A Paddle to Nascall Bay

September 11, 2021 

After my birthday, on one particularly sunny and calm day, Jason and I decided to kayak over to Nascall Bay. The Nascall hot springs are privately owned by James Murdoch, and they are off limits to the public, however a beautiful glacier-fed river flows into the bay from Nascall Lake. We had been to Nascall Bay in Kiki back in 2019, and we were curious to go back with our kayaks to see if we could possibly get up the river and into the lake. It is a very short river and so there was the possibility that it would be navigable by kayak. When we were there in Kiki two years ago we could not venture up the river because the water was so full of silt that we had no idea about the depth and we did not want to risk hitting bottom with our outboard. 

We began the 6 nautical-mile paddle out of Eucott and further up the Dean Channel in the sunshine over beautifully calm water. As we arrived at Nascall Bay the wind had just started to pick up, and we were very aware that it would be against us on our paddle home. 

We paddled over the beautiful turquoise water of Nascall Bay and made our way up the river. It was plenty deep for our kayaks and we easily skimmed across the fast flowing current. It was quite pretty, but unfortunately we were there on a mid tide and so the water level was not in our favour for making it up to the lake. 

It is hard to say for sure if we would have made it on a high tide, but we definitely could not make it up there with the level it was at. We rode the current out of the bay and started our paddle home. 

The inflatable kayaks that we have are great, but they are impacted a lot more by the wind and waves than a standard ocean kayak. We beat our way back towards Eucott. Sometimes the wind would let up for a few minutes and we would get a break, but then it would pick right back up again and we struggled to make progress against it. 

The Dean channel is very influenced by current and we encountered one particularly bad section where the waves were large and steep due to the current flowing strongly against the wind. We had to read the coming waves and make sure that our kayaks hit them at the perfect angle. It was not a fun paddle home and we were exhausted when we made it back. 

On Monday, September 13th, the day before we had to be back at work, we pulled up our anchor and headed home.

Comments

  1. JanNovember 22, 2021 at 7:33 PM

    Whooosh! Not a fun paddle. But you made it. Take good care. Cheers

    ReplyDelete

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