Photo caption: Sidney Spit Provincial Park is an exceptional destination with wide open spaces and few people -- until you need to use what is made available for recreation. The problem is access, as this park is another example of increasing restrictions on use to deal with problems of congestion. By John Kimantas I was fortunate to be project manager for creating the Salish Sea Marine Trail, a kayaking route still little-known and seldom-used linking Victoria and Vancouver as a paddling portion of the Trans-Canada Trail. It was a tougher task to create than we could have thought possible, in the end, for a number of reasons, but a key one being the relative inability to officially link the two ends. On...
We are asked this question a lot at Wild Coast Publishing, and the question can be directed two different ways: where is volume 3 of The Wild Coast series of guidebooks, and where is volume 3 of the BC Coast Explorer series. In the way of background, The Wild Coast series was the original guidebook series for exploring the British Columbia coast. The first volume was originally printed in 2003, with volume 3 following in 2008. The series was published by Whitecap Books and written by me (John Kimantas). Several reprintings of the volumes followed. Unfortunately, Whitecap Books went bankrupt about the time volume 1 was to be updated and reprinted. The titles were picked up by Fitzhenry and Whiteside of Toronto, but...
One of the most-told stories relating to Nootka Sound is the story of the origin of the name Nootka Sound. It goes like this: Captain James Cook, upon first arriving in March 1788, was greeted by the Mowachaht, who yelled "go around," using the Nuu-cha-nulth word "nootka-a", an instruction for the safe place to go as the ships the Discovery and the Resolution approached Yuquot on south Nootka Island. Cook misinterpreted that, or so the story goes, to mean the Mowachaht were in fact introducing themselves as the people the Nootka, and so he chose that name for the people of the sound he was entering. It is a good story, to be sure, but the basis in fact was purely speculation. It was...
If you're a hiker, you are probably familiar with UTM grid lines on your hiking maps. If you are a paddler or mariner, you may not have seen them at all. Even if are a hiker and used to seeing them, you may not have known what they are, and just overlooked them as more clutter on a map. Overlook them no longer! Wild Coast Publishing has added UTM grid lines to all 200-series marine mapsheets, ensuring the entire new lineup of Wild Coast maps -- both marine and trail -- includes UTM grids. This isn't because you are likely to convert from longitude-latitude to UTM coordinates when tracking your routes. If using a GPS, it doesn't really matter too much, just...
If you are of the frame of mind that being amidst a crowd in a sprawling wilderness setting makes no sense, then rock ledge camping may be for you. By using an anchor, reaching locations otherwise thought to be inaccessible to sea kayaks becomes much simpler.
