Kayak Bill Camps

Originally published October 3, 2012

Billy Davidson

At one point or another every paddler who travels the BC coastal waters hears about Kayak Bill Davidson.  For me it came on August 4, 2005 in the Shearwater bar at the culmination of my first coastal kayaking trip with Dave Resler, Keith Blumhagen and Larry Longrie.   Having run out of food we had cut our trip short and paddled in from Quinoot Point.  We were feasting on pizza and beer when a dark haired, sunburnt man walked up to our table and sat down.  He smiled and introduced himself as Keith Webb.  We poured him a beer.

He had something to tell us that he simply had to get out.  He began recounting the trip that he had just completed following in the wake of Kayak Bill.  He told us how Bill had established camps at remote locations on the coast while living a semi-hunter/gatherer life style for 28 years and how he had just returned from visiting some of those camps.  We poured him another beer.  He talked for hours about Bill’s journals, charts, windscreens, fire stands and many camp sites.  Keith’s friend Brian Clerx showed up so we poured him a beer, too.   Brian lived nearby and talked about his friend, Bill Davidson.  He told us how Bill had spent a couple months each year painting in a cabin on his property in order to finance his next ten months of living off the grid.  He told us about the boardwalk and trail that Bill had built through the forest for his daughter and invited us to his home to view one Bill’s paintings. I was intrigued.

Fresh from his trip Keith submitted an article about Bill to Sea Kayaker Magazine where it was posted online.

Kayak Bill - A Requiem by Keith Webb

Over the next two years Keith and I stayed in touch and I learned more about Bill Davidson and the life he lived.  When Dave Resler and I returned to the coast in 2007 we had eight Kayak Bill camps marked on our route that would start in Klemtu and end at Shearwater.  On that trip we discovered that what Bill labeled as a “Bivi Camp” on his charts was not always a desirable campsite and contained no obvious infrastructure.  In fact, some the spots he marked as Camps took a vivid imagination, lots of determination to find and showed little if any signs of his passing.  Often there was nothing to see and in most cases there were much better, albeit, well known and obvious places to camp.  Many were just sites he used as stopovers on his way from one real camp to another.  Some camps we could not find at all.

Continued..........

Klemtu 2007

Originally Published 3/16/2008

When Dave and I started talking about a trip for 2007 we didn’t have approved time off from our jobs.

We didn’t have a route.

We didn’t have a plan, really.

We were inspired to get back to the coast and do something a little more ambitious than we had done before.

The 2005 trip introduced me to the area and convinced me that I had to return again and again and again until I could say that I had paddled the West Coast of Canada. Bumping into Keith Webb at the conclusion of that trip in the bar at Shearwater was amazing fortune as he introduced us to the legend of Kayak Bill and planted some seeds for this trip. His on-line article for Sea Kayaker Magazine fertilized those seeds. We walked into that bar motivated by pizza and beer and walked out inspired by the legend of a dead man.  If you are unfamiliar with Kayak Bill read Keith's excellent online article here: Kayak Bill - A Requiem

John Kimantas, a Canadian author and sea kayaker, had quietly released a book called "the Wild Coast" which covers kayaking the west coast of Vancouver Island. When I received the book for Christmas I hadn’t seen or heard of it before. What a surprise. Detailed routes, great photos, good natural history. Dave and I were inspired to start planning our next trip.

Work kept me close to home in 2006 so I wasn’t able to travel but Dave did go back to the Central Coast and spent a rainy week at Cultus Sound with Larry and Connie Longrie. During that time John Kimantas released the Wild Coast 2 which covers the coast from the north end of Vancouver Island to Prince Rupert. John’s descriptions of campsites that Dave and I had stayed at were spot-on and gave us confidence in using the Wild Coast 2 as a planning tool for the 2007 trip. We wanted to spend as much time as possible “outside” and finding information on the Outside Passage was not as easy as the Inside Passage. The Wild Coast 2 filled in lots of blanks.

Dave and I both wanted to explore the area between Banks Island and Milbanke Sound but recognized that we were challenged by logistics. We needed to try to fit our trip into a two week window if we were going to persuade a third person to join us. We felt that we needed a third partner to share this trip with and, as you know, finding the perfect adventure travel companion is tough. We wanted the safety and strength that a skilled and level-headed partner would provide.

I knew Greg Polkinghorn a bit from work and had paddled with him a few times. I knew that he was stronger than most paddlers had reason to be and had more experience on kayaking trips than I had. Smart guy, strong, no hidden agenda. I had shown him photos of the Bella Bella trip and knew that he was interested but he had lots of competing priorities. I threw it out there to see if he would consider it and to our delight Greg signed on!

Dave, the best qualified to design a trip plan assigned the task to me. Not sure why he did that but I shared my ideas with Keith Webb and John Kimantas. Keith was very generous and spent time on-line and on the phone candidly discussing his experiences and learnings chasing “Kayak Bill”. He also shared copies of Bill’s charts along with GPS coordinates of campsites that worked and didn’t work at spring tide levels. John Kimantas encouraged me where I wavered, confirmed the validity of some thoughts and suggested that I re-examine my plan where it didn’t pencil out for him. Eventually I submitted a plan to Dave who did the preliminary chart work and made a few suggestions. That plan, for the most part stuck and that was what we showed to Greg. Nothing extreme or crazy. Bigger crossings than I had done before. Reasonable exposure with bailouts. Three Kayak Bill campsites with the possibility of more. Maybe see a white bear. Ton’s of new territory. A bit of time in familiar haunts. Sounded like a great trip.

Bella Bella 2005

Originally published 8/6/2005

Seattle to Port Hardy

7/23,  Saturday,  Day 1

Clear

Traveling from Seattle to Bella Bella, British Columbia takes about 25 hours. Some of that time is spent waiting for ferries but you won’t get there much quicker than that.  Maybe you can take a later Tsawwassen ferry and wait in a longer line.  Your call.  I hate being late, though.  That’s my personal problem so 25 hours it is.

Dave and I left Shoreline at 2:30 AM on Saturday the 23rd of July.  We stopped briefly at the rest stop short of Arlington to meet up with Larry and Keith who we would be paddling with.  All three of them are veterans of numerous kayak trips, with Larry and Keith having visited this area at least four times in the past.  Dave had been to the region once.  This was my first overnight kayak trip, period.

Dave explained to me how each of us had particular job responsibilities to perform:

Keith enjoyed cooking and had done all of the meal planning so he had procured the food and would prepare the meals.

Larry, having a pyromaniacal bent, would build and nurture the fires.  Any food prep done over an open fire was also his responsibility.  

Dave’s job, he claimed, was to clean the fish that our meal plan dictated we provide by hook or by crook (more on that later).  

My job was to clean up after the meals.  I inherited that responsibility from Dave who considered cleaning fish a major step up.

Leaving the Arlington rest stop we caravanned to the international border where we were “greeted” by a singularly humorless Canadian border guard.  Think of a young Randy Newman with a short early-70's Caucasian Semi-Afro receiving a failing grade at UC and you have a visual of this guy in his glass booth.  We guessed that his demeanor was due to his disappointment in not being a part of the big drug bust on the BC-Bud-Smuggling-Tunnel under the border the week before.  http://www.historylink.org/File/7928

Picture him in a cold booth and uniform

Photo of young Newman, early 1970s - Getty Images

Or maybe he had been a part of it yet now found himself back in his cold, dark guard shack reviewing passports of kayaking reprobates.  A bitter pill to swallow.  I should mention that one of us had been denied entry into Canada twice for a “crime” that had since been de-criminalized.  I will say no more about it other than to say that it wasn’t me.  We didn’t know what the computer records told him and weren’t about to ask as he had the look of someone desperate to get even.  He didn’t keep us long, though, as he was clearly too depressed to concentrate or have a meaningful conversation so we were off for our rendezvous with the 5:15 AM Tsawwassen ferry to Nanaimo.

Kayak Bill - Foraging

Published 4/7/19

Disclaimer:

I Am far from an expert on the ins and outs of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle.  As interested as I am in the topic, I find that my distaste for all stages of food preparation makes it more likely that my hair will grow back than that I might become someone you should look to for guidance on what to eat in the wild.  I do know a little bit about Kayak Bill, though.

I have great admiration for individuals who have learned to live off of the land and sea and I hope to someday attain that knowledge.  For now, I will study the accounts of foragers, fellow paddlers and the rich history of our First Nations who host our visits to their territorial waters.  Perhaps the most celebrated BC Coastal paddler of our time who succeeded in living off the land was Billy (Kayak Bill) Davidson. 

Obviously, fish played a primary role in his diet for its nutritional value and because it was so easy to come by.  He also ate a lot of clams and mussels.  Mussels were a favorite for their size and flavor.  Large mussels provided “steaks” that were easy for him to prepare.  Whether he was ever sick from PSP is not known to me. 

Though there are many types of “vegetables” that grow on or near the shoreline he primarily ate Goose Tongue, Sea Asparagus, Wild Carrot (Queen Anne’s Lace) and Wild Pea of some sort.  The flowers and buds of the Wild Carrot were eaten and as far as the Wild Peas go, he stuck with new branches that were still curled up like a bud.  The peas, themselves, were not eaten.  While Goose Tongue and Sea Asparagus are easy to discern, both Wild Carrot and Wild Peas look very similar to poisonous plants that can be lethal.  I’ll pass on those two.

Bill would also harvest deer and seals.  Seals became more important to his diet as he moved further out from the mainland and his First Nation’s sources of Oolichan grease.  He had been utilizing Oolichan grease for dietary purposes but the Oolichan fish is rendered down to oil by the ton.  It’s a messy process that requires infrastructure and labor.  Not something that a solitary individual would provide but he found that oil rendered from Seal blubber replaced his need for Oolichan. 

Bill would choose a small-ish seal to shoot so that he could manage getting it back to camp.  He would skin it and then remove the blubber layer from the meat.  The blubber was cut into small cubes about 1” square.  Any smaller than that and it was too small and slippery to handle.  The cubes of blubber melted down to oil when put into a hot flying pan.  The oil was poured into containers for storage. 

The meat was cut up into pieces that would fit in his large pot and boiled until it fell off the bone.  It was removed from the pot and the oily water was thrown out and replaced with clean water.  The meat was squished up by hand into a hamburger-like texture, mixed with sea water and made into patties.  The patties were then smoke dried over the fire, placed into stacks and stored. 

To prepare them they were put into water overnight and allowed to rehydrate.  He would put some seal oil in a pan, add the seal burger and cook.  He claimed that the seal oil tasted like bacon grease and that the seal meat was indistinguishable from tender beef.  He felt that the “too-strong” flavor that kept folks from choosing to eat seals was mitigated by pouring off the initial water and boiling it again with fresh water. 

Next came the flour and rice.  These staples were brought from town.  Usually Shearwater.  The flour was used for making chapatis.  He mixed sea water with the flour and added oil for flavor.  The chapatis were made over the fire, dipped into oil and eaten.  Rice would be prepared with chunks of fish, bivalve, seal or “vegetable” added. 

When Bill traveled, he would carry a container of blubber oil and a stack of dried seal burgers.  The oil would last as long as bacon grease before turning rancid.  Goose Tongue and Sea Asparagus are everywhere so they could be quickly be gathered most anywhere that he camped. 

Aside from using the seal oil for food he used it on a rag to keep his knife and tools from rusting as well as oiling his .22 rifle.

Harvey Island Camp

March 7, 2020

I’ve been holding off talking about Bill’s most remote camp out in Hecate Strait for 15 years.  A friend first told me about it immediately after returning from his visit there in 2005, just 2 years after Bill left the camp for the last time.  About then there were spoilers published by Neil Frazer in Sea Kayaker Magazine (https://3meterswell.blogspot.com/2017/11/looking-for-kayak-bill-by-neil-frazer.html), John Kimantas in “the Wild Coast 2” and Ian Mcallister in “Following the Last Wild Wolves”  but they flew under the radar or maybe nobody cared.  Probably the latter. 

Shortly after Bill’s wake in 2004 my friend was given copies of Billy’s journals and charts by one of his childhood mates from the Wood’s Christian Home orphanage outside of Calgary where the two had spent their early years.  http://woodschristianhome.info/  Using this information, he undertook a solo mission to visit some of the camps marked on the charts and mentioned in the journals.  Those resources led him out into Hecate Strait ~11.5 NM west from Aristazabal Camp III to the Beyers-Conroy-Harvey-Sinnet Islands Ecological Reserve and the site of Bill’s most remote and comfortable camp on the coast.  It was a camp less reliant on tarps for protection from the elements.  Almost a shack rather than a shelter. 

My friend paddled west from Weeteeum Bay into a fogbank on a compass course of 270 degrees, located the islets by sound and arrived on a high tide which happened to be the right answer.  His account was published online by Sea Kayaker Magazine and is available here: https://3meterswell.blogspot.com/2017/12/kayak-bill-requiem.html

On a 270 course out of AIC III

Image by My Shearwater Bar Friend

The Harvey Islets Group is one of the two groups of four in the conservancy out in the middle of nowhere that allows reasonable, albeit conditional, landings.  From the water you wouldn’t consider it advisable as the Harvey camp lies in the center of a maze of islets and is completely invisible from the perimeter of the group.  The area surrounding Harvey is shallow and the anchorage is foul.  Boomers are the norm which caution against approach by watercraft of any type.  At low tide the drying is extensive which further complicates approach and discourages exploration. 

Kayak Bill Camps - Gosling Island

September 27, 2017

In 1991 Audrey Sutherland reported that she had run across Kayak Bill on her way north to Alaska.  He told her that he had wintered at Goose the previous Winter.  He told an acquaintance that he had built it to get away from “tourists”.  It was both a natural and unfortunate choice.  Natural in that Goose is very remote and requires a committed crossing that limited traffic and unfortunate in that he initially built it on a reserve near the north end of Duck Island.  The reserve marked the site that had once been a seasonal harvesting village and the Heiltsuk took exception to it.  After finding it destroyed twice he moved from Duck Island to Gosling Island and it was there that he would spend the last days of his life.

The access to the Goose Group filtered out most casual visitors by requiring a significant crossing of Queens Sound or a northern approach with a crossing of Golby Channel.  A typical crossing of Queens Sound is between 7 – 8 NM.  Crossing Golby from the McMullin Group sounds pedestrian at 2 NM but the water through Golby can move surprising fast during medium to large exchanges and the addition of a typical wind component can make for a challenging transit that some may look at and choose to forego.  Most of the traffic into Goose Anchorage consists of pleasure boaters passing through or locals from Bella Bella / Shearwater who motor out to camp and fish.  During the ‘90’s there just weren’t that many kayakers out there.

Side Bay 2 Tofino 2014

Image by Greg Polkinghorn

Paddling the west coast of Vancouver Island, in one trip or in many, can be complicated.

There are few hard surfaced roads that cross from the inside to the outside of the island.  Owing to the extensive logging that has been undertaken there are a number of gravel roads that provide access but their condition varies and they are subject to closures.  They can also take their toll on your vehicle. This seriously complicated the Point A to Point B route that we were going for.

The route is exposed and subject to changing weather.  Conditions can get very large and you have to pay attention and stay within your skill set.  Some stretches of the coastal route can be long, requiring extended periods of cockpit time and potentially difficult surf landings and launches.  Many of the places that make sense to land were First Nation village sites or fish camps hence Maa-nulth Treaty lands that require prior approval of the local band office prior to entering.  For the most part if there is a good beach it has First Nation’s historical significance and should be treated as such.

Enter my friend and Nanaimo area paddler Glenn Lewis.  He offered to ride with us from his house near Parksville up island to Port Alice and out 60-some miles of bad roads to Side Bay where he dropped us off and then delivered the vehicle to the Ucluelet Campground where we hoped to finish in 2-3 weeks.  His knowledge of the logging roads out of Port Alice proved invaluable as we made all the correct turns and arrived at Side Bay around 4:00PM.  Oh yes, his wife Joan then drove the 2 hours out to Ucluelet to pick up Glenn and bring him back home.  Amazing, right?  On the way up he provided weather and site-specific data that helped us solidify our route.