I'd been looking forward to this trip for a long while. You can't dive in the Vancouver area without hearing people talk about Port Hardy. I had all but given up going this season because I couldn't coordinate a group to go. But out of the blue my friend Alan Johnson emailed me saying “Want to go to Port Hardy on October 30?”. I couldn't believe my luck and jumped at the chance.
The outfit we stayed and dove with was Browning Pass Hideaway. They have a website here:
http://www.vancouverislanddive.com/
John seems to have been there forever, and has been running dive trips in the area for many years. It really was a great place, but make sure you like roughing it.
Here is a Google Map link to the location of the actual Hideaway. You can see it in the satellite images! It's a floating “water world” of buildings and docks, cobbled together out of a mind-boggling array of various bits and pieces.
First off, if you are planning on diving with John and the Hideaway, you need to understand a few things.
It's 2 hours away from any civilization (by boat, no roads).
Do not count on laundry facilities, 24 hour electricity, private rooms, your own bathroom, etc.
Do not count on customized meals, and if you have any kind of specialized diet talk to John first before you commit. Ideally, if “camp food” works for you, you'll be good to go.
If cold bothers you, make sure to bring a lot of layers!
Try to pack anything you can in waterproof containers or dry-bags. The boat ride out can be very wet, and some of your gear may need to go in an open top skiff.
Plan well! Bring anything you might need, as there is no going to any store if you forget something.
Bring good rain gear.
The drive up was quite long, about 6 hours total including the ferry trip over from Vancouver via Nanaimo. The scenery might have been very nice, but it rained for most of my trip. I had borrowed a small Mazda Miata, and while it was great fun to drive, it was a bit hard to fit in all my gear. Every spare nook in the car was taken up by something.
Arriving in Port Hardy, the meeting place was the Quarterdeck Inn. I found Alan and his friend Evan there, and we settled in to wait for John. The weather outside was quite miserable, with a steady driving rain. John arrived at about 12:45pm or so, and we started to coordinate loading the boat. This involved a lot of trekking back and forth between the parking lot and the boat. The dock ramps were very steep and slippery and it was quite the ordeal to get everything down there.
There were four other divers on the trip: Cheryl, Adrian, Mike, and Derek. Along with John, Ron the cook, me, Alan, and Evan that made for nine people on board. It was pretty cramped, especially since so much had to be jammed in the main boat cabin to keep it dry. There was even a spare toilet being transported!
The plan was to do one or two dives that day when we got in to the Hideaway, but that was not to be. We didn't get far on our first forray out because the weather past the sheltered bay was terrible, with large swells and wind. Towing a fully loaded skiff didn't help, either. I was really worrying about my gear and cylinders going overboard! John decided to abort the attempt and go back to the harbour to wait for the weather to calm down a bit. It wasn't a good start to the trip!
We relaxed in the Quarterdeck Inn, and got to know each other a bit while we dried out. Everyone was soaked from loading the boats. We were all getting resigned to the fact that we'd be stuck in Port Hardy for the night, when John came in and said “We're going!”. The weather had calmed, and we had a short window of opportunity so we hurried back to the boat and got underway for the second time. It was around 5 o'clock or so I think. It was a long ride to the Hideaway, and when we arrived it was dark. You really couldn't see much on the trip out, and even though the weather calmed, it was still pretty rough all the way.
Everything had to be started up and made ship-shape, so there was no way we'd be able to dive that night. We didn't get dinner until about 10pm, either. We were all starving. Ron did a pretty good job getting together a meal without the benefit of having been there before. It was his first time working with John at the Hideaway. John got the generator going, blankets and sheets distributed, rooms sorted, and all the bits and pieces that were required to run the pretty complicated operation that is a dive outfit. I think any regular person would go insane with such demands, but he seemed to thrive on it. Nothing appeared to phase him much. Probably the worst thing according to him was loosing/misplacing his coffee, which happened fairly frequently!
Alan, Evan and I were assigned to the “Trapper Cabin”. We were lucky to have a propane heater, and once it was tinkered with by John, proved to be fairly good at keeping us warm. The other camp building had a wood stove which was a pain to keep going. But it had a nice lounge area and bigger beds, so there was a trade-off. The Trapper Cabin had beds and that was about it. Still it was serviceable, if rustic. There would be a lot of jokes about the Trapper Cabin throughout the weekend, and it will forever live on in infamy with it's little quirks. Basically it was like summer camp all over again. Alan, Evan and I would spend a good deal of time laughing and playing practical jokes on each other.
We awoke to a fairly nice Halloween morning. The rain had let up, and some sun had come out. After breakfast, we headed out for the first dive of our trip. It was called Eagle Rock. There was a lot of kelp in the water around the small island where we'd be diving around. I'd never dove in big kelp before. The water was extremely clear, and what people were saying about the visibility at Port Hardy wasn't exaggerated. I joined Alan and Evan on this dive. The kelp forest was very impressive, and I rolled over on my back several times to look up through it to the surface. It was very nice. After the dive, Evan mentioned that I had paid attention well to his signals during the dive (he had led this one), so that was a nice compliment.
The next dive was a place called Rock of Life. Here, we came across a massive Puget Sound king crab under a big rock. It was at least three feet across, and was easily the biggest crab I've ever seen. The Rock of Life was aptly named, with a huge array of organisms living on and around it. Again there was a lot of huge bull kelp stretching upwards, while rays of sunshine reached downwards from the surface. It was extremely impressive. There were also a tonne of hooded nudibranchs living under the kelp leaves and swimming about in the water. I'd never seen nudibranchs like these before. When they were all together they looked like masses of fish eggs of some sort.
On the next dive, I split up from Alan and Evan since they were diving double cylinders and wanted to have a longer dive. I joined Adrian and Cheryl at a dive site called Hussar Point which was well known for the huge numbers of giant swimming nudibranchs. They were very cool! On the descent, I noticed something shining on the bottom. It looked like a flashlight! I realized that Adrian had dropped his light on the way down, so I retrieved it and gave it to him. Good thing he had turned it on first. We came across another pretty big Puget Sound king crab too. He was out in the open on the sandy bottom, but got a bit perturbed when we surrounded him gawking. At the end of the dive, we went through a rocky trench which had a tremendous current going through it. It sucked us along and through at great speed, and I thought it felt like the scene out of Star Wars, where Luke flew through the Death Star trench. It was a lot of fun! It was also so sunny that I had a bit of a sun-bathe on dock after getting back to the Hideaway.
After some dinner, we had a night dive at a site called North Wall. I buddied up with Derek on this dive, since Adrian and Cheryl decided to stay in, and Evan and Alan were taking photos. Mike was also taking a lot of photos, and was diving solo because he needed to go very slowly. North Wall was a very impressive wall dive. Unfortunately, I don't recall many of the details of this dive other than when we surfaced, the full moon was out and illuminating the shear rock wall stretching upwards crowned with trees. It was like something out of an adventure movie. Mission accomplished! Mike's camera strobes also made for an impressive underwater light show when viewed from the boat.
When we got back to the Hideaway after a fanbulous moonlit boat ride, we were greeted by a jack-o-lantern being held by Cheryl in a fuzzy Eyor costume. I couldn't believe she totted a costume out with her! We had a bunch of photo ops with everyone, and I grabbed a rusty hatchet as part of my impromptu crazed-diver costume. It was very fun. We all relaxed for the rest of the evening and had a few Halloween drinks.
After a bit of confusion with Daylight savings time, our first dive the next morning would turn out to be the high-light of the trip. Not for the dive itself, but for what we saw after. The site was called Snowfall, and again I buddied up with Derek. There was quite a bit of current on this dive between rocky channels on the bottom, and we had to fight a lot to move anywhere. There was also a lot of bull kelp, and this time I got caught up on a piece of it for a while. I was swimming and swimming and not going anywhere until I realized. Kelp is very strong! We surfaced, and John was motioning us to get over to the boat animatedly. When we got aboard, we saw why. There was a pod of 8-10 Orcas going by! There were at least two to three big adults, and five or six younger ones. They were resident Orcas, so they just ate fish and weren't dangerous. The rogue Orcas were the dangerous ones apparently. We spent a lot of time following the pod in the skiff marvelling at these magnificent animals. I knew there would be a chance of seeing something like this, but didn't think it would really happen! Some sea lions bobbed up and down near the shore keeping a close eye on the Orcas as they passed. The size of the adults was amazing, easily bigger than our skiff. Their dorsal fin was also much taller than I thought possible. In the end, the cloudy rainy cold weather forced us to stop watching and head back to the Hideaway. Alan was especially happy since Orcas were one of his favourite creatures.
Next was Seven Tree Island, with a lot more trees than the seven it originally had when it was named! This site had two spectacular walls in a rectangular shape. Derek and I ended up almost lapping the whole island since we cruised by the first two corners and I kept looking for another one. We would have made it around if we had not ran into some nasty current on the other side of the island.
After lunch, Hideaway Island was next. There, Derek and I discovered a really great giant pacific octopus mostly out in the open. He was orange and in full camouflage mode, with horny projections all over his skin, especially on his eyes. Derek tried to coax him to grab hold of his finger, but it would have nothing to do with that. Rather than upset him too much, we left him alone.
The last dive of the day was another night dive at North Wall. Here, Derek and I joined Alan on this dive, since Evan decided to stay in. The highlight of this dive was coming across an octopus. Well, part of one at least! I looked down and spotted a tentacle. When I got closer, I realized 'hey, where is the rest'! A lone, fresh, octopus tentacle was just sitting there, with a small crab gnawing on one end. The tentacle was very long, at least three feet, and there was no way such a small crab could have gotten it off. Alan got some great pictures of this 1/8th octopus and the lucky crab.
The next day was our last, so the plan was to get up really early and get in a morning dive, then another dive after breakfast. I joked that it was a “morning night dive” since it was so black out. We hit the famous Browning Wall for the first dive, and it didn't disappoint. It was just covered in all sorts of life. The highlight was a huge nudibranch that was kind of yellow and looked like it had cauliflower growing out of its head. There was also an endless school of perch-like fish gather just off the wall which looked great when you shone your light on them. I think Alan and Evan reported seeing a sea lion cruise by them briefly too. I wish I'd seen that!
We came full circle for the last dive of the trip: Eagle Rock. I ended up buddying up with Alan for a very relaxing and beautiful last dive. He got a lot of pictures, and I just poked around amongst the kelp forests and rocks. I don't recall seeing anything mind-popping, but it was just a nice last dive.
Returning to the Hideaway, we had a good lunch and packed up the remainder of our gear. The weather was pretty good, with a bit of sun every now and again. It was looking like it would be a very pleasant boat ride back to Port Hardy, in stark contrast to the rough ride coming in. And it was! There was a bit of rain, but it only made for two great rainbows to marvel at, along with the rugged beauty of the shoreline and islands. John told a few stories about some of the big storms of the past.
All in all, no one really wanted to leave, but all good things come to an end and we soon were going our separate ways. I do hope to be back in Port Hardy for more diving next season, though! It was a great trip.
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