Now that I’m finally back home after road tripping back from Orcas Island to Washington, I wanted to write a bit about my preparation, logistics and strategy and insights, what worked out well for me.
Why the Inside Passage
As a preface, I want to briefly lay out (a) a bit of my personal background on adventure sports and values which then probably also helps to understand (b) what motivated me to do the Inside Passage (as opposed to other destinations) as my first longer solo expedition and the way I did it.
After 10+ years of extensive rock climbing all over the world, followed by a wild year of WW kayaking, then a few years of bike packing and sea kayaking, I came to realize that by far my most preferred mode of adventuring is fast & light, happily trading comfort for experiences of remoteness and self reliance. In addition, the more I can avoid driving or flying to make adventures work out, the better. And the more hours I could spend doing the actual activity of focus (be it climbing, kayaking, biking) each day (as opposed to running shuttle, waiting, packing etc), the happier I would be. These preferences got more and more in conflict with particularly rock climbing and WW kayaking. And really, biking and sea kayaking seemed to be the solution allowing me to get out into nature and minimize travel time, while maximizing adventure time.
My first sea kayaking trip outside California was actually in 2018 to Glacier Bay, Alaska. I was stunned by the beautiful nature (and scared by all the grizzlies we encountered) and the realization that one could spend months kayaking in the many fjords here. But, oh, the logistics of flying here. And renting a kayak. To then only paddle for 7 days…
Then, fast forward, 2021 I got to spend 2 weeks in the San Juan Islands, Washington. Crusing around on day trips and a few overnighters. Due to COVID and travel restrictions, I wasn’t allowed to cross that imaginary border to Canada that runs just slightly west of Stuart Island. But I kept looking NW, wondering what would be between here and Glacier Bay. I had never heard about the Inside Passage before until that evening, sometime at the beginning of July, when Davina told me about it. Oh, so I could just paddle up to Alaska? In my own kayak? No need to fly? … the idea was born.
For someone living on the West Coast of the United States, the Inside Passage is probably one of the logistically most simple long distance expeditions one can do. All I needed to do is drive to Washington (thanks to my friends Davina & Lu, I was able to park my car on their property on Orcas Island), and start paddling (in my case, directly from North Beach, Orcas Island). Once finished, I could jump on a ferry of the Alaska Marine Highway System which makes its way along the Inside Passage, conveniently connecting several cities in southeast Alaska (Skagway, Juneau, Wrangel, Petersburg, Ketchikan) to Washington (Bellingham). You can easily bring your kayak on board, paying a few extra $. Once back in Bellingham, carry your kayak to a nearby beach (around 250 meters), and paddle another ~25 miles back to Orcas Island. No shuttle involved. Basically an expedition based on public transport. What a dream!
Another big draw for me was the fact that this ~1200 miles journey basically is a concatenation of several 5–10 day mini expeditions. Every ~100 to ~200 miles, you get into some town, allowing to restock, get laundry done, take a shower, and eat some big calorie meals. Yet, in between these towns, wilderness and remoteness awaits. For this being my first long distance solo expedition, this seemed to allow for the perfect balance.
(Note: I had originally not dared to think this route so big — I am a bit of a conservative planner — , and instead planned to finish much earlier, somewhere around Petersburg. I am very glad others encouraged me to go the full length.)
My Personal Twist on Logistics
There are plenty of excellent resources as well as beautiful trip reports (see below for a list) available, which I found extremely helpful in my own preparation, and inspiration. What a luxury to be able to follow other people’s route descriptions, camp site recommendations, info on how and where to stay in towns etc. What I am writing here is more of a “delta”, ie a couple of aspects in my own preparation and strategy that deviated from what I found described in those resources and what most people seem to be doing. Given my background (lightweight bike packing) and values (appreciation of minimalism and going fast), those worked very nicely for me. I recognize my approach might not be for everyone, but maybe it can be helpful for others planning a trip in the future.
(1) Plastic kayak
The default vessel that people seem to use is a fiber-glass or composite sea kayak. I think almost everyone I talked to or read of, had some sort of repairs on their hull to do due to abrasion. And almost everybody complained that getting your kayak from the water to your camp site would be the most annoying thing of the trip. For solo kayakers that typically means unloading the boat at the water line, maybe building some log-rollers, and often shoulder carrying the kayak. For those doing the IP as a group, people seem to usually carrying heavy/loaded kayaks together, often over slippery rocks. Either option seemed massively unappealing and also somewhat dangerous to me. After all, I think the risk of slipping while getting your kayak/gear to/from the water is probably one of the biggest risks on that trip.
So I decided to go with a plastic kayak!
I wanted a fast and light plastic kayak. And a rudder. And really there aren’t many kayaks that fit this bill. I ended up paddling a P&H Valkyrie (see also this longer review, which I very much agree with in most aspects), which I think ended up being quite the perfect boat for my needs. While certainly not an uber-stable tank, its very sea worthy, I loved how fast this boat could go, even when loaded up, and I really enjoyed downwind surfing it (there were a few occasions with perfect conditions). On land, I usually just dragged it up and down to/from the water line, either fully or half loaded (granted, at low tide where all the rocks with barnacles are exposed I didn’t want to torture this thing too much dragging it along). It’s got its scratches for sure, but none too bad.
Now, for the “downsides” (sort of). This kayak has limited packing space (for an expedition kayak), and per it’s specs, the max paddler weight (which includes all gear and paddler) is 115kg. Me being around 75kg fully dressed, this really only leaves 30kgs for all gear. I often carried 20 liters of water in addition to food and gear for 10 days and hence often exceeded the the max paddler weight. Which felt a bit strange at the beginning (kayak is just pretty deep in the water), but actually the Valkyrie paddles pretty ok once I got used to. But also volume-wise this kayak calls for a more minimalistic expedition setup (fine when you come from bike packing anyways, otherwise probably bit of a change of gears when you’re used to luxurious kayak camping…). Especially the stern doesn’t have a lot of volume, so that larger (and often heavier) items end up being in the bow hatches making proper weight distribution a bit tricky. But all manageable.
Overall, I loved this kayak. Fast & light — very much was I was looking for.
(2) Food Storage
What’s amazing about the P&H Valkyrie, is that the bow hatches can fit bear vaults! For a skinny and rather low volume boat that’s quite remarkable — many smaller expedition boats either have too tiny hatches or just won’t fit the vaults barrel shape. I was able to fit 3 of the 450 vaults in there, holding all my food. That made setting up/breaking down camp and getting ready to sleep so much easier: No need to set up a pulley system to hang your food.
On the flip side, using bear vaults really limits how much (and what shape of) food you can bring. As per my calculation I wanted to fit up to 35,000 — 40,000 calories for the longer stretches in there (calculating 10 days with ~3,700 cals needed per day). Given the volume constraints by the bear vaults, that meant I would definitely have to go with freeze dried meals and stay a bit minimalistic/simplistic on the snack side of things — luckily chocolate bars are easy to fit, but all the other fancies needed to stay home.
Also worth mentioning that I did put all my freeze dried meals in the bear vaults. To make them fit I had to take them out of their original, more space-consuming packaging and repacked into ziplog bags. This is something I probably wouldn’t do again, but instead leave the meals in the original packaging which I think is reasonable odor proof and just keep in the boat overnight (DM me if you thing that this is a bad idea from a bear-safety perspective).
(3) Resupplies
Another for me very appealing aspect about the Inside Passage is that resupplies are fairly easy — from an expedition logistics point of view. Every 5–10-ish days you will get into some sort of town. I found resupplying there fairly straight-forward. Granted, don’t assume you’ll get all the fancy foods there. But you’ll get the basics in the decently stocked supermarkets: coffee, oats/granola, dried fruits and nuts, some sort of snack bars (no, probably not your fancy high-protein-safe-the-world-ones, but hey, it’s an adventure, make do with what you find…), quick to prepare meals (mashed potatoes, simple pasta dishes, quick rice etc).
Several of the cities also have outdoor stores where you can buy actual freeze dried camping meals: Powell River (very well stocked outdoor store), Port Hardy (outdoor store closed Sun+Mon though!), Prince Rupert, Ketchikan.
When I couldn’t buy the proper ready made, freeze-dried camping meals (for me that was largely the stretch between Port Hardy and Prince Rupert), I defaulted largely to Knorr Sidekicks. Not my top choice (you still need to cook them for 5 minutes, as opposed to camping meals where you only need boiling water, and they weren’t quite as satisfying), but OK. Topping up with olive oil and milk-powder to meet calorie intake targets.
Given those resupply options, I decided to not mail myself any resupply packages, which saved me a lot of time ahead of the trip (I heard from others that mailing packages from the US to Canada also is not cheap) and a bunch of hazzle during the trip (I’ve heard stories about packages being returned from the post office when not picked up until a certain date). Also, not mailing packages allows you some more flexibility wrt to changing route as you go and also not needing to make the post office opening hours (supermarkets have much more convenient hours).
Granted, my trip was not a gourmet journey, so this approach might not be for everyone, especially if you have strict dietary restrictions. But, I had heard from some folks I met along the route that they mailed themselves lots of food just because they didn’t know that the grocery stores in the town one gets through are largely well stocked…
(4) Water
After stupidly running low on water on day 2 of my trip (good to make some mistakes early on, right?), I started carrying usually around 20 liters of water. Maybe it was because of the unusually warm summer, but I did not find the streams to be running everywhere reliably and especially since I camped on islands, water was not abundant all the time.
I brought 5 individual water bags, so if one would break, it wouldn’t be too dramatic. I had been using the bags from HydraPak before, mostly for bike packing: they are light-weight and pack up really small. For a long kayaking trip, where weight is not that much of a concern, I would probably bring something a bit more sturdy next time… the bags definitely suffered some abrasion (still OK, but I can see that those might not last much longer on a rougher trip).
(5) Navigation and Electronics
I did not use paper charts — just to say it upfront :)
100% of my navigation while paddling was based on a Garmin GPSMAP 86sc. It comes with Marine charts for US waters pre-installed and I added a SD card with the charts for Canada. I mounted this GPS on my deck, so I could easily see it while paddling. The picture below has the “trip computer” view, but for navigation I would usually just have it show the marine chart with an overlay of my planned GPS track.
I did bring a few larger maps for the “big picture”, to use in camp for planning, but while on the water, only relied on my Garmin and the route I had prepared before.
Garmin’s user interfaces are problematic, to say the least. BUT: highly configurable. Once I had modified all the “pages” (that’s what Garmin calls the different views) the way I needed it, this turned into a highly efficient device. I am now able to switch pages (eg from “trip computer” to “map”) or even do multi-click operations (eg, pulling up the tide table for a closeby location) while putting in paddling strokes, ie almost without loosing speed: on every right hand down stroke, I would quickly take my right hand off the paddle and press the respective button. Takes a bit of time to get used to, but works nicely.
At first, buying this device seemed pretty costly (I paid about $600 for both the device and the Canadian charts on SD card). However, comparing this to the cost of individual charts for the whole ~1100 miles of the Inside Passage, it’s actually pretty competitive (NOAA in the US let’s you download the charts for free and print yourself, but Canada doesn’t and so you either do screenshots or actually buy printed charts for a steep price).
What I like about the GPSMAP 86 (as opposed to the older 79 version), is that it can be charged via USB. Obviously, rechargeable batteries are preferable over from an environmental perspective. In addition, the USB rechargeable option probably is also more durable: no need to open a battery case (one thing less to break) and less chance for corroded battery connectors, just a small USB plug covered with a solid water proof rubber cap (I figure that one would be easier to fix if broken). Worked perfectly — almost 2 months of water exposure with no issues at all!
A concern I had heard from folks seeing me using a GPS for navigation was relying on electricity. Yes, I did critically rely on electricity for several devices (all USB chargeable): phone (iPhone 13 mini with small screen, uses significantly less battery than larger modern phones), headphones (I enjoy listening to audiobooks and music while on the water), VHF radio, GPS, InReach. My daily needs were about 7,000-8,000 mAh. I had 4 small battery packs like this (and also this one with a a small solar panel attached) summing to a total capacity of 85,000 mAh. I brought doubles for all charging cables (just in case one would get lost or break). Also having multiple independent power banks (instead of one massive one) gives some redundancy in case one fails. Overall this worked very well.
Speaking of redundancy: I did bring a second phone with all relevant apps preinstalled (in case my GPS would break or I’d drop my phone — you never know).
For tides and currents, I largely relied on the Navionics app on my phone (in addition to the info on the Garmin — the Navionics app gives a slightly better picture though) and also had PDFs with tide and current tables saved to my phone.
The Canadian Sailing Directions turned out the be an extremely valueable source of information, too. I didn’t know of these beforehand but got the tip from a friend who noticed me fiddling with figuring out the exact timings of currents in Desolation Sound. The sailing directions are full of tons of helpful information on specific characteristics of about every channel (eg, after running into a strong tide rip on Laredo channel just south of Campania Island, I found out in the Sailing Directions afterwards what exactly caused this. Ha, had I read this before I could have even avoided it… hm, might have taken some fun out of it, but also increase safety ;)
Resources Used for Planning
Guide books and trip reports:
- Robert Miller: Kayaking the Inside Passage
- John Kimantas: The Wild Coast: Vol 2/North and Central BC Coast
- Susan Conrad: A Women’s Journey through the Inside Passage
- Denis Dwyer: Alone in the Passage
US waters:
Canadian waters:
