Photos by Margo Pfeiff / Special to The Chronicle

Visitors observe totem poles, one of the major attractions of Ninstints Island. Also known as Sgan Gwaii, Ninstints is a tiny island at the far southern tip of the archipelago in British Columbia.

By Margo PfeiffSpecial to The Chronicle

Ninstints, British Columbia

Moss, moss everywhere. Meandering lushly uptree trunks, it envelops woodpiles, grows moss-Afros atop fence posts and encroaches on the

cedar plank pathway I’m hiking through a rain forest ofSitka spruces so big they could be simultaneously huggedby a dozen people.

Then, just ahead, a pair of huge eyes stares at me andmy heart does a little jig. An unmistakable eagle’s face,craggy and weathered, peers out from a bleached silvertotem pole eerily naked in a green clearing. And then Isee the others, the only cluster of ancient totems stillstanding. And like my first encounter with giraffes in theAfrican bush and seeing the hilltop enclave of MachuPicchu, these poles pack a spiritual punch in real life thatI never get from even the best documentary footage.

Seventy miles off the north coast of British Columbia,the Queen Charlotte Islands — a.k.a. “the Charlottes” or,

Attention-getting sights include, from left, a sign in Tlell, the eagle atop Bill Reid’s totem in Skidegate and a Haida man’s tattoo in Old Masset.

NATURALLY BEAUTIFULQueen Charlotte Islands offernative culture and history, too

1 QUEEN CHARLOTTE: Page E4

TRAvELABCD | 9.21.2008 | Section E

o o o

AnMGMMIRAGE Property

TRANS-SIBERIANORCHESTRANovember 14October4

SOYOUTHINKYOUCANDANCEOctober10SANTANA

October 11REBA & KELLY CLARKSON

October12JEFF DUNHAM

November 1NEIL YOUNG

COMING

All performances arein theDowntownRenoEvents Center.

TURKS & CAICOS, E2IKE-BATTEREDISLANDS BEGINSLOW RECOVERY

NEW MEXICO, E6NATION’S FIRSTWILDERNESS ATIME CAPSULE

OREGON, E8REMOTE, RUGGEDCAPE PERPETUABEST IN AUTUMN

E4 ABCD SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2008

increasingly, “Haida Gwaii” in thenative Haida tongue — are just 20miles shy of the Alaska Panhandle.To get there, you can fly fromVancouver or take a ferry acrossHecate Strait from Prince Ruperton the B.C. mainland. The cruiseon B.C. Ferries is likely the bestapproach, with 6! hours at sea tomellow down to the local’s pace.

My sister and I came forglimpses of long-abandoned Hai-da village sites with their topplingtotems. They’re now protectedwithin Gwaii Haanas NationalPark, a wilderness covering mostof the southern tip of this blade-shaped archipelago.

We wanted to walk wild beach-es and hike in some of the conti-nent’s most verdant rain forest,which is drenched in 51 annualinches of rain. Also on the agendawas taking in the resurgence ofHaida culture, a bit of fishing andsome whale-watching.

And we had our fingers crossedfor a sighting of the elusive migra-tory tufted puffin because neitherof us had ever seen a puffin in theflesh.

The Queen Charlottes arecomposed of two main islands —Graham and, to the south, Mores-by — and 1,500 surrounding islets.Only about 120 miles of pavedroads connect the seven commu-nities, the biggest being QueenCharlotte City, population 1,000.

Tourism is relatively new here.This means things are costly andthe only five stars you’ll see will beon a rare cloud-free night sky.

And the experience is not, asthey say, for everybody. “Peopleneed to make sure they know whatthis place is about before they goto the effort and expense of com-ing here,” said Parks Canadaspokeswoman Nathalie Fournier.

Stormy winter weather dictatesa short visitor season — from lateJune to early September — soplanning and booking far ahead isessential. It’s not too soon to beginbooking a trip for 2009.

Super-size meEverything in the Charlottes is

super-sized, from trees and bears(the biggest black bears in NorthAmerica) to seaweed, scallops andrecord salmon that draw folks forsome of the world’s best sportsfishing. You can hire a Masset fish-erman or head to one of the exclu-sive luxury lodges on Langara Is-land off the north coast.

We zipped over to one of them,

the West Coast Fishing Club, byhelicopter, scattering tame deeroff the landing pad. The lodge isan elegant, manly place that en-courages catch and release by of-fering world-class Haida art in ex-change for letting your 40-pound-er go. But I didn’t have to makethat decision because, as usual,nothing nibbled. We blamed apair of killer whales patrolling inthe distance and switched to deep-er water halibut gear. I found my-self childishly overjoyed to snag amodestly sized specimen, an expe-rience akin to hauling a fridgedoor from the ocean depths.

Masset is a no-frills fishingtown of loggers and fishermen,hippies and Haida, like the rest ofthe island. It sits alongside Nai-koon Provincial Park, a vast ex-panse of beach and forest occupy-ing the northeast corner of Gra-ham Island. We quickly becameaccustomed to the on-and-offlight rain showers that are theCharlottes’ trademark weatherpattern as we beachcombed foragates, chatted with crab seekersand poked around a shipwreck.

Great coffee is generally a rar-ity in remote places, but we foundit everywhere here, even at MoonOver Naikoon, an offbeat, off-the-electrical-grid cafe/informalwhale museum in the middle ofNaikoon’s rain forest, where wemet guide Andrew Merilees over afair trade Java and still-warm cin-namon buns.

Merilees took us to nearby OldMasset, one of the island’s two re-maining native communities.

“There were once over 500 Hai-da communities in the islands,with a population of over 7,000,”he said.

The Haida were fierce warriorsand traders, with a rich culture af-forded by a bountiful land. In thelate 1800s, though, a series ofsmallpox epidemics reduced theirpopulation to less than 700. Re-markably, their culture didn’t dis-appear and has been undergoing agrowing revival for 50 years.

Artists here encourage homevisits, so we dropped in on silver-smiths, carvers of argillite — ablack, coal-like stone — and to thehome of Joyce Bennett, a fourth-generation button-blanket maker.Sarah’s Haida Arts and Jewelry, in astylized longhouse in Old Masset,sells the works of dozens of artists.

A canoe in the forestWe headed south with Merilees

toward Port Clements, a strug-gling logging town with a pioneermuseum. Years ago loggers came

across a huge, partially completedcanoe in the forest, and called inanthropologists. Sleek thoughmossy, it is one of more than 30found in the islands.

“The trees were selected, felledand partially hollowed out beforebeing moved on log rollers to thewater,” Merilees said.

They were then filled with hotstones and water to steam themopen. Canoes as long as 60 feetwere the Haida’s most valuabletrading tool, and they have beenfound as far afield as NorthernCalifornia.

Along with standing cedarsfrom which strips of bark wereharvested years ago to weave bas-kets and hats, the canoes are offi-cially dubbed CMTs — CulturallyModified Trees — and the Haidaare presently using GPS to maptheir sites as evidence to back theirnative land claims.

At the southern end of GrahamIsland, 70 miles from Masset, Ski-degate is the islands’ second nativecommunity. In August it hostedthe official opening of a $26 mil-lion Haida Heritage Centre, an el-egant and insightful complex in-cluding a museum, traditionalamphitheatre and canoe/totemcarving shed.

Six totems erected out frontwere created by master carverswho worked with apprenticeslearning the ancient skills.

There is also the Bill Reid Teach-ing Centre, named after the iconicpart-Haida artist who spearheadedthe current revival in Haida carvingbeginning in the 1950s and whosemonumental works are showcasedat Canada’s embassy in WashingtonD.C., in Vancouver’s airport and onthe Canadian $20 bill.

The Heritage Centre stretchesalong a crescent of pebble beach, acontemporary rendering of a se-ries of longhouses echoing thehaunting black and white archivalphotos of once-thriving Haida vil-lages, a line of totems and the fam-ily canoes parked out front.

Home of the HaidaIt is the remnants of those old

villages that we set off to see nextafter a short ferry ride south toMoresby Island, where we joinedMoresby Explorers for a four-daytrip into Gwaii Haanas NationalPark.

A reserve jointly managed byParks Canada and the Council ofthe Haida Nation, it compriseshundreds of small islands accessi-ble only by float plane and boat

A zodiac is the most efficientway to see the park. With ourtrusty 23-year-old guide, LauraPattison, a sharp homeschooledlocal, we zoomed to sites of oldcopper mines, the ruins of canner-ies and logging operations thatonce clear-cut these lush rain for-ests.

In 1985, the widely publicizedLyell Island blockade of clear-cutlogging operations was the impe-tus for the park’s establishment onsouth Moresby a few years later.

This is often called “the Gala-pagos of the North,” a major sea-bird stopover where eagles are socommon locals call them “chick-ens.”

We spotted humpback whalesfrom Hawaii gorging themselvesen route to Alaska; pilot whales;bears and teenage Stellar sea lionsgoofing off in the water whiletheir parents’ syncopated gruntsfilled the air from a nearby rock.The sea life was lush, too, a Tech-nicolor underwater forest ofanemones and sea stars brighten-ing the shallows of Burnaby Nar-rows.

During the 21 hours of daylightin summer, we soaked in naturalpools on Hotspring Island and vis-ited the old village of T’anuuwhere huge, fallen roof beamsand poles are distinct mossy bulg-es on the forest floor, spanning thesunken interiors of once-spaciouslonghouses where extended fami-lies lived.

We spent two nights at Mores-by Explorers’ cozy wooden floathouse, complete with a propanefireplace and a cook whipping upfabulous meals. The third nightwas at a quirky, hippie-style guest-house on the site of the aban-doned Rose Harbour whaling sta-tion, where a pair of giant metal“bone digesters” — renderingdrums — rusted on the beach.Four thousand whales were “pro-cessed” here in the early 20th cen-tury, their meat and bones re-duced to fertilizer.

Totem forestNinstints, also known as Sgan

Gwaii, is a tiny island at the farsouthern tip of the archipelago,and I’d wanted to come to thisplace for decades. Tension built asI walked the boardwalk from thebeach through the rain forest, fol-lowing one of the Haida Watch-men who spend summers guard-ing and guiding the more popularsites in the park.

The highlight of the trip is thefirst glimpse of the clearing whereroughly a dozen totem poles tow-er, a stacked cedar menagerie ofkiller whales, ravens, beavers andbears. It’s clear that this is a specialplace, a sacred site for the Haidawho regard it as the resting placeof ancestors felled by smallpox.UNESCO also found it sacred in1981, when it declared it a WorldHeritage Site as the best preservedremaining First Nations (what Ca-nadians call Indians) village any-where, abandoned when therewere only a handful of survivors inthe 1880s.

It was hard to imagine the tripcould get any better as we leftSgan Gwaii. But then an ungainlyflock of five birds suddenly liftedoff the waves ahead of our zodiac.Chunky orange beaks and a brightyellow Mohawk flapping in thebreeze could mean only one thing— tufted puffins.

“Well spotted,” exclaimed oneof the guests in a British bird-watchers’ plumiest accent as thebirds flapped in a circle around us.

“Check!” we chimed in as“twitchers” do, ticking anothergreat life experience off our lifelist.

Margo Pfeiff last wrote forTravel about Quebec City. Tocomment, visit sfgate.com/traveland follow the links.

If you goGETTING THERE

Air Canada’s Tango subsidiary has two-hour flights from Vancou-ver to Sandspit in the Queen Charlottes. www.aircanada.com.Fares run around $360 CND (US $339) round-trip.BC Ferries operates a 6!-hour ferry from the town of PrinceRupert, on the mainland, to Skidegate in the islands. (888) 223-3779, www.bcferries.com. One-way fare for a vehicle with twopassengers is about $160 CND (US $151).

WHERE TO STAY

Dorothy & Mike’s GuestHouse, Queen CharlotteCity, (250) 559-8439,www.qcislands.net/doro-mike. Serene, comfortablelodgings overlooking Skide-gate Inlet. Doubles from $58CND (US $55) with break-fast.Premier Creek Lodge,Queen Charlotte City, (250)559-8415 or (888) 322-3388, www.qcislands.net/premier. Funky renovatedhistoric town lodge. Doublesfrom $35 CND (US $33).Tlell River House, Tlell, (250) 557-421, www.tlellriverhouse-.com. Elegant field stone and wood lodge and spa on the TlellRiver. Doubles, $175 CND (US $165) per night with breakfast.Popular for river fishing.

WHERE TO EAT

Queen B’s Cafe, Queen Charlotte City, (250) 559-4463. Funkycafe/gallery, homemade food. Open daily. Lunch, $25 CND (US$23.50) per person; dinner (Thursday and Friday only), $40CND (US $37.75) per person.Purple Onion Deli, Queen Charlotte City, (250) 559-4119. Greatbreakfasts and deli sandwiches from $15 CND (US $14) fortwo.Keenawii’s Kitchen, Skidegate, (250) 559-8347. Haida culinaryexpert Roberta Olson “Keenawii” comes from a long line of tradi-tional food gatherers. She and her two teenage kids cooked upour best meal on the islands, a traditional Haida-style feast in-cluding octopus, seaweed, silky smoked black cod, cod souffleand much more. By appointment. $50 CND (US $47) per per-son.Trout House Restaurant and Bakery, Tow Hill, (250) 626-9330.Great food including halibut burgers, candied salmon focacciaand seafood chowder of the Gods. Local musicians on week-ends. Call to check seasonal hours. Open for dinner Friday andSaturday. From $25 CND (US $23.50) for two.Hidden Island RV & Resort Fish n Chips, Masset, (250) 626-5286. Eight tables in a tackle shop/diner in an RV park, whereyou dine on terrific fresh halibut and chips amid day-glo lures andfish bonkers. Lunch for two, $20 CND (US $19).

WHAT TO DO

Haida Gwaii Discovery, www.northwestrecreation.com, (250)626-3949 or (866) 626-3949. Day tours, $80 CND (US$75.50). Longer custom tours also available.Moresby Explorers, Sandspit, BC, (250) 637-2215 or (800)806-7633, www.mores-byexplorers.com. Four-day Gwaii Haanas Nation-al Park boat trip, $1,290CND (US $1,216) perperson. Advance reserva-tions essential.Haida Heritage Centre,Skidegate, www.haida-heritagecentre.com.Open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.Closed Sundays. Adults,$12 CND (US $11.30).

FOR MOREINFORMATION

Northern British Colum-bia Tourism Association,www.nbctourism.com, (800) 663-8843Haida Gwaii Tourism, www.haidagwaiitourism.caQueen Charlotte Visitor Centre, www.qcinfo.ca, (250) 559-8316

BRITISHCOLUMBIA

VancouverVancouver

C A N A D A

ALASKAALASKA

WASH.

VancouverIslandVancouverIslandPacific

OceanPacificc

QueenCharlotteIslands

0 200

M I L E S

Prince RupertPrince Rupert

VictoriaVictoria

The Chronicle

Five cool thingsabout the Queen Charlotte Islands1. The islands’ original Haida name was Xhaaidlagha Gwaayaai,“islands at the edge of the world.”2. The only naturally occurring golden Sitka spruce in the world,the 500-year-old “Golden Spruce,” was sacred to the Haidapeople. It was cut down in 1997 by a logging protester with ahistory of mental illness, who subsequently vanished while kay-aking to the islands for his trial.3. Fierce and feared warriors who raided coastal villages as faraway as California in enormous dugout war canoes powered byas many as 60 paddlers, the Haida were called “the Indian Vi-kings of the North West Coast” by an early anthropologist at theCanadian Museum of Civilization.4. A unique species of caribou once lived on Graham Island. Thelast one died off in the middle of the last century.5. The Web site of the Queen Charlotte Islands Chamber ofCommerce (www.qcislands.net/chamber) lists a tanning salon.

Enormous canoes are part of the islands’ history. Here is apartially carved one in the forest.

Operations Manager JasonAlsop stands at the new HaidaHeritage Centre in Skidegate.

Photos by Margo Pfeiff / Special to The Chronicle

Baby sealions are partof the region’svibrant sealife, above.Totem poleson NinstintsIsland are oneof the majorattractions,left.

A Haida Watchman at work on T’anuu. The Watchmen spendsummers guarding and guiding the more popular sites in the park.

The Charlottesshow off theirhistory, beauty1 QUEEN CHARLOTTEFrom Page E1

COVER STORY