Khutze Inlet to Butedale to Hawk Bay, Fin Island

We were up early again to catch a favorable current to Butedale. It was overcast and not very nice out. Bob flaked the anchor chain as I brought it up, which seems to help avoid the anchor chain jams we’d had to wrestle with earlier in the trip. Preventive medicine works wonders!

Our friends on Zucchini had told us it was worth stopping at Butedale, even though it is a falling down mess of old cannery ruins. It sounded interesting, and the caretaker was reputed to be friendly and inventive. So off we went. As we approached, you could see what used to be a thriving settlement and cannery. There is a lovely large waterfall, and then the main area with all the buildings. On first approach, it was tough to see where the right dock was, but it came clear when we saw the gangway to shore.

"Welcome" to Butedale

Butedale is a mixture of collapsed structures or soon to be collapsed structures

We were the only boat there, and as we were tying up to the docks which were sturdy but had no bull rails, just metal eye hooks. Cory the “new” caretaker came down to greet us. Cory is working as a caretaker with Lou, the longstanding Butedale caretaker, with hopes of taking over for Lou when we retires. Cory’s greeting party consisted of Burt the dog and Tiger the cat, a big orange male who was super friendly.

The dock is solid, despite your first impression. I've paid $1 a foot for a less sturdy tie

Cory took us on a great guided tour of Butedale – which was not only needed for the inside information about what we were looking at, but also to keep us safe. There is a lot of stuff that is falling down and not OSHA certified. “Enter at your own risk” signs made sense to me.

We saw the power plant, with the 2 turbines from 1939, and how they had it rigged to provide some electricity to the cookhouse where Cory and Lou live. We walked up to the “flume”, which Lou and a friend built several years ago when the old pipeline failed and water was needed to keep the power going. It is an engineering feat, that’s for sure. We then saw the two old houses that are rented out to the occasional kayaker or small boat captain, and the large warehouse that housed a makeshift bowling alley.

Cory leads the way into the power plant

The water from the lake arrives in the powerhouse and is controlled by this massive valve

All the force of the water now drives a small alternator

The handmade flume seems to spill more than it carries, but it works!

Butedale’s history was interesting, and it’s hard to believe that it was still running about 30-40 years ago. Time has certainly taken its toll. Lou and Cory do their best to hold back time, but they hope for a new owner (Butedale is for sale) to infuse the place with cash and dreams.

One of the many buildings whose fate is undeniable

We're standing at the end of the warehouse that abuts the shore. The open end is falling into the sea.

The makeshift bowling alley

“I know I put it here someplace in the warehouse”

Each day, a little more is reclaimed by Mother Nature

Cory ended the tour at the cookhouse. We met Lou, who was making and then enjoying his breakfast, and we saw lots of old pictures of Butedale before it started to decay. Apparently, when it was abandoned, the lights were left on, so it was a true ghost town. Cory said fishermen used to tie up and take showers because the boilers were left working as well – at least they worked for a while.

The cook house, home to Cory and Lou, keeps warm with 100 cords of wood a year

Lou is a character. He and Cory get their provisions from Kitimat, and they have a great story about losing the engine on Christmas Day on their way up Douglas Channel, and having to wait in 5’ seas for the Coast Guard auxiliary to rescue them, as the Coasties had to be roused from their Christmas plans to come to work!

Lou does some really cool carving art, and we bought a nice one of a killer whale. We enjoyed our time at Butedale, and think it’s definitely a worthwhile stop. Plus, it was good to stretch our legs, we were feeling a bit boat-bound!

Lou at work in his artists studio

Lou is very skilled in his craft

A photo of Butedale in its prime

Back in the boat, we headed north. I worked on blog updates, while Bob helmed. After about an hour or so and following a great lunch of meatloaf sandwiches, we traded spots. Bob took a nap while I enjoyed helm duties on an overcast but calm day. Even Wright Sound was peaceful and flat as we made our way to Hawk Bay.  At one point, I saw a pleasure boat go by… it was the same boat from last night’s anchorage. I was pleased to see it heading at full tilt boogie to a different destination from ours, white wake flying from the boat as it went by.

Just us and the grand Pacific Northwest

We knew Hawk Bay was just a place to sleep, and were not expecting much in the way of scenery. We were right. There was a bottom sampling barge in the bay, but it was otherwise empty and we dropped the hook and settled in about 5pm.

Dinner was curried chicken salad and Bob’s homemade drop biscuits, and an early night.

Khutze Inlet

Today was a planned lay day, and we wanted to kayak up the Khutze River as far as we could at high tide. Energized by coffee and bacon sandwiches, we headed out at 9:40am. We were out over two hours and had a great paddle. We went over the mudflats and into the river, which was fairly wide and full of current that made paddling feel a bit like we were in molasses instead of water.

This is why kayaking back home always seems to be something less majestic.

We saw some waterfalls, and seals, and lots of birds and waterfowl. No bear or bear prints in the mud that we could see, although you KNOW they were there somewhere. The valley is pretty and extensive. At one point, the river was almost blocked by fallen trees, but we got around those. Later, though, our path was blocked about a wide swath of boulders and rapids and shallow water.

Karen puts Bob in the lead when there is an obstruction to navigate. Am I a trusted skilled kayaker, or sacrificial pawn?

We turned around and enjoyed the push of the river current as we made our way back. We detoured over by the large waterfall, and were tracked by curious seals. I saw an inuschuck someone made on a large rock near the base of the waterfall. It was lovely out, and we enjoyed the paddle.

Some industrious individual built this inuschuck at the base of the waterfall

Before we got back to the boat, The Connor J came back into the anchorage and picked up his prawn pots. He made no wake. After we got back to the boat, it became colder and windier – the weather was changing again.

Prawn boat Connor J picks up his posts after a 24hr soak

This seal stayed close, but not too close. His was fascinated by us.

Karen poses in front of the waterfall

Bob gets his turn at the “postcard” spot

We expected to spend the evening alone, but about 8pm a boat came FLYING into the anchorage at full tilt boogie. To protect the skipper’s identity, I will only say that the boat’s name had to do with fly fishing and it was from a ritzy suburb in Illinois. Despite the implied fishing ability and high income land-dwelling, this fellow had no common courtesy when it came to entering an anchorage. He waked us so badly that we had worse yawing and rolling motion than anything Cape Caution or Queens Sound had served up. We rolled hard for quite a while, as his wake kept bouncing off the walls of the anchorage. I was not a happy camper and mumbled nasties under my breath.

No sooner had he anchored off the waterfall (guess he had a GPS location , because he did absolutely no soundings or anchor circles before dropping the anchor at warp speed), the group started to fish off the back of the boat. He later went into full reverse at anchor to drop a few pots off the back of the boat before killing the engines and letting the anchor chain pull the boat forward away from the pots and the line. His radar was going – and going – and kept going all night long. Nice neighbors.

We enjoyed pork tenderloin with onion balsamic glaze for dinner and watched “Body of Lies”, which was truly a forgettable movie despite Leo de Caprio and Russell Crowe in the lead roles. Tomorrow’s destination? Butedale, and beyond!

Horsefly Cove (Green Inlet) to Khutze Inlet

We had another early call, as the tides and currents said that an early departure would make the best travel to Khutze. Unfortunately, an early call after last night’s anchor watch was a bit difficult! Still, we decided to get up and go.

We retrieved the stern tie with no problems, and headed out Tolmie Channel and Graham Reach for Khutze. The only problem was that riding the favorable currents meant that we’d arrive at Khutze at high tide. Khutze is another anchorage with mud flats and silt from the Khutze River and the waterfall, so it meant that finding the elusive anchor spot would be more challenging than at low tide.

As we headed north, we saw the old cannery ruins in Swanson Bay, but no one showed up on AIS. As we neared the entrance to Khutze Inlet, a small fishing dinghy came tearing out and made a line for us. He wanted to know if we’d seen a white prawn boat in the vicinity. Bob had noticed it behind us by a few miles, and he shared that with the dinghy driver, who sped off to the south. As we entered Khutze, it started to clear some. We passed Green Spit anchorage, which to us seemed kind of ho-hum, unless you just needed a place right off the major pass to lay down the hook. We continued to the head, encountering dissipating fog.

Fog was giving way as we enter Khutze

The head of Khutze is lovely, with a very large green valley sandwiched between mountains. There is a very pretty waterfall on the right (as you face the head) and the Khutze River empties to the left. Finding the anchor spot was a challenge….it was quite deep, and then the mudflats came up sharply. Bob’s diligent plotting coupled with my adding marks to the electronic charts with depths helped us see the spot. We dropped 300’ in 100’ of water and set the hook well. Based on our calculations, we would never swing into water less than 40’ deep.

Bob took a short nap to fight off the ills of the previous night’s anchor watch, while I read all day.  It was cool out, but not windy, and there were lots of seals and gulls to watch, along with an occasional eagle. As the tide went out, the picture was so very different. You could clearly see the mudflats as well as the uncharted silt spits emanating from the Khutze River and also over by the waterfall. At anchor, we were often dive-bombed by swallows – three of them kept coming over to the boat and trying to fly in the windows. We had to close them to keep the darned things out. And we were once again visited by a hummingbird, though the closed windows also kept him from coming inside to say hello.

Anchored opposite this tall waterfall made for a pleasing sound all the while we were in Khutze

Later that afternoon, the white prawn boat (accompanied by the same dinghy we had seen that morning) came into the anchorage. Her name was The Connor J, from Nan., BC (Nanaimo?). She set a long string of prawn pots abeam us, and it was fun to watch the process.  That was probably the activity highlight of the day!

Dinner was salmon gorgonzola with fusilli and a few lemon cookies and two more extremely good episodes of The Good Wife, and then bed.  A peaceful night in a glorious spot.

Windy Bay to Horsefly Cove (Green Inlet)

As suspected, we awoke to light rain. It always seems to rain when I have to haul anchor! For the first time in a long time, we saw some targets on the AIS, tugs headed both north and south in Tolmie Channel. So there is boat traffic up here somewhere, hmm?

We had an uneventful trip through Hiekish Narrows, which was no big deal and easy to navigate.

Shortly afterwards, we turned into Green Inlet and headed in .6 miles to Horsefly Cove. The buzz on this anchorage was mixed, with some saying it was too deep and small to anchor comfortably without a stern tie. We decided to check it out for ourselves.

It’s a nice intimate spot, where you look back out at Green Inlet between a few islets. As we measured depths in our potential anchor spots and searched for the optimal place to drop the hook, we saw two gray wolves swim from one of the islets to the main body of land. We clearly surprised them – they froze when they saw us, and we watched each other for a long while. They eventually disappeared into the woods, never to reappear.

The view from Horsefly Cove

Finding that anchor spot was a challenge. It is deep, about 100 feet, and it’s not easy to back down enough to set the anchor without running into the shore. So we decided to stern tie, and thus the stern tie dance began. We actually set the anchor in about 70 feet, dropped 150’ of chain, and got close enough to do the stern tie without too many problems (and without having to leave the dinghy – no mountain goating for me this time). It was chilly and damp, and we were happy to get the boat secured. Not long after we were done, a sailing vessel exited the Inlet. We do not know where it had anchored, but it was clearly further down the inlet towards the rapids and lagoon.

I always wonder what forces placed this log here, standing at attention.

I wanted to dinghy down to see the rapids when they were flowing, despite the rain and wind, so I convinced Bob to take the excursion. It was a cold ride, and our eyes were definitely watering as we headed to the rapids. They were running hard, you could see all the boulders and from our perspective, it looked like a 2-3’ drop from the lagoon down to the inlet. These rapids are marked in the books as “unnavigable” – hard to say, but maybe you could portage the kayaks over the rocks off to the side and then paddle inside the lagoon? Too cold and wet to give it much thought.

The “entrance” to the lagoon is certainly imposing

On our way back, we stopped briefly at the small beach and creek across from Horsefly Cove, enjoying the sight of old pilings at low tide. We were happy to get back to the boat and warm up. As we were heading back to the boat, we did see one pleasure boat heading down the major channel outside of Green Inlet. It was the 2^nd pleasure boat we’d seen in days.

Aboard, we decided to watch “Black Swan”, which was well acted but definitely creepy. Bob made meatloaf and we enjoyed it with mashed potato casserole. The Sat TV worked again to bring us the  Comedy Channel, which is how we get our news. Apparently the Weiner scandal will NOT go away.

As we went to bed, we heard loud scraping noises, which had us jumping up to see what was going on . The shift in the wind and current had moved us so that the anchor chain scraped rocks on the bottom. All looked good, so we went to sleep about 11:00.

The anchor alarm sounded about 12:30 am. Frankly, it’s most often a GPS anomaly, so I let Bob handle it. When he did not come back to bed right away, and I saw flashlight glare outside the cabin window, it was clear that I needed to get up as well.

The anchor alarm was just an anomaly. But the current had changed, and there was a tremendous amount of pressure on our stern line, and we had swung quite far to starboard, putting us closer to shore than we liked. Pulling up some anchor chain wasn’t  helpful, as the stern tie was so tight. It took a lot of elbow grease to loosen that tie enough to let the boat swing to a better spot. About an hour later, the current died down and the boat went back to its preferred lie, but we were both uncertain about how the rest of the night would go. So Bob slept on the couch in the saloon with the anchor circle image on our computer angled so he could see it. I think I got back to sleep about 3am. Oh yes…and it was raining.

Culpepper Lagoon

I had planned for us to spend 2 nights in Culpepper Lagoon, and I was glad of it. The morning was sunny and calm, without those crazy winds of yesterday.  We were certainly slow to get going. I wanted to take the dinghy back to the narrows and go out again at low tide, to check out the head of Kynoch Inlet from the vantage point of the dinghy, and just tool around a bit. Brian had told us that he finds slack to be about an hour after Tom Bay, rather than 15-30 minutes before Bella Bella, which the guidebooks suggest. So we wanted to check out how close the Tom Bay calculations matched the actual conditions at the narrows.

Snow Ice still sits at the foot of this waterfall at the head of Kynoch Inlet. Even more amazing since it faces south.

The fact that we were so slow to get going was a bit of a problem, because by the time we got in the dinghy it was howling wind again and there were whitecaps in the Lagoon. It was going to be a wet ride up to the narrows! But, the narrows were nicely slack at about 1 hour after low tide at Tom Bay, so we now will use Brian’s method of calculating slack at Culpepper.

Karen capturing more memories during out dinghy ride

We exited the lagoon, tooled around the head of the inlet near the mudflats, and then headed over to Riot Creek (back inside the Lagoon) where an old cabin used to be located. There were no signs left of the cabin, but the creek was beautiful and the current was riotous. It hit the water of the lagoon and made some choppy waves, but as soon as we headed back to the boat, there was no more wind and chop. We passed by ‘seal rock’ and saw the seals basking in the sun again.

Riot Creek earned its name

Rock + Sun = Seal haul out

We agreed that we needed to go kayaking when the tide was nearing the high, so that we could go across the mudflats and up Lard Creek as far as possible. There was time to kill, so Bob worked on pictures while I sat upstairs and read. Apparently the hummingbird from yesterday came back into the boat through an open window, and Bob had to don his oven mitts and rescue it again, freeing it from captivity inside of Alaskan Dream. It must be attracted to the red kayaks.

We were anxious to kayak, so we left a bit early, say at mid-tide, rather than nearly high tide. We crossed the mudflats with no issue and soon were paddling up the creek with the stony bottom clearly visible in the clear water. We went a good ways up, and had to battle the creek’s current. We were finally blocked from proceeding further by rapids over a downed tree. We needed at least another foot of water to move ahead, and so we turned around.

Warm sun, clear river, snow capped mountains in the background. Pretty great!

The ride out was great, due to the favorable current at our backs. We saw bear prints in the muddy banks of the river, but none of the animals themselves. The creek banks were full of lavender fireweed, and we enjoyed some photo ops in the sun.

We think the name of the purple flowers in the background is lavender fireweed.

Paddling back to Alaskan Dream

It's a short sleeved day. A first for this trip!

As we headed back to the boat, a Sailboat appeared and the wind started to pick up. The sailboat was apparently single-handed by a man – he set his anchor twice, was satisfied the 2^nd time, dropped his kayak overboard and immediately went for a long paddle. The name of his boat was Imagine.

We had my favorite meal – Bob’s meatloaf – with drop biscuits and mashed sweet potatoes for dinner. We turned in early, because we had an early departure (6:30am) to catch high slack at the narrows to exit the lagoon.