Continuing up the left side of Prince of Wales Reach 1.5 miles (2.4 km) brings you to the Brittain River and the start of Princess Royal Reach. Brittain River is the site of another deserted shíshálh (Sechelt) village, Sláy-ah-thlun that was famous for it’s dugout canoe makers. Logging has taken place in the area since the 1930’s and no trace of the village remains.
Princess Royal Reach continues to have incredible scenery with steep and unusual rock outcrops. We found two more sets of pictographs and missed one more. Ten miles (16 km) up the Reach you turn left around Patrick Point and enter Queen’s Reach.
We travelled another 3.4 miles (5.4 km) and anchored in front of an old homestead. Again weather was favourable and we had a beautiful afternoon and evening there. We kayaked a little further up the inlet and found an old logging camp with lots of discarded equipment left in the bush. Unfortunately this was not an uncommon practice – it was cheaper to just leave the equipment rather than haul it out.
We also found lots of erratic boulders along and under the waterline. Many of them were massive chunks of rock piled on top of each other descending into the depths. The trees were also amazing to see, growing right down to the tideline. These would be second growth timber as most of the accessible old growth trees in all the inlets had been logged out in earlier times.
kenneth mcmillan - photography 