Two landings on Jedediah Island
by Heather Harbord, 21 January 2015.
7 Jan 2015 trip: The fog horn sounded every 2 minutes as nine of us crossed over to Egmont and then drove to Secret Cove where the fog began to lift.
From there John Dafoe on the HiBaller II, a small landing craft, took us over smooth seas to Jedediah Island. En route, we saw Long-tailed Ducks, Marbled Murrelets and a few Ancient Auklets. At the south end of Texada, John pointed out some sheep grazing the cliffs. Once we got ashore on Jedediah, we found lots of sheep traces and glimpsed some black and white animals in the distant meadow. Sure enough the tops of the young conifers had been nibbled off. Probably the flowers in the meadow are no more either.
While some of the group hared off to Deep Bay, the rest of us hiked over to Long Bay visiting the grave of Will, the horse, en route. The banks of lush wet green mosses were like jewels contrasting with the black trunks of several fire survivors. Although there was no rain, at lunch time, we were glad we had brought waterproof things to sit on as the land was very soggy. Small creeks ran along the trails.
Getting on and off the boat was a bit of a challenge as the shallow water, meant we had to do so up and down a slippery rocky cliff. On the way home, we detoured into the strait where we saw more Long-tailed ducks and a Rhinocerous Auklet that disappeared before it could be photographed. It was cool on the boat but we were dressed for it and the temperature was around 7 degrees.
21 Jan 2015 trip: For the second Jedediah trip, nine of us drove to Secret Cove where we boarded the Comintagetya Hiballer II landing craft with John Dafoe at the helm. The seas were calm and we had excellent views of about 150 Long-tailed ducks packed together in 3-4 groups along with a number of Ancient murrelets, a few Murres and Marbled murrelets. The Steller’s sea lions, cormorants and gulls on the rock just outside Home Bay put on a show for us too.
We landed just below the old farmhouse and were glad of the steps they had cemented into the rock. After a quick lunch, we hiked across the meadow and on to Deep Bay where we saw three of the goats. Laurette later found this informative article.
We left just as the wind started to rise. After a good look at Napier Falls, we started back but soon noticed a line of small waterfalls in the distance. When we caught up to it, we found a pod of about 200 Pacific white-sided dolphins heading north which were very entertaining. We got back to Secret Cove in time to catch our desired ferry back to Powell River.
