Higgins Pass Camp - Found

Glenn Lewis and I had been searching for this camp for years.  We had a copy of Bill’s chart showing the location of the camp on an island less than a kilometer from the main campsite at the west end on Higgins Passage.  ‘We had pretty good beta on the location but the site was confusing. 

Glenn had talked to a power boater who had met Bill at Higgins Passage and visited his camp.  He described it as having no beach and set far enough back that it wasn’t visible from the water.  Further, he mentioned that in spite of the lack of a beach Bill had concocted some means of dealing with his kayak. 

From the carefully placed ink dot that Bill used to locate the camp on his chart it was hard to discern exactly what he was pointing at.  Glenn and I differed on where the camp would be and in 2017 I conducted an unsuccessful search that was cut short by the ebbing tide and an approaching weather system. 

In 2018 Glenn camped at Higgins Passage during a solo mission and searched about 600 meters of shoreline where it made sense that the camp would be based on the mark on the chart, the description of the man who described his visit with Bill and Glenn’s instincts on where a camp would be based on wind, weather and Bill’s choices.  His search yielded no sign of Billy.  Glenn has been to many of Bill’s camps in the past and knew how these camps disappeared in the forest so I was surprised that his search came up empty.

Camp II - Thistleton - Found

Camp II on Thistleton Island has eluded detection for over 13 years but was “found” in July 2018 by Glenn Lewis.  It’s probable that Glenn was the first visitor the camp had seen since Bill pulled down the tarp and moved three kilometers southeast to establish Camp III.  I don’t know when that move occurred but it was prior to 2003 as Camp III was fully in play that year.

Armed with Bill’s charts Keith Webb searched Thistleton in 2005.  No dice.  Glenn had been there a few times in past years, once with the specific intent of finding the camp.  Both Keith and Glenn struck out.  The nice beach at the northeastern end of the narrow passageway seemed to call their names as well as those of any other visitors the island entertained.  It was the obvious location with a friendly beach and was surely where the camp had existed but no camp was found. 

Glenn’s study of Bill’s charts overlaid with his personal coastal experiences, specific knowledge of some camp locations, descriptions of Bill’s fastidious detail including Colin Lake’s account of his eye for detail in “Breakfast with Kayak Bill” (https://3meterswell.blogspot.com/2017/11/breakfast-with-kayak-bill-by-colin-lake_24.html)  convinced him to take a closer look at where Bill marked his camps on his normally low-tech charts.  Bill had carefully marked the camp’s location on a section of shoreline that Glenn knew to be rocky and inhospitable and was ~120 meters from a friendly place to land so that’s where he would look.