shipwreck and other explorations

And we go on, deeper into the confusing web of logging roads. Let’s get started.

Haida people worked a hole into this tree to see if the wood would be straight enough to carve a canoe out of it.

It wasn’t, so they took down the tree right beside and started carving the canoe. From what I’ve heard, the Haida left it because of a massive population loss due to an introduced illness.

Next, we’ll see the fallen Golden Spruce. It was cut down in 1997 by a guy in protest against the logging industry. The huge media echo was due to the mutation that actually turned the needles of the Spruce golden and the role the tree played in Haida mythology. The fate of Grant Hadwin, the guy that cut the tree, actually remains unknown s he was last seen taking the his canoe from Prince Rupert over to Haida Gwaii in order to attend his trial. The crushed remains of his canoe were found later. There is a wikipedia article about it and also a whole book called “Golden Spruce”. There is a very well maintained trail leading to the opposite side of the river it’s laying by, however you have to cross the river on a fallen log to get a closer look.

And another thing you find in the forest of Haida Gwaii: An abandoned logging camp, probably a hundred years old. It’s situated right on the coast of the Masset Inlet, which made it very easy to transport the logs by just floating them. The forest around it has been lightly logged throughout several years until the workers then abandoned camp.

Now, just to break the “green pictures”, some black’n’white structure for you. The firekilled tree (most certanly by lightning strike) features some smaller seedling growing on him, but they themselves dried out, or at least don’t look very alive to me.

We’ll now go ahead and have a look at the Pesuta shipwreck, laying on east beach about five kilometers from Tlell. The 80 meter long log carrier run aground in a winter storm in 1928.

Just two more pictures to got before we close this post. First, the nice lil bonfire we had while camping near Tlell. Light conditions went really bad soon after this is taken. it went all cloudy and of course out there there isn’t any source to light them up from below.

And last, the first and only sunrise experience I had, since I was mostly staying up north near south beach (isn’t that confusing) most of the time. Nothing exciting, although the colors really worked out on that one.