Weather or Knot to Dive - a Port Hardy Trip Report

[MXGratefulDiver]

It's about 425 miles by car, plus a two-hour ferry ride from my place to Port Hardy ... then another 90-minute boat ride out to the Browning Pass Hideaway where we were staying. We left Friday around noon, and spent the night in Nanaimo, about a third of the way up the coast on Vancouver Island. The nine of us who were on the trip had made plans to stay at the same motel in Nanaimo, and have a "meet and greet" dinner at a waterfront Pub. I had previously met everyone on the trip except Curt Bowen ... whose "Advanced Diver Magazine" had organized the trip. Curt is an interesting fellow ... firefighter, entrepreneur, photographer, artist (both kinds), inventor, and diving explorer. He's also a very funny fellow ... at one point in the evening he said something to the effect of "I don't really know my ass from a hole in the ground, which is a pretty big problem for a cave diver". He has no detectable ego about his accomplishments, and is one of the most easy-going people I think I've ever run into in the diving world. In other words, my kind of person. I enjoyed being around him for the week.

Saturday morning we left bright and early for Port Hardy ... a 240-mile drive up the coast and through the mountains from Nanaimo. It's a beautiful drive, really, and we had a picture-perfect day to do it. We arrived in Port Hardy around noon, and a scant 20 minutes later our host for the week ... John DeBoeck from the Browning Pass Hideaway ... pulled into the dock in his cabin cruiser, towing a skiff to haul our gear out to the lodge.

The ride out from Port Hardy to Browning Pass takes us through a series of inlets and passages between clusters of tiny islands and rocks, populated with all sorts of "locals" ... we saw dozens of eagles, flocks of cormorants, rafts of sea otters, several Pacific whiteside dolphins, and a bunch of stellar sea lions ...

Arriving at the lodge around 3 PM, we quickly sorted out our lodgings for the week, stashed our stuff, put our gear together and headed out for a dusk dive at one of the walls that Browning Pass is so famous for. These walls are sheer, deep, and completely covered in cold-water corals, sponges, anemones, and all the sea life that is attracted to such sessile life forms. Among these, and sought-after by divers, are orange-peel nudibranchs.

Visibility for this dive was around 60-70 feet, which is about what we had hoped for. We surfaced to a beautiful sunset, which we fortunately enjoyed ... because it was the last one we would see all week.

Dawn the next morning brought with it a blowing snowstorm. A building wind precluded any possibliity to dive the walls, but there are some sheltered sites that are OK to dive in those conditions, and so we were off to Hussar Point, an arc of sloping boulders enclosing a shallow, sandy basin. The attraction at Hussar Point is hooded nudibranchs ... scores of thousands of them, clustered to every surface they can possibly attach to ...

... including other sea life. I found a bunch of them hunkered down on top of a sea cucumber. Gotta wonder what the cuke was thinking about these strange hitchikers ...

Out in the basin we also found some giant dendronotid nudibranchs ... this one a lovely golden color ...

... as well as sea pens ... a type of cold-water coral common to our area, and the favorite food of several types of nudis ...

After the dive we made our way through building seas back to the lodge. The boat was crashing through the waves, sending freezing sprays of sea water over us. Unfortunately, we were diving from an open skiff. Fortunately, everyone decided to keep their hoods and masks in place to protect us from the elements. There was little conversation coming in, although lots of grins after such a lovely dive.

Our next two dives were also in sheltered locations ... pinnacles whose tops rose as bare rocks from the ocean floor ... Rock of Life and Eagle Rock. Each of these had its own charm, and although not as spectacular as the walls, the boulder structures provided shelter for colorful China Rockfish ...

... and an inquisitive giant pacific octopus ...

Quote of the day came from Paul, our deck hand, as we were heading back in from the second dive. I mentioned the fact that the storm seemed to be building in intensity. His reply was "Nah, the storm's up north ... this is just a gale." Made me feel so much better.

The ride after the third dive involved little conversation and no happy faces ... we were getting bounced around like a toy in a washing machine, dodging giant logs that had gotten washed off the beaches of the nearby islands, and just wanting it to be over. It was not a fun ride, and by the time we arrived back at the cove there was a collective sigh of relief from just about everyone. The day had provided some intensely beautiful diving, but was also a case study in how much people were willing to put up with to dive here. Fortunately, this was a very experienced group of divers.

(Part 2 follows) ...

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

The next day started out calm enough ... but it was snowing, and Lynne and Peter decided to sit out the first dive. The rest of us headed to the signature dive site of the area ... Browning Wall. I got to start the dive twice, as one of our team members lost his mask backrolling into the water. Fortunately the vis was spectacular ... at least 75 feet ... because I was able to see his mask clearly as I chased it down the sheer sides of the wall. I caught up to it at about 40 feet ... which was a good thing, because the wall goes down in excess of 300 feet. Coming back to the surface, I handed him his mask and we restarted the dive.

Browning is truly an imposing wall ... massive and totally covered in life. Oddly, there's so much life here it's almost overwhelming to the senses ... and for the first few minutes I was so awed by the immensity of it all I seriously couldn't "find" anything to take a picture of! But after a time I settled in and started noticing things. I had hoped to find Puget Sound king crab on this dive, and dutifully, one showed itself after a time. This was a juvenile, still wearing his "gremlin" hat (they outgrow those as adults), and just developing the classic red, yellow and blue pattern that adults are known for.

There were also the basket stars ... and down deep, around 100 feet or so ... I found one that was sizeable and with its arms fully extended, feeding on the planktonic life being carried past on the current ...

We surfaced to discover the snow had stopped, and the sun was peeking out from behind low clouds. The wind had moderated, and it was a pleasant ride back to the Hideaway. Spirits were high that we were going to have some decent weather for the trip, as it seemed the storm had passed us by.

Our next dive was the wreck of the Themis ... an old, 270-foot freighter that had crashed into Croker Rock several decades ago. This was an exposed area, and we embraced our opportunity to get on it. It is also, however, a shallow dive ... maxing at about 70 feet ... and the storm had left us with some surge to deal with as we were exploring the wreck. The major attraction to this dive was the rockfish that shelter among the remains of the wreck. Because of the shallow depths, there is a lot of bull kelp. Massive schools of black and yellow-tail rockfish nestled among the forest of kelp stems rising from the wreck to the surface. We also found a couple of wolf eels tucked back inside the shelter of parts of the wreck. Overall, due to the surge, visibility wasn't as good as on the walls, and I got very few pictures worth keeping. But the experience of diving among the remnants of the ship made it a memorable dive.

Our final dive of the day was on a shallower (80+ foot) wall with the ironic name of "Snowfall" ... which turned out to be so named because of a predominance of white anemones attached to the rock walls. This wasn't a memorable dive for me, as I flooded a glove and by 20 minutes into the dive I was torn between really wanting to continue and really wanting to get out of the water so I could warm my hand up a bit. But it was a lovely wall, and we managed a respectable 55 minutes before surfacing.

Which was a fortunate decision, because this was to be our final full day of diving for the trip. Mother Nature wasn't done with us yet.

The next day we awoke to heavy winds ... 50 knots, with gusts over 80 knots. The docks were creaking and rocking ... moving the entire emcampment back an forth in an eery way. Sleet was coming down sideways, and it was a challenge just to venture outdoors to make sure our gear was secure enough to not get blown into the cove. After breakfast John told us it was too rough to venture out of the cove. By mid-morning we had experienced sleet, snow, rain, sunshine, more snow, more sunshine, more rain, and yet more snow. The wind had died down to a respectable 40 knots, and a couple folks made tentative plans to take the skiff to a nearby island and go hiking on a game trail John knew about. Unfortunately by the time they were ready to go, it was sleeting again. So John suggested that if anyone really wanted to dive, he could take us to the mouth of the cove, and as long as we didn't venture out of the cove we should be OK. Five of us opted to go.

It wasn't really a very good dive. The cove is a shallow, sandy bottom and we were getting pushed around pretty good from the impact of the waves at the mouth of the cove. But we found a few interesting things ... peering through 10-foot vis due to the constant stirring and shaking of the bottom by the waves. Among them were an "orgy" of nudibranchs, busily reproducing ... it was my one picture worth keeping from this dive ...

The remainder of the day was simply too rough to go out ... we stayed inside, downloading pictures, cleaning camera gear, regaling each other with dive stories, and laughing hysterically at Curt ... who turned out to be a comedian among all his other talents. If I had to get stuck in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, I couldn't have picked a better group of people to do it with.

The next day brought yet more surprises from Mother Nature. We awoke to dead calm ... no wind at all. That was the good news. The bad was that the temperatures had plummeted. All of our gear had frozen solid to whatever surface we had placed it on. A sheen of ice covered the cove. It was just downright cold ...

Curt, being a Floridian, was both unused to and amused by the thought of diving in these conditions. He took a video of himself breaking the ice from around his Armadillo rig ... which had frozen solid to a table ... calmly dipping the thing in the sea water to thaw it out ... then looking at it and pronouncing it "good to go". An hour later we were diving. This was, once again, on Browning Wall ... and this would be my 2,500th dive., It was truly special. It was also, unfortunately, our only dive of the day. I did find one of the things I had hoped for on this dive ... a candy-striped shrimp ...

We surfaced to snow and building wind, and by the time we got back to the Hideaway it was blowing a solid 40 knots and building. So we spent the rest of the day indoors once again.

The next day ... our final day ... we were only planning a morning dive because we had to leave around noon to get back to Port Hardy. That dive was at another of the signature walls called Seven-Tree Island, and was a spectacular wall dive. Once again the treats for me were the basket stars ...

... and orange peel nudibranchs ...

After the dive we headed back to the lodge, packed up the boat, and headed back to civilization. As we were unloading the boat in Port Hardy, the sun came out, the clouds disappeared, and we were once again treated to beautiful, sunny weather for the long drive home.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[TSandM]

I was on this trip, and I have to say . . . if you've thought about heading up that direction to dive, DO IT! I can't believe I waited so long to get up and see the breathtaking color and density of life that is there.

I wouldn't recommend doing it in March, though . . .

 

[JeffG]

Nice Pictures Bob.

 

[Underwater Ogre]

Beauty report...

 

[Darnold9999]

Great report, that must have been some storm as John is not shy about going out in weather.

November is not the best time either for exactly the same reason. We had great diving, but the trip back was extremely unpleasant. The skiff was full of water and our gear was soaked at the end. I spent almost the entire trip out on the back deck as inside I would have been sick.

Got a laugh at the diver losing their mask backrolling in. That diver was me at Seven Tree, fortunately someone had a spare in the skiff - a nice pink mask. Another diver retrieved mine at 140 or so he said. I had given it up for lost as by the time I got the spare we had drifted away from where I had lost mine and I wasn't prepared to go poking around at that depth looking. He was in doubles so was planning that deep a dive anyway.

At the Themes we had a group (20 or so) of sea lions visit. One of our group managed to get the nickname Chum - he got bitten twice in one dive. Once by a wolf eel and once by a sea lion. Put his hand on a girder to look closely at something (not the wolf eel) else and the wolf eel took exception to his hand at the edge of the den.

The sea lion was curious we figure and just took a nip out of the dry suit - ended the dive for him as it punched a couple of small holes.

This is truly one of the best diving spots around - this was my favourite dive trip of the year - whales on the surface, bald eagles everywhere, and the life is more than you can imagine. I have already booked next year's trip.

 

[BradnerBoy]

Fantastic pictures and a great story. Thanks for posting. You've whet my appetite for our trip to the Hideaway in September.

 

[kathydee]

Thanks for the report Bob. Sounds like quite an amazing trip. You're pictures are beautiful.

Congrats on dive 2,500 !

 

[DaleC]

Excellent dive report Bob! Nice pictures too :cool2:

 

[princessaprilia]

September was a perfect time to go! I was very lucky.

Glad you got up there again, Bob. I'm thinking Sep-Oct again this year.