A Great Day of Exploring

August 23rd (Sunday)

At 07:00 we walked over to the yacht club dock and met Dave on his boat, and headed out.  We planed our way out to the area of Barba Point where we tried some salmon fishing for a couple of hours, but we didn’t have any action.  At around 09:30 we headed up Dean Channel, spotting humpback whales along both shores.  We turned left and checked out the small inlet of Elcho Harbour.  There was a beautiful grassy area at the end where the river came out, and a sailboat was anchored close to the shore.  The harbour, like all of the inlets and channels in this area, is very deep; often it will be 100 feet or more until one can almost touch the shore.  This can make anchoring a challenge, but the sailboat had found a shallow enough area just out from the shoreline.  

We left the sailboat to the peace of their surroundings and headed back out, continuing up the Dean Channel.  We turned left once again at the entrance to Cascade Inlet and explored our way slowly up the straight 14 nautical mile long inlet.  

The shoreline reminded me of the scenery on Link Lake, or of the mountains around Eucott Bay, with towering rock faces, sheer cliffs, and cascading waterfalls. 

We made our way along from one waterfall to the next, and every bit further into the inlet that we went changed our perspective and opened up a whole new view of the steep valleys, crumbling rocks, and always different but always present waterfalls.  We had timed this trip perfectly because we had just had several days of very heavy rain, and today it was a high mix of sun and cloud. Once the morning cloud around the mountains had burned off we had a perfect view. 

 Each waterfall was unique and had its own way of being beautiful; some tumbled off the top of a cliff and fell through the air dissipating into a mist before landing on a shelf far below and re-accumulating before tumbling off once again.  Some fell spread out across a shelf and appeared as a beaded curtain of water, and larger ones roared down valleys. 

 

There was one waterfall that we found that was particularly unique because it tumbled down behind a rock wall and then instead of coming out around it, the water came out through the rock wall.  There was a hole in the rock and the waterfall came out through this hole.  

It was interesting because it was obvious by the location of the high-tide line on the rocks that at high tide one would have no idea about this unique waterfall.  The high-tide water would cover the hole and it would simply look like the waterfall disappeared behind the rock.  It was only at a much lower tide that one would be able to see this cool formation, as we did.  

Down at the end of Cascade Inlet there was a large green valley stretching back into the mountains, and a river ran out into the sea.  

We were amazed by how much sand there was and since the tide was rising we were able to bring Dave’s boat into shore and explore a bit.  

We found one particularly nice sand bar on which we had our picnic lunch.  It was a beautiful area.

On our way back we explored down the other side of Dean Channel.  We checked out the area of Fog Creek and also went up Jenny Inlet.  Back around the area of Rattenbury Point we once again tried our luck at salmon fishing and trolled for a bit before heading home, but once again we had no luck.  It was a great day of exploring!