I’ve read about in outdoor literature. Despite my lack of sensation or contact with the kayak via my hips, knees and feet, the subtle movements of the kayak were transferred to my shoulders and I could read the sea by listening to my upper body. There were other days when I ached, when the next headland seemed to take an eternity of wind-battered struggle to reach, when negotiating a safe landing and making camp just all felt like too much effort. I think we all felt that way. On the good days, the sun would shine brighter, the views would be more spectacular, the wind would be calmer, and a passing fisherman would give us a bundle of Coho salmon to cook on a crackling log fire. On the tough days, the sea would chop, the sky was blanket cloud, the seaweed was extra thick, and we would get soggy couscous with dried carrot yuk spice sauce.
Speed was an issue with nine paddlers. Naturally some had a higher cadence and a need for speed. Towards the back in our heavy double kayak, Suresh and I would watch the ‘Snakes’ disappear towards the horizon while the ‘Walruses’ at the back plodded along. At times it was difficult to communicate, and friction would rise between the Snakes and the Walruses, but always we found each other, camped together, and accepted our different ways, styles, and speeds.
With time and routine, we were becoming accustomed to each other’s ways and nuances. Pete and Alan were morning men, Pete and Suresh were evening men (Pete somehow managed to be both!). Fran and I enjoyed cooking. Tony liked drawing shapes in the sand with a stick. Alan and Susi liked to have the map. Mark liked to slaughter fish. Adi like to fix things. Alan liked to take photos. Pete liked to make fires. Suresh liked to look after everybody. Tony was very fast. We adapted to each other and were sensitive to each other’s needs.
“You OK?” Alan or Tony would ask me in a morning. “Anything to take down to the kayak?” I would prepare my carefully packed pile of colour-coded dry bags ready for one of them to jigsaw into my kayak hatch. Everyone developed an eye for what needed doing, and put themselves there—retrieving breakfast from the bear stash, packing food and stoves, maintaining the kayak health—whatever the task, someone was there. It took us a few weeks to navigate into this mutually supportive team state, and it wasn’t, of course, without its irritations and difficulties; as a team, though, we also reached some measure of a “peak state.” It was often too easy to be critical of our performance, of how many hours it had taken us to get on or off the water, but there were moments when I smiled inside, watching the way the team had adapted and the almost-slickness of the launch or land operation!
I was full of excitement at the prospect of being re-united with my wheelchair, which we’d asked a Vancouver friend to mail up the coast to Port Hardy. How fantastic it would be to enjoy a day or two of rest and independence, to wheel around and feel some freedom. I thought it would be a welcome break for the rest of the team too; everyone could just switch off for a while and not have to be on full alert.
Our biggest swell and sea yet took us into Port Hardy; my concentration was intense as the waves slopped around the kayak with no apparent pattern, wave reflections from the cliffs interfering with those coming in from the open Pacific. I dared not stop paddling for fear of losing my balance. If I paddled, I felt connected somehow, and able to focus through my fear of the ‘slop’! My gaze was ahead, my paddle strokes cautious, and occasionally my paddle found air where it expected water.
Port Hardy felt like a major achievement. Almost a third of the way into our journey and reunited with Adi, it was cause to celebrate. Suresh, Fran, and Mark headed to the ferry terminal where the wheelchairs would be waiting, while the rest of us pottered about at camp, dreaming of a feast that we would create after a trip to the supermarket.
Their worried faces appeared a little later. “There’s a wee problem. Sorry to tell you but your wheelchairs aren’t here. We need to phone Vancouver and try to track them down.” My heart fell. Posting the wheelchairs up the coast to various random ‘strangers’ had always felt like a plan full of potential to fail. I drowned in silent disappointment.
A few hours later and some effort from resourceful team members, the friendly character of a campsite owner, Richard, appeared with a stylish (?) wheelchair, sadly lacking in essential parts such as a footrest, but luckily having round wheels. It was in no fit state to carry me around the shopping centre center of Port Hardy, its wheels groaning and creaking for oil. My inability to manage its awkward anatomy was revealed as I fell out while transferring onto the toilet and crashed into piles of tins while food shopping.
The phone calls to Vancouver got things back on track wheel-wise.
The feast was great.
Feeling full, rested and mentally prepared for the next open crossing to ‘Cape Caution’ (named to intimidate sea kayakers), we paddled out of Wildwoods Campsite with Richard chasing after us with a pair of Mark’s smelly wetsuit socks that he had deliberately left behind, into a thick mist and steady rain.
“Hello!”
“Goodbye!”
“Hello!”
“Goodbye!”
Pete and Suresh shouted as they disappeared from each other’s sight, carried up and down on the crests and troughs of the giant Pacific swell. The crossing and Cape Caution gave us calm water but swell large enough to roll our stomachs. We felt the exposure and expanse of the Pacific, and were humbled by Richard’s cautionary tales of waves the size of houses. It was a peaceful, almost serene crossing, and a seed of relief grew within me as we passed safely around Cape Caution.
The rain was an atmospheric backdrop to the wildlife that appeared around us. A cheeky sea otter pinched Tony’s hatch cover and swam with it as a steering wheel before flopping onto Fran’s deck, grabbing her paddle, and rocking her kayak to alarming angles. Mark and Susi spied the first whale, spouting in the distance and in completely the wrong direction. With their superbly coordinated paddle strokes, they sped off towards the eastern mountains, chasing the spout. The rest of us continued and were rewarded with a fantastic tail flop from a Grey Whale less than 100 metres from the kayaks. It was awe inspiring. Little did we know what treats lay ahead in Alaskan summer waters.
Duncanby Landing was a collection of shore-rambling shacks with a café, fuel, a small store, and a few rooms available. It was the scene of much beer consumption, along with chips, burgers and in fact anything edible that didn’t involve porridge. It was also where Adi recognised his skin had deteriorated again, broken down by the previous days of damp conditions, sand and seawater a grim abrasive on the skin. It wasn’t safe for him to continue, and after some heartache all round, Adi decided to radio a British Columbia ferry. BC Ferries had kindly offered us support if at any point we needed it. Fran and Pete volunteered to stay and help, all logistics made more complicated by the lack of wheelchair, and we agreed to meet in Shearwater, four days paddle away.
It was strange and sad to see the team split again. The fierce British Columbia insects were disappointed. They had three less bodies to devour as they attacked in the dawn and dusk, leaving red roar lines of bites above our trouser waist lines and around our cuffs. When they munched, they were vicious, but luckily it wasn’t a daily event. It was rare for the conditions to be sufficiently damp and windless for them to gain superiority over the aggressive slaps and potions that we used to defend ourselves.
Shearwater. Sun shining on mirror calm water.
The purr of leisure boat engines.
A shop with lots of edible treats.
Happy holiday makers sailed along the British Columbia coast, exchanging stories over the tumble of washing machines in the laundrette. A makeshift campsite was adorned with dog debris; then came days of dilemma in dismally wet weather.
The holiday atmosphere of Shearwater was a stark contrast to Bella Bella, the First Nation’s non-touristy settlement across the water.
Our time in Shearwater started as a cleaning, eating, sorting festival. It soon changed into a collection of awkward difficult discussions about how to proceed, given that Adi was not yet fit to continue due to further deterioration of his backside wound. No-one wanted to miss the next two-week section to Prince Rupert, yet no one wanted Adi to sit two weeks out alone. Our values were unpacked, our styles of being, our hopes, our fears; some had given up jobs to be here, and everyone had invested a lot. How should we proceed, giving everyone the chance to paddle as much as possible?
Alan came up with a solution: he and Tony would wait with Adi while we paddled towards Prince Rupert. Then Adi would get a ferry alone to meet us there while Alan and Tony paddled super-fast to catch us. Meanwhile we would shop and re-stock. The only disadvantage we could see was that Tony and Alan wouldn’t get a rest and that if they were delayed for any reason, we may have to continue with only five people able to lift boats and bodies.
We decided to go for it despite those reservations.
The wet weather came from the south, with rain but great tail winds. The dry weather came from the north, with sun but fierce headwinds. For the next 10 days, we had superb tail winds and rain so heavy it bounced and reduced our vision to a hazy suggestion of landscape. We were swept along in our rhythm of tides, fires, log jam bivvis, salmon feasts and whale displays. Some days we were amazed at realising 70 kilometres of progress, tide, current, and waves just sweeping us northwards. We breathed the wilderness.
With rain again, we negotiated sand bars, ran aground a few times, and eventually arrived to a disappointingly urban scene. Not that there was anything wrong with Prince Rupert, but it just didn’t compare to the majesty of the ocean and the beauty of nature’s surrounding coastline.
Adi was waiting for us, and his skin seemed recovered. But we’d been quicker than expected, and after three days of waiting, frustration with urban life and the call of the seas beckoned us onwards to Alaska. We were careful to leave a trail of messages as to our whereabouts so that Alan and Tony could track us down.
“Welcome to Alaska,” the wide-smiled customs official boomed from the Ketchikan jetty.
“Do you need to check our kayaks, or what do we have to do for immigration?” I asked.
“Well, they look like nice kayaks to me. They’ll do just nicely in Alaska,” he replied with a smile.
And that was it! All our worries about crossing the border into the USA—all our effort of travelling to the American Embassy in London for special visas to allow us to enter by water had paid off—it just seemed too easy! Alaska welcomed us with a smiling sunshine and spectacular mountain scenes.
We worried about the bears. The stories and hype had built images in our minds of terrible bear encounters, our tents ravaged in the night by toothpaste-seeking, coffee-hungry brown and black bear. Anan Creek was our first opportunity to face our fears. We nervously paddled into a sheltered lagoon and a cringe-catalysing smell pervaded. One glance downwards into the dark emerald water revealed countless fish skeletons, the remains of salmon devoured by hungry bears.
“There, over there! A black bear!” someone “shouted” in a loud whisper. We watched with a combination of curiosity and caution as the bear paced strongly along the shore. The next day we decided to follow the path to the ‘bear observatory’ platform, somehow believing that because it was an established bear watching spot that it was also safe. Adi and I got piggy-backs along the path from the others. Resting on a wooden step, Mark and Suresh’s faces bleached of color and their jaws dropped open. I turned my head to see a giant black bear striding across the path just a few metres ahead of us. It turned to inspect us, looked rather bored by our frightened stares, and continued on its fish-searching route to the creek.
There followed a spectacular performance of grizzlies working their way upstream, scooping unlucky salmon from the writhing silver water, blood spraying, black cubs cowering in trees, black mothers protecting them from the nearby grizzlies. It was an incredible display of nature’s harsh, raw beauty.
For the last few weeks, I felt literally to have landed in heaven. The mountains and their tooth-like ridges, incisor peaks, sheer rock faces, and icy edges were a mesmerizing backdrop to the turquoise and deep blue water, broken only by whale fins. There were resounding echoes of whale tails slapping down on the water as they dove deeper, huge flocks of geese squawking in spectacular formations, sea-lions grunting, otters playing and sea kayakers laughing. We met an iceberg and toasted Alaska with Bailey’s on iceberg ice.
Hoods up and gloves on, we journeyed silently, cold waves breaking over our kayaks and low clouds concealing the glacial peaks. Our sea odyssey was almost over, and the thought of leaving the beauty and adventure behind and returning to the busy concrete world wasn’t very enticing. Too weary to feel elated, we paddled in near-darkness the final few kilometres to Juneau. The rain had set in and discouraged us from making a final camp, the twinkling lights of cruise ships and downtown Juneau beckoning us to push our paddles to the end. We paddled apart yet together, silently immersed in our individual thoughts, painting the 63 days of journeying and memories into our own pictures.
“A journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step.”
Well, in this case, a single paddle stroke. It was hard to stop.
The expedition was organized through Interventure, a registered Scottish charity (formed by Karen Darke with Sir Ranulph Fiennes as patron), to provide equipment and opportunities for disabled people to participate in sport and access the outdoors. Most Interventure activities are based in Scotland. For more information about Interventure and the expedition, or to volunteer or support the organization, see www.interventure.org.uk.
Specialised equipment was designed and/or provided by Equal Adventure Developments, www.equaladventuredevelopments.co.uk .
Thank you to the Royal Geographical Society – Institute of British Geographers, the Neville Schulman Challenge Award, OPS Group Ltd, Exxon Mobil, and the Southern Trust as our main financial sponsors. Thanks also to all our other equipment sponsors and supporters.
