San Juan River - Port Renfrew
The San Juan River flows gently from the west slopes of southern Vancouver Island through thick forests with abundant wildlife and into the Straight of Juan de Fuca. Our goal was to take three kids, three photographers and one mom, pack them and all their gear into two old canoes and run the 15k stretch of the river that flows eventually into Fairy Lake a few miles before the San Juan gushes into the Pacific.
Late summer is the ideal time for family adventuring on Vancouver Island. The summer heat has diminished but the consistent rain, shortening daylight and clouds of fall have yet to intrude. The local wildlife is also busily preparing for a fast approaching winter. Salmon swim methodically upstream, making their final journey from the Pacific and into the San Juan to spawn and die. Black bear dot the banks of the river, fattening themselves on blackberries and salmon stranded in the shallows. Heron watch it all from the sky or a perch on a tree near the banks looking for an opportunistic meal. Unseen to us, thankfully, cougars stalk their prey in this wild habitat, ideal for Vancouver Islands top predator.
Any trip into the outdoors is logistically difficult, but when you involve kids under ten those difficulties are magnified ten-fold. We knew things would be forgotten, the hope was these items would be things we could live without. We ended up only forgetting one paddle and a cooking pot. We could live without these, of course, but that meant one canoe, powered by a single paddler was much slower and we would be forced to cook hot-dogs in our tea kettle.
The West Coast Road (Highway 14) to Port Renfrew was familiar territory. Waves were picking up at Jordan River and surfers flocked there after a summer starved of consistent surf. The road is rife with bears and most times driving this stretch we are lucky enough to see them foraging on the side of the road. No luck this time. Once in Renfrew we headed east up Harris Creek Main, a mix of pavement and mountainous, bouncy gravel logging roads that will challenge your transmission and eventually dump you out on the east slopes of Vancouver Island near Lake Cowichan. Take the Old Port Renfrew Road off of Harris Creek Main Line and follow that to the campground and access to the river.
The put-in for the river trip is about 15 kilometers up the Harris Creek Main. There are campsites right at the put-in spot and it’s a great staging ground to sort gear and pack canoes. A lone, massive spruce, standing majestically in the campground tells the story of what this landscape looked like before widespread logging reduced the old-growth to minimal stands. Second and third growth dominates the forests now. But this one towering spruce informs us of the magnitude of what used to be here.
The adults pack canoes and shuttle cars to the final destination at Fairy Lake. The kids entertain themselves by skipping rocks on the calm river and collecting the abundant, tiny frogs that congregate along the banks. Before long we are off and paddling making good time on a slow but steadily moving river.
That is until the portages start. Late summer means low water, which makes a river trip with kids safer but forces the adults to often abandon ship and drag the canoes through the ubiquitous shallow sections. At first the portages seem oppressive and all too frequent, but as we make our way into the journey the river deepens and we get better at picking lines to avoid the shallows. And besides once our feet are wet the portages seem less arduous.
As we paddle on we see a bear on the banks off in the distance. The bears scamper into the brush on the banks as we approach. The only mom on our trip, responsible for two of the three kids in our midst, is sure we will all be eaten alive. She’s originally from Iceland where if bears do appear they are of the Polar variety and yes will probably eat you. But Vancouver Island black bear are, if not provoked, harmless, and we pass without incident.
The river teems with Salmon, which despite their imminent demise seem to be darting around the river and energetically flopping up the rapids to spawn with vigor. They have lost their silver color and are turning shades of red and purple, a sure sign that the end is near.
We begin to realize time may not be on our side. As the sun approaches the western horizon casting a golden hue on the river we start to conjure the nightmare scenario of getting benighted and not making our campsite by dark. We naively left all our camping gear with the car we dropped at the Fairy Lake campground. So here we are, it’s getting dark and cold, we have no clue how far we still have to paddle, and if it gets dark there is no use in continuing. We dig our paddles into the river and pull back hard fueled by worry and the desire to avoid camping out with no sleeping bags and three cold kids.
And then far downstream, as dusk settles in, we see the salmon gate that marks the entrance to the lake. We’ve made it. We paddle across the lake and hit the shores of the campground just as darkness pervades. Soon we have a fire built, the hotdogs are in the tea kettle and marshmallows bounce on sticks over the flames.
Story by Matt Kelley
Photography: Snorri Gunnarsson - Greg Miller - Matt Kelley
Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value.