Sandi is a rambler based between the coast and the Kootenays in western Canada. She has been an educator, a community festival co-producer/artistic director, a street vendor, and a house cleaner over the last five decades. She now divides her time between her Kootenay garden, various music festivals, conscious dance events, and exploring different parts of the world during the months when gardening at home isn’t an option.
Skookumchuk, also known as Stl'ikuw in Sheshashisalhem, the traditional language of the Shishalh Nation, is one of the greatest natural spectacles in British Columbia. This place is renowned for its breathtaking whirlpools, a sight that never fails to thrill sightseers, extreme kayakers, and divers from around the world.
The first thing you need to do is check the "best viewing times" online for the days when the tides on the Sechelt Peninsula are at their most extreme.
Then, you need to check the time of the lowest tide: ideally, between 8 am and 3 pm. The standing wave enthusiasts—a small but growing collection of intrepid SUP surfers and kayakers from around the world—will want to catch the flood tide.
But for sheer spectacle-to say nothing of the "sound and fury"-the lowest ebb tides at the Skookumchuck Narrows can't be beaten. This is where the "salt chuck" of the Salmon and Narrows Inlet, branching off the larger Sechelt Inlet, meets Jervis Inlet, which opens into the Salish Sea. And as the tides advance and recede, all that water dramatically finds its way through the narrows called, in Chinook Jargon, "Skookumchuck," meaning strong water. It's a bit of an understated name, to be honest.
If you've taken the ferry from Vancouver to the Sunshine Coast, you're in for an 85-kilometer drive that goes from smooth to snakey once you get past the Secret Cove area. Slow down and hug those curves! Watch for the turnoff to Egmont, just past Ruby Lake (swim there AFTER your hike, though), and park as close to the trailhead across from the little museum as possible.
The first part of the trail will take you through the tiny community of Doriston, where a sawmill established at the turn of the century warranted the creation of a post office and a school by 1912. Now, aside from a smattering of seasonal inhabitants, the hamlet is all but abandoned. There is, however, a funky little bakery here, where you'll want to stop at either the start or the end of your ramble.
The trail through the second-growth forest is a wonderland of firs, hemlocks, cedars, salal, assorted ferns and mosses, and coastal tiarella. If you look at the remains of some of those massive stumps, you can see the notches where the fallers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries wedged in their springboards in order to manually fell the ancient giants with crosscut saws. Once you notice a few, you'll start seeing them everywhere, like those tiny coastal huckleberries.
This shaded path does have one thing to beware of—beyond the occasional tripping hazard of jutting rocks and roots: mosquitoes. You need to either keep moving and forget about taking photos or slather yourself with the best repellent you've got. These mosquitoes have been known to bite through sweatpants. We used to think the NO CAMPING signs were there because the rapids were a hazard. After testing the warning, we concluded that the mozzies were a greater danger. You've been warned.
When you get to Brown Lake, where the rainforest opens up, you will likely hear the loons calling. Listen...harder. You should hear something, a susurration... sh...listen... and follow the sound as the trail re-enters the forest. Even though you are a kilometer away, the rushing sound is unmistakable.
Pick up your pace, and within minutes you are atop a boulder and can see the North Point lookout just below you. The rushing sound has, by now, become a roar. If you have been intrepid enough to do this on a grey, drizzly day, you will be rewarded with solitude and a vista worthy of Gustave Dore. If it's a sunny day, there are probably a few other people here, but the colors that intensify as raging whirlpools swirl in and out of creation will be magnificent.
The Skookumchuck Narrows is a passage through which 200 billion gallons of water surge in and out twice a day. Thundering through a rocky passage at speeds that can exceed 16 knots/30 kph, the Sechelt Rapids are reputed to be the second-fastest navigable rapids in North America.
If you spend some time at the little museum, you will learn that many a ship has failed to time the tides and read the water accurately, usually a tug with a barge or log-boom. Then there is the family photo from a century ago of mom, dad, and the daughters, captioned by a note saying the girls drowned in the rapids attempting to row from Doriston to Egmont not long after the picture was taken.
More recently, a Coast Guard Search and Rescue training exercise took the lives of two women when the rapids flipped their Zodiac back in 2012. If you listened to the stories of loggers' families, back in the day, there were plenty of hair-raising tales of misadventure on this coast, and this area figured in quite a few.
Yet, the constant flushing of this enormous volume of seawater has made this place a magnet for "extreme divers," who go out with experienced tour operators who organize these excursions, waiting and watching for the slack tide when the current speeds drop to about 5 knots, and the diving window is open.
In addition to the massive bull kelp fronds, anemones, and sea stars that one can view from the other lookout at Roland Point, about ten minutes past North Point, divers are treated to an undersea spectacle that rivals the view from above. This is an aquatic Eden, submerged rock walls ablaze with life and color. The seals and seabirds you see from the lookout know the drill: "When the tide is out, the table is set."
I am often asked if I have ever taken a boat trip through the Skookumchuck, especially now that several tour operators offer trips through the rapids when they are more navigable. After all, these are navigable waters. I have not.
I grew up overhearing stories about this place that served as cautionary tales. So, although I've probably been here a couple of dozen times since I was a kid—picking oysters in Egmont with friends and family and, later, braving mosquitoes and muck galore to participate in the occasional Summer Solstice ceremony (it was the 70s!)—this particular ramble, for me, is a forest tunnel into a primeval tidal dance to the rhythms of time.
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