Canadian travel blog Toque & Canoe  is running a story about a schooner trip I took to the remote Kitlope Heritage Conservancy in Haisla Traditional Territory, in northern British Columbia.

For the last four years now, I’ve been travelling to the Great Bear Rainforest region on the central and northern coast of British Columbia for a book project about Sasquatch lore among the region’s indigenous residents. Known in the Haisla language as “Huchsduwachsdu Nuyem Jees”, the Kitlope is among the most far-flung and hard to access areas along an already remote coast.

In addition to receiving environmental protection in the mid-1990s, is also an area historically known for Sasquatch activity—some of which has been written about by the late Bella Coola Nuxalk bear guide and author Clayton Mack. The Haisla, too, who live near and travel into the area on occasion, and whose old village sites cluster at the mouth of the Kitlope River, have similar stories. The conservancy is home to one of the world’s largest remaining intact coastal temperate rainforests.

Given the difficult access and the priority of covering other communities for my book, I never reached that specific area.

The opportunity to visit the Kitlope finally came when I joined an expedition aboard the Maple Leaf, a century-old schooner travelling into the region through the spectacular fjords of the British Columbia coast. Our destination was Kitlope Lake, a distant body of water and area that Haisla elder Cecil Paul called “The Cathedral.” Reaching it would depend on favourable river conditions, which were anything but guaranteed.

The resulting article for Toque and Canoe, entitled “Exploring Canada’s Kitlope: The Jewel in the Crown of the Great Bear Rainforest” is a rumination about the power of nature and the importance of cultivating awe in our lives. You can read it here on my website under the title of “Into the Kitlope: A Journey Through the Great Bear Rainforest.“

Postscript 2019: My book about Bigfoot lore in the Great Bear Rainforest, entitled In the Valleys of the Noble Beyond: In Search of the Sasquatch has been published by Grove Atlantic and is available everywhere for purchase.