I never thought I'd leave my hometown in the UK.
Forget the name. Desolation Sound is Canada’s best-kept secret.
22.09.2023 - 14:09 / nationalgeographic.com / Pan Usa
If you sail into British Columbia’s Desolation Sound Marine Park on a slightly smoky afternoon, as I did recently (there were still more than 900 wildfires burning across Canada), make sure you watch out for the huge tides and the weather. B.C.’s largest marine park might have the warmest water north of Baja, but here nature still rules.
As if I needed a reminder, an hour after we’d anchored, a large seal slapped its tail alongside our boat, sending a shower of saltwater down through the hatches onto my laptop. The next morning, a mass of kelp morphed into a gigantic humpback, who exhaled spectacularly foul breath. Rafts of sea otters floated past, warming their toes in the sun.
I’ve spent months exploring B.C.’s coast with my husband aboard our sailboat Heron, and even wrote a book, Uncharted, about our adventures (and misadventures). Of all the remote, watery places we return to each year, Desolation is the most dramatic.
Recently, there has been an astonishing resurgence of life in Desolation’s Salish Sea—more humpbacks feeding, dolphins leaping, and masses of seabirds. Mountain peaks loom over forested fjords where environmental laws have noticeably led to cleaner water and, after decades, more abundant wildlife.
The Pacific Northwest boating set flocks to Desolation’s granite-cliffed coves in summer, but fall is our favorite time. Salmon return to spawn, and the air turns crisp. Here’s what to know and how best to experience the quieter off-season.
Desolation emerges from the northern end of the Salish Sea just 90 miles north of Vancouver. Since the nearest road is 20 miles south, where the Pan American Highway ends in the tiny fishing village of Lund, the marine park is only accessible by boat or floatplane. Most boaters migrate south after Labor Day, and nature reclaims itself as migrating birds arrive, blanketing the sea. In the off-season, Desolation Sound’s thick forest of cedar, fir, and honey-barked madrone feels once again like the traditional territory of four First Nations, which it’s been for thousands of years.
The real secret of Desolation, says Captain Colin Griffinson, owner-operator of classic 1943 expedition yacht Pacific Yellowfin, is to come in the quiet months if you want to see wilderness and wildlife. “My ideal times are September into October, and May through early July. We have one of the biggest bald eagle shows in the world then and nobody knows about it.”
“At low tide, a beach in Desolation Sound is full of food,” he continues. “Because of the temperature of the water, mussels, mollusks, and oysters thrive. This place was a huge food source for Indigenous people for 10 thousand years. The bears know all about it, too.”
(Explore the Oregon coast—but don’t touch the
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