Highlights of Haida Gwaii - Part 1

     Kayaking around the islands near Queen Charlotte City.

The Haida Heritage Centre in Skidegate – A large and very nicely done museum focused on the Haida culture. We happened to arrive shortly before the tour of the totem poles and the young Haida girl who led the tour was an excellent guide. 

The newest totem pole is near completion and will be raised in celebration of the 20^th anniversary of the establishment of Gwaii Haanas, a park on Moresby Island. It was interesting to see one of the carvers at work. It takes three carvers about a year to do one pole. The other thing we found interesting is that the carving area is totally open and, as near as we could figure, has no security after hours. You would not see something like that in very many places!

Carving on the totem pole that is almost finished.

Two of six totem poles outside the Haida Heritage Centre.

Cape Fife Trail – The first part of the trail goes across inland from the west to east side of Naikoon Park. So much moss over fallen trees made it look like moss covered waterfalls. Beautiful!

We then hiked the beach to the northern tip of the park and back to where we started. The east side of the island in this area is uninhabited and we saw no one else, which was great! Unfortunately there is vehicle access on the west side so we saw a few trucks and ATV’s.

Although the entire length of the trail is only 35 km we stretched it out so that we could spend two nights camping on the beach. Note – if you’re doing this hike be aware there is no drinking water along the route despite a few streams being shown on the map. Luckily we took just enough to make do.

Waterfall-like moss

Funky design on the leaf

At the "tip" of the cape; simultaneous views of west and east beaches.

Walking on the beach was mostly pretty easy,
except when high tide forced us onto rocks that were like walking on marbles. 

Laying on the beach!

Exploring the beach from our campsite.