What a pleasure to meet young people who are passionate about their work, professional, and polite to us arthritic and opinionated old folks. Ted’s van and trailer shuttle us to Ucluelet, home of the lovely Wild Pacific Trail. Shannon takes the lead for the paddle to Secret Beach at Toquart Bay, and we arrive exactly on schedule for our 3:00 pm pick-up. At Stopper Island Shannon leads a yoga session, while Kevin and Ben prepare lunch, chasing boats when required as the tide rises. The Pinkerton Islands are a sheltered and peaceful place to paddle before heading back towards civilization. On our final morning, we leave park boundary, but there are still 14 kilometres to go. The apple trees and periwinkle, planted by homesteaders, are alien species, but they sure are pretty. Paddles up! We cross Peacock Channel to the Brabant Islands and on to our final camp in the grasses at a shallow, sandy bay on Hand Island. Whether you pitch your tent on the beach or in the woods, you will enjoy a layered view of white sandy shoreline, windswept rocks, and distant mountains. Camp ClarkeĬlarke Island might be the prettiest of the seven campsites in the Broken Group. There is plenty of space for our group of three guides and four guests: Rod from Texas, Sven from Germany, and us. These islands are a world-class paddling destination, but in late May the summer crowds have not yet arrived. Judy transports us to Dodd Island, where we launch our kayaks for our trip through the Broken Group Islands ( map), one of the three sections that make up Pacific Rim National Park Reserve (the Long Beach Unit and the West Coast Trail are the other two sections). Our guide Ben is there to help, along with his two shadows, guides-in-training Shannon and Kevin. Clever packing and contortions are required to squeeze our gear and our bodies into the sleek tandem kayak, but we don’t have to do it on our own. A kayak’s “large” dry bag holds 30 litres, one-quarter the volume of our canoe’s capacious bags.
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