INTRODUCTION

A good day is defined not by what happens to you,
but by what you do to it.
—R. H. M.

Straits of Georgia, April 1973, Alaska State Ferry USS Malaspina: My new Ford F-100 pickup and I had been commandeered to, literally, ferry all the gear and food to Alaska for a Mount McKinley attempt. Of course I agreed, volunteering to drive while the rest of the team flew to Anchorage. Nonetheless, I wasn’t looking forward to driving 4,000 miles, much of it along the still unpaved Alaska-Canada (Al-Can) Highway, mud-bogged and potholed during the spring melt-off. That’s when I found out about the Alaska Marine Highway: an intricate system of long-haul ferries that penetrates where no road has dared.

Making the ferry arrangements and reservations had been cake: call up, show up, and we were on our way. Back then, demand didn’t seem to exceed capacity and prices were downright cheap. The route was shorter, too: only three days from Seattle to Haines. The ferry trip forced a much-needed respite from the hectic planning and cross-country driving. And what a revelation those three days turned out to be! I had never been on a ship before, and never been to Canada or any northern latitudes. All my tensions and stresses drained away. The majesty of the Inside Passage, for thus had the improbable easement been knighted, flooded my consciousness. I was overwhelmed.

Nothing quite focuses the mind like a serious climb. It is a time to reflect on the undertaking, as well as one’s commitment, focus, and balance. At the time, the proportion of failed attempts, and even fatalities, was quite high. Was I really ready for a McKinley attempt? It was a time to take stock of life and what I was doing with it, and question whether I’d change anything if I knew only a short time was left me. In such a frame of mind, it was inevitable: I was seduced. The Inside Passage (I didn’t even know it had a name) infected me like a cunning succubus.

The previous winter, 14 of us, mostly friends and students from Prescott College in Arizona, had attempted to kayak the inside coast of Baja California. Sea kayaking, to us, did not exist then; we were inventing it—or so we thought. Our boats were Klepper doubles, skin-on-frame collapsibles with sail rigs, shipped from New York. We’d been using them on the local rivers and the lower portion of the Grand Canyon and had been smitten by their simplicity and waterworthiness. Roy Smith, the college’s Outdoor Action Program director, had come up with the idea (it was a whole new spin on phys ed). He did not have a shortage of takers.

We didn’t know what we were in for. The first day out of San Felipe, stunningly calm with a mother-of-pearl sea and sky, rendered all of 10 miles. We were exhausted—river currents had spoiled us. Huddled around the campfire, dispirited, with charts and pencils we worked out the math: 600 miles @ 10 miles/day = 60 days. We had planned on three weeks. Despair gripped the group. The trip was categorically impossible. Roy, a seasoned mountaineer and survival instructor for the British Army, gave us a pep talk, but there was no way to spin 10 miles today into 30 for every day thereafter. Yet, with dogged determination, our mileage slowly increased in spite of downtime due to windstorms. Our spirits were further steeled by the futility of an expedition of three from Wyoming who were attempting the same trip in one double Folbot. While two paddled, one backpacked along the shore. Talk about one man’s genius being another’s folly! They didn’t last long. At least most of us made it to Santa Rosalia, about two-thirds of the way down the coast. Another four persevered to Loreto. Two of us made it to La Paz, by which time we were ticking off 45 miles per day. But at what price! We were paddling from 7 AM to 7 PM and arrived at La Paz harbor burnt, rickety, and with a boat whose skin decomposed as we took it apart. At least we’d learned the difference between the possible and the improbable.

Leaning over the guardrail of the Malaspina, I wondered what it would take to kayak the Inside Passage. Had it been done? My God, it was over 1,200 miles! I recalled the silent vow in La Paz never to paddle in the sea again. I had meant it, and my thoughts now were strictly speculative.

Sea kayaking (or canoeing, as the Brits call it) was the Inuit, Aleut, and Northwest Coast Native Americans’ adaptation to a seashore environment. It was so effective (and they so adept) that whale and walrus were regularly hunted from these pilot fish–like craft. After the Russian conquest of Alaska, sea otter hunting expeditions ranged as far as Baja California, over 2,000 miles south of New Archangel (present-day Sitka), the capital of the colony. In fact, following Mexican independence in 1821 and the relaxation of trade barriers, entrepreneurs developed a salt rendering plant on Carmen Island, opposite Loreto, halfway up the Sea of Cortez, to supply the Russians with a pelt preservative.

During the Russian imperial administration, in the winter of 1852–53, three indentured servants, sick of the weather, Tlingit attacks, and the ham-handed policies of Governor Michael Tebenkov, went so far as to steal a native canoe with hopes of reaching the United States. Over the course of many tribulations and with only a hand-drawn map, they paddled to Astoria, Oregon, and freedom. But in a context other than subsistence or survival, sea kayaking, as a sport, would have to wait until the prosperity of Victorian Britain.

In 1865 John MacGregor designed and built a 15-foot-long, 28-inch-beam, 9-inch-deep sea kayak that drew 3 inches of water and weighed 80 pounds. He took his newly christened Rob Roy on a variety of “jaunts” (his term) throughout Europe and the Middle East, always later publishing his exploits in best-selling books. Sea kayaking became the rage in England. About 40 years later, Fred Fenger set out on what was probably the first great long-range sea kayaking adventure. In 1911 he left Grenada bound for the Virgin Islands in his homemade Yakaboo.

The Great Depression fathered a renaissance, out of circumstantial necessity, in human-powered conveyances. With little thought or credit to those who had gone before, some people sought escape or opportunity in setting out simply and, from today’s perspective, with minimal planning in a paddle-powered boat, sometimes with a destination in mind, sometimes with only a direction. On October 9, 1933, Ginger and Dana Lamb embarked from San Diego in a homemade kayak, headed for Panama. As they recount in their fascinating 1938 book, Enchanted Vagabonds:

We had dreamt about this day. Ginger and I had talked about adventuring ever since we were kids together. The depression-ridden world was sunk in a morass of its own making. Like thousands of young men and women, we had come to maturity in such a world—and we were tired of it. This jaunt off to the wilds was not the result of a sudden impulse, nor was it conceived as a stunt. To both of us a life of routine was distasteful, and we had always planned to avoid it.

Their boat, built in a garage, was “a mongrel boat, a sort of cross between an Eskimo kayak, a surfboat, and a sailboat with a canoe.” They christened it Vagabunda. What little money they had they planned to supplement with gold panning, odd jobs, and hunting. It took them three years, to the day, to reach Panama, and they returned home richer than when they had left.

That same year, 1933, Jack Calvin, his wife Sasha, and their puppy Kayo paddled and sailed their 17-foot canoe, Nakwasina, from Tacoma to Juneau. They took 53 days, sometimes paddling at night. Along the way they were often offered rides, which they inevitably declined. However, opportunities to sleep in cabins were always accepted. In Millbanke Sound a native fisherman gave them an unexpected reception, “Indian go ahead, get gas boat. White man go backward, get canoe. Haw, haw!”

In 1936, four Boy Scouts from California—Ken Wise, Gene Zabriskie, Wilfred Cash, and Phil Fallis—set out from Seattle in two canoes, without tents or stoves, headed for Alaska. In Cruise of the Blue Flujin, Wise minimizes their travails, always finding humor in adversity. It is difficult to discern whether his nonchalance reflected their wealth of experience, was a cover for their poverty, or was simply a literary conceit popular during the Depression. The Scouts had no qualms about accepting lift offers and took advantage of every windfall or setback with equal enthusiasm. At Skagway, following in the footsteps of the 1898 Klondike prospectors, Wise and Zabriskie packed their kit over Chilkoot Pass and paddled down the Yukon River to Fairbanks, by which time encroaching winter overtook them. Having had their fill of the trip, they hitchhiked back to Los Angeles.

The next year, 1937, 22-year-old Betty Lowman set out from Anacortes, Washington, solo, in a native-modeled, homemade canoe. She was headed for McKenzie Inlet, just north of Ketchikan, to surprise her fisherman father. She too accepted rides, but, as time passed—and the rhythm of her trip bore down into her soul—more and more reluctantly. The experience was life-changing: so much so that in 1965 she and her husband, Neil Carey, pulled up stakes and moved to the Queen Charlotte Islands.

Not long after I’d been contemplating the magnitude of kayaking the Inside Passage from the deck of the Malaspina, Ed Gillet, a quiet but very intense San Diegan with a custom-designed Seda kayak (the company had just started laying up boats in his neighborhood), embarked from Skagway for Seattle—solo. He didn’t intend to set a speed record. But, without company and with nearly 20 hours of daylight—not to mention his obsessive target fixation—Gillet ended up paddling every day for 16 hours at marathon pace. He reached Seattle in a month. It was to be the beginning of a lifelong sea kayaking odyssey that, so far, has resulted in a phenomenal solo paddle from California to Hawaii.

Only a cynic would assert that familiarity breeds contempt; in truth, familiarity is the foundation upon which greater feats are essayed. Arguably—but without diminishing previous exploits—the Inside Passage is becoming a much more familiar paddling objective. In 2002, New Zealand brothers Garth and Kevin Irwin set out not only to paddle the Inside Passage but also the Outside Passage. They departed Victoria, BC, on March 11 bound for Glacier Bay, Alaska. On their return south they braved the swells of the open Pacific to follow the rugged and spectacular Outer Coast, returning to Victoria on October 21.

In 2017, Karl Kruger became the first stand-up paddleboard paddler to successfully navigate from Port Townsend, Washington, to Ketchikan, Alaska. Though not the entire Inside Passage, it was nonetheless a distance of 750 miles.

In the intervening years, though I had, in my mind, unfairly relegated sea kayaking to the realm of “old duffer” sports (along with golf and bowling—something I might pursue in my autumn years), the Inside Passage had bewitched me and wouldn’t let go. Meanwhile, kayaking the Inside Passage gained in popularity. Seattle, Vancouver, and Alaska boaters explored, popularized, and commercially developed many sections of the inland waterway. Still, paddling the entire length of the archipelago was expedition-caliber kayaking.

Every journey is a compromise of conflicting objectives. Ought speed and endurance be the focus, a la Gillet, for the sheer joy of pushing oneself to unknown limits, or did I want to simmer in the bouillabaisse of the Northwest Coast, absorbing the flavors of the culture, history, and environment? Since paddling alone was out of the question, what would be the objectives of my prospective companions? I’d discovered, after many years of paddling, that 15 miles per day, average (with some big days of 30 or more miles, and some days off for weather, sight-seeing, and unforeseen circumstances), was the pace that most appealed to me. At that rate, an Inside Passage expedition would take more than 70 days. Could we accommodate this schedule with our work commitments? Should we go Spartan—light and fast is not only appealing, it can also be a safety edge—or would we be a tad more Dionysian, with some creature comforts, which carry home wherever one finds oneself.

My wife, Tina, is self-employed. The self-employed tend to have slave drivers for bosses—it’s part of the territory. My work schedule at the local community college was extremely accommodating; I could leave for three months. After much discussion, research, and agonizing, we realized that we could structure the trip almost any way we desired (sometimes more of a complication than a simplification). Additionally, there were some prospective coexpeditionists who were interested in joining us for different sections of the trip but couldn’t take the time for the entire Passage. It slowly emerged that our best bet would be to break up the trip into discreet sections, each paddled during portions of the summer for succeeding years during optimal weather and work windows. Upon reflection, it seemed somewhat arrogant to contain such a demanding and magnificent undertaking into a package of our own design, yet the piecemeal approach heartened us by scaling the venture within our reach. And there was precedent for this approach. None other than George Vancouver, pioneer explorer and mapper of the archipelago, resorted to a seasonal approach. He parsed the Passage into three discreet sections, charted during benign weather, and wintered in Hawaii between sections. The Inside Passage thus became a series of “Inside Jaunts.”

In late June of 1996 Tina and I embarked from Boston Harbor in single kayaks, bound for Glacier Bay National Park, Alaska. Bursting out of our skins in anticipation and apprehension, our sentiments were tempered by the knowledge that our first leg—Olympia, Washington, to Victoria, British Columbia—would be a good shakedown cruise. We looked like characters from The Grapes of Wrath. Cart wheels, spare paddles, personal flotation devices (PFDs), pumps, deck bags, and chart cases covered our decks. Our plan was to tackle succeeding sections in yearly seasonal increments, each about three weeks in duration, to accommodate job and family responsibilities, to fine-tune equipment for changing conditions, and to regenerate depleted reserves.

So what is this book about? Basically, it is a select guide to kayaking the Inside Passage. It is “select” because a complete guide to all the possible routes and styles of kayaking would be beyond my ability. It is primarily a guide to the routes we chose, emphasizing the strategies that worked best for us and the interests that motivated us. These ought to be helpful to a broad spectrum of potential Inside Passage paddlers.

Paddling the Inside Passage need not be a white-knuckle, quit-your-job, major expedition commitment. With proper planning, the right strategies, adequate skills, and suitable equipment, anyone can sample it. This guide emphasizes accessibility and breaks down the component parts of the challenge into attainable goals by partitioning the nearly 1,300 miles between Puget Sound and Glacier Bay into self-contained, logistically independent, bite-sized portions. These are stitched together by a primary route that is an ideal compromise of safety, comprehensiveness, brevity, and interest. A variety of alternate routes, some (for example) stressing interest over safety, or safety over brevity, offer optional choices.

But this book goes much further. By identifying the considerations involved in setting a route and configuring them into a useful algorithm, the reader can better customize his or her own route out of a bewildering number of possibilities. Along the way the book identifies and evaluates different tactics and approaches to objective conditions that facilitate good planning—for example, exactly where or when to cross a particular channel; how to approach and cross major river deltas; basic orientation for approaching big towns with overwhelming commercial traffic from low in the water; potential shortcuts; approaches to resupplying and camping when facilities are not conveniently spaced; border crossings; and much more.

Besides a kayak and an unquenchable lust for the journey, just what skills and experience do you need to paddle the Inside Passage? Kayaking the Inside Passage stresses three essential skills as the minimum for setting out: a dependable roll, competent navigation, and good seamanship. On the protected waters of the Inside Passage, in balmy weather and conditions of one’s picking, the need for a roll is rarer than Sasquatch. Nonetheless, a dependable roll is the best safeguard against ever needing to use it and instills confidence and comfort in any situation. Competent navigation is not just the ability to read a map, the topography, and hydrography, but also being able to conform one with the other so you can determine where you are and get to where you’re going. Finally, good seamanship is that ineffable quality that is part experience tempered by an acute sense of place, and part self-knowledge combined with the sort of critical judgment that promotes risk assessment better than any actuary. Together, these will keep you out of trouble.

And experience? Just how much do you need? Experience is like capital: Some people can wisely invest a small grubstake and turn it into a fortune, while others can squander a fortune and have nothing to show for it. It’s not how much experience (or money) you have that will determine your success, but rather how you use it. In the late 1960s the National Park Service held public hearings to establish skills, proficiency, and equipment requirements for boating the Grand Canyon. During the discussion, some veteran river runners became concerned that the proposed regulations might be too restrictive. In a thinly veiled reference to explorer John Wesley Powell, Vern Taylor, a geologist who had spent years studying travertine deposits in the canyon, innocently asked: “So would a one-armed army veteran, without any previous experience or maps, and rowing a wooden boat be disqualified?” The room fell silent. Subsequently, many of the proposed requirements were dropped. The only way for a novice to gain experience is to plunge into the task, preferably under controlled conditions but always reaching just a tad further than previously. This book cannot determine whether your experience and temperament are up to the challenge—only you can do that. Fortunately, this guide starts in Puget Sound, the most benevolent and forgiving portion, and wends its way north to more demanding locales. The incremental approach allows for experience to accumulate slowly, the better to invest wisely.

Suitable equipment can make or break a trip, or at least strike the difference between grim endurance and actual comfort. This guidebook makes some strongly opinionated recommendations that minimize the misery and maximize the fun.

Finally, the organization of the information makes for a very user-friendly experience. Reams of scattered and disparate data have been collated into a seamless compendium easily accessed on the go. Points of interest and challenging conditions, along with their background and strategies for making the most out of them, are woven into the mile-by-mile description. Book maps note campsites, parks, points of access and resupply, and trip distances along the main route and alternate routes.

How to Use This Book

The first two chapters of this book provide general and specific information for paddling the Inside Passage: overall history, environment, equipment, weather, safety, and other considerations for the entire journey. The route has been divided into logical sections, each easily accessible and all approximately of equal length except for the first and last. Chapters 3 through 7 each correspond to one major section of the Inside Passage. Each of these five chapters is, by and large, self-contained and covers one discreet geographical area—including historical, political, and natural background. The trip chapter/sections are divided into two parts, each more or less independent of the other. The first part of each trip chapter/section illustrates some major aspect of the region—regional history, economy, ethnology, and the like—and often applies to the entire Inside Passage. The second part of each of these chapters constitutes the mile-by-mile meat of the guide and includes necessary logistical arrangements for getting to and from starting and ending points. Where there is some cross-referencing among the chapters, it is noted in the text.

I do not belabor certain popular guidebook themes such as camping etiquette, menu planning, guided trips, and the admonition to get professional instruction; nor do I provide exhaustive gear and clothing lists. Most are matters of common sense, inclination, or ubiquity, and I have nothing original to add. The book concludes with a list of resources and an annotated bibliography for those readers wishing to explore themes barely touched in this guide. Some of these are absolutely essential reading, either for enrichment or basic research, by anyone contemplating the Inside Passage.

The book opens with an Inside Passage map that indexes each trip section. Each trip section corresponds to one of Chapters 3 through 7 and opens with its own overview map. Routes, points of interest, campsites, and other notable features pepper each map. The main route is calibrated in 15-statute-mile increments, a handy though admittedly arbitrary day’s paddle. The mileage notation used in this guide is not accurate; rather it is merely a convention and a handy scale to measure progress. Navigation on a liquid medium precludes exact precision. The mileage is measured twice: once from each section’s starting point, and—in bold—cumulative from Olympia, Washington. Alternate routes are described either immediately after their points of divergence from the main route, or immediately following their points of convergence, depending on what sequence seemed most logical in the situation—so check both. Alternate routes continue the main route’s mileage notation from divergence to convergence, and then revert to the main route’s mileage. Mileage discrepancies between alternate and main routes are noted and then ignored as the two rejoin and the main route continues. Points of reference and interest, towns, and settlements are also marked with their respective mileages. Port and rapids detail maps, wherever possible, accompany the text. Though all are scaled, they are for orientation, not navigation. I use statute miles because I will advocate primary reliance on 1:250,000 topographic maps for navigation. Unlike charts, these have the advantage of retaining the same scale from one map to another. In the text, “miles” will refer to statute miles. Here are the conversions:

11/7 statute miles	=	1 nautical mile
1.13 statute miles	=	1 nautical mile
1 statute mile	=	0.88 nautical mile

Campsite notation on the maps is a tricky exercise. There is no way to list all possible campsites. Some areas might require a portaledge for camping, while others offer virtually unlimited tentable space. One person’s sylvan retreat might be another’s toxic dump. Some campsites are official and well developed with amenities, while others require pruning to become habitable. Map campsite symbols reflect some of this variety, but not all. The major distinctions are among campsite “areas,” “possible” campsites, and specific campsites. These and other details are mentioned in the text.

Don’t overlook the appendices and bibliography. Appendix A lists all the 1:250,000 topographical maps required for the routes in this guide. Appendix B lists all the resources (and then some) for equipment items recommended in Chapter 2: map and chart dealers and agencies; government agencies such as Customs, Coast Guards, land managers, weather services, etc.; ferries, lodging, and vehicle storage facilities and some boating retail shops along the way. Appendix C is a very basic primer on marine radio use. Finally, Appendix D helps you identify the various salmon varieties and some of the more confusing small mustelid mammals. The bibliography includes not only my own research resources but also a thematic, annotated list of suggested reading.