Sailing to BC's most SURREAL Hot Springs! Sail-to-Soak Adventure Tour | A&J Sailing S3Ep.9
This is Bella Coola.. a remote Mountain Valley at the farthest reach of one of Canada's longest Oceanic Fjords. The gateway to the Great Bear Rainforest an area renowned for its incredible wildlife. Mountain peaks lost in clouds and crystal glacial water, the scenery here is a little out of this world! This is a place people dream of but often don't make it due to its remoteness and inaccessibility. Our journey here began days
ago when we made the 70 nautical mile journey up this 10,000 year old waterway carved out by glaciers of the last ice age. Sailing through squalls and thunderstorms to arrive here in this remote town at the end of the road. Rugged and wild join us on an unforgettable experience as we journey to one of the most incredible places you might never get to. Good morning we just left the marina in Bella Coola and we've already spotted a whale ahead of our boat. I was just trying to get the boat up ahead on the radio to let him know that a whale is there. Such an awesome way to start the day, it is so beautiful here!
We are currently on our way to Tallheo Hot Springs where we plan to drop the hook for the day and enjoy what is meant to be one of the most incredible hot springs on the coast. Super excited it's looking like it's going to be a really nice day.. it's still pretty calm and settled here but the sun is trying to poke through so that's awesome. I'm just going to make some coffee because it's still early and we're pretty tired. [Music] Just enjoyed some coffee and breakfast underway.. one of my favorite things about living and cruising around on this coast is the amount of wild salmon you get to enjoy. We've had salmon almost every day.. the salmon are everywhere right now,
people are fishing and they have surplus salmon that they want to give you and then we've also been gifted a lot of canned salmon.. we've been having it for breakfast lunch dinner.. pretty awesome yeah it's really a problem that you want to have is like your boat listing to one side because there's too much canned salmon on board.. we also have some canned elk and clams and pulled pork so we're eating well on the ship oh [Music] yeah [Music] We're just arriving at the uh intersection of the head of Burke Channel North Bentinck and South Bentinck and it's kind of where the three arms meet here in kind of like a crossroads of the waterway.. there's still no wind yet this morning which I think is awesome
because it'll give us a chance to stop at the hot springs on on the way in.. you can see from all the low lying cloud that there hasn't even been enough of a breeze to really lift it up over the hills yet so that's a pretty good indication that it's going to be calm for the next couple of hours still if it does start to blow though from this point onwards it would be blowing into the inlets so as we come around the corner here into the South Bentinck Arm we would be then sailing down wind again for the rest of the way which is pretty well perfect Glaciers have dramatically left their mark on the landscape here scouring out old river valleys into u-shaped fjords like this one stretching 100 km deep into the heart of the coastal mountain range.. these mountains some of the largest in BC are part of the legendary Pacific Ring of Fire a tectonic belt of volcanoes circling the Pacific Ocean.. geothermal Hot Springs like the one we're journeying to today are evidence of
this mysterious volcanic activity.. truly a land formed by fire and transformed by ice. I'm glad that we've timed it pretty well this morning to come out on the calm and we're arrived here and it's still calm and that we're going to have an opportunity to go explore the hot springs this morning [Music] We're just coming up on Tallheo Hot Springs here and it is still really really deep like we're in 650 ft of water and you know the shore is just there anchoring here is really exposed because the wind will funnel straight up the channel towards where you're anchored and basically just drag your bow straight off the shelf there is a little bit of a spit that comes out and we've understand that we're meant to Anchor in about 30 ft of water fairly close either just off the spit or just tucked in behind the spit so we're going to have a real good scout out around the area kind of work out where we are it's getting a little bit later in the day and you can we can already start to feel the wind blow into the channel you can see the clouds are starting to lift up off the side of the hills and are definitely tracking a little bit faster but we're going to have a good scout around test the holding um check it all out does Dr so we're in about 40 ft of water here which is actually pretty good there's a little Landing Bay over there which I think you meant to tie your dinghy up to there's a little bridge that we can see I'm just going to do a quick little Scout around the shelf and just kind of get a approximation of it size and then we can work out where we're going to put the hook there we go graceful one two three seems always criminal to burn gas to do the 20 M to shore unfortunately it's a necessary safety because if the boat does drag and ends up down the inlet we need to be able to go get it and paddling after a boat that's drifting nah so we'll leave the outboard on so that we can recover our big boat in case we have to and here we are we're already here at Shore there you are landing party right here taada much closer than we thought makes me feel really good because we can keep an eye on the boat to make sure the boat doesn't drag and we can hot tub at the same time amazing it's like the perfect temperature wow oh my gosh this is crazy okay this could be my new favorite place it's not too hot it's not too cold totally Goldilocks temperature nobody here huh is that lovely this is the best thing ever wow and it's not salty it's not salty or sulfury could be the best hot springs on the coast so good [Music] how was that good coming back into the warm water from the cold water it's definitely where it's at it's crazy how you are climatized to the cold water never suspect that you'd always think that hoping in the cold water is like the hottest bit and I guess it is mentally but it actually feels really nice after being like that hot you know I tasted the ocean and like it's barely salty up here really yeah like it doesn't taste like ocean wow the fresh water sits on top of the salt cuz the salt is denser like you could drink it like it's it's is that fresh so we just made a really cool Discovery here when they built this and they put the concrete in to make this little retaining wall for this pool they put the imprint of a beer can into it so that you can sits there perfectly isn't that amazing what Forward Thinking Folks up here in bellula and we just found beer holder number two so this shall be my spot cheers guys nice big spot Pon it's beautiful and this is a stripy Pon also beautiful we're going to go motor over to the lasso Cove we may watch roll the line for goo while we're at it there's a little bit of an out flow wind this morning it's very gentle maybe like 5 six knots of wind we wanted to check out all of James sewing progress so we rolled at the head saale and we are cruising along at 2 and 1/2 knots we're told that it's better to catch salmon when you're not running the engine maybe this quiet trolling session will land us a COO we've had an amazing couple of days hanging out at tallo Hot Springs the weather has been so settled the last couple of days so we've been able to remain anchored in the middle of the inlet overnight in the morning there's some tour groups that come through yesterday there was a bachelorette party and today there's a bachelor party so we decided to haul up anchor and cruise over to larso Cove which is just about 2 and a half nautical miles from talho Hot Springs yeah it's going to be really cool to check out lasso Cove it's the only other protected Anchorage here in South bnck Arm so being anchored out in the soft holding in front of Tello Hot Springs totally fine for a few hours when it's nice and settled even overnight when it's settled but people drag there quite often um you're kind of on a leash or With the Wind from whichever way the wind's blowing so a lot of people go to lasso Cove lasso Bay camp 2 it's also known as and anchor there big mud flat and it's an Old Logging operation I think they still do log out of there if you go up the Logging Road there's a huge tree that's worth going and checking out that the old time log is left standing because it was just too big to cut down so we're told um unfortunately not many of them left in BC anymore it's a kind of a Travy that the entire Province used to be covered in these things and now they don't really exist anymore it's kind of like seeing a white rhus rhinoceros a white rhinoceros I'm Keen to go check it out go stretch the legs and then come back to Tello Hot Springs when it uh when it simmers down not in temperature but in the quantity of people we're just going to scout out of cross spot to drop a prawn trap uh I'm told it's pretty good prawning here um so we're going to see if we can catch another prawn or two for dinner we'll anchor up in the head of the bay after the traps dropped and we'll go find this big tree hang out for the afternoon wait through a period of slack come pull this trap then head back over to the hot springs for a soak so we're just going to do a couple of little Loops or about here check to make sure that the bottom floor actually matches the Contours on the turs and then we can work out where we want to drop our trap [Music] [Music] [Music] so we just dropped the hook in about 60 ft of water and the hook dug in right away super solid we backed down on it and it didn't budge and now we have our own private Lagoon here in front of the trail to the Big Cedar Tree very nice campsite here at the trail head the trail is nice and obvious which is always a blessing when you come to an Anchorage that says it has a trail some of them are less than obvious and you're just kind of like what this is just Bush that's more fun that is more fun but this is very well defined there's a park BC sign that says campsite and trail head and I mean it's gorgeous look at this turquaz Bay the Flies are a little intense um but that's cool it's their time to shine let's go check out this tree we'll head up the [Music] trail so we walked like a kilometer up a deactivated Logging Road and then jumped off where it said trail and I think we're coming out to the big tree oh yeah I think I see it that is the biggest one I've ever seen oh my God that thing is massive wow we've seen some big trees but they say this one's the biggest in Canada of wow like that's so massive this thing is a behemoth Goliath tree stretching well into the sky and over 19 m in diameter this is an iconic Western red cedar one of the largest left in British Columbia over a thousand years old it's up there with some of the oldest organisms on Earth it's crazy to think that we'll only get to experience a few Generations while this being has stood and witnessed upwards of 80 to 100 Generations we felt humbled and in awe even after falling to the forest floor it'll remain here for centuries due to Natural defenses that make it resistant to rotten Decay and this superpower only increases with age here it'll become a lifegiver or nurse log for Nutri trees to grow into eternity quite literally the Tree of Life as it's known by Coastal First Nations people whose material and Supernatural world has depended on its Woods sustaining them since time and Memorial highly valued by the logging industry there are very few of these old growth forests left virtually wiped from our ecosystem over the last 200 years this is one of the last few remaining Giants and more than ever forests like this need to be protected well what do we have here it's a bit of a random concoction for lunch but there is fasha that we made last night there is buoy that we made last night and we have a prawn a prawn each how was your one and only prawn one prawn definitely leaves you wanting more there's so many flies here so many FES here I don't know if this will be a tonight Anchorage with this many fliers I don't know if it can be there's literally like I've killed a dozen yeah horse flies and oh my God he's still living how is he still alive he dead now buddy that's the thing with these anchorages with no wind yeah the cockpit is littered in big fly carcasses it's [Music] wild hoping that the sight and smells of this Carnage will deter the others from wanting to bother us so going to leave these guys out here as a big message tell your friends tell your friends flies don't come mess with us if it's this bad we'll probably have to leave because we just killed like 40 in I don't know 10 [Music] minutes [Music] the weather in the inlet has been so settled the last few days we've been able to stay anchored here in front of the hot springs honestly I think we could stay here forever definitely want to come back to this place in future sadly I think the time has come to haul up anchor and continue on it's really hard to leave it's really really hard to leave I mean this could be like the best spot in BC for the entire Pacific Northwest I know it's a very bold statement but could possibly be true it's really hard to leave the next stop is also a hot spring so like it's just leaving one hot spring to go to another hot spring which is kind the awesome thing about the Discovery Coast or as I'm going to start recalling it the sail to soak Coast where you can sail downwind up inlets to places you can soak in the winter it could be S to ski sure there's some great Back Country Touring up here coming here in the winter would be really cool I doubt it's as settled though so could be a little dicier it's important to hydrate when you're in the hot springs out of all the places worth being I would 100% do this trip again it's just worth it to to come up here it's beautiful you get to soak in the hot springs this is amazing 10 out of 10 I don't know what else to say about it where else can you sit in a hot tub in a f with turquoise Waters Mountain views and settled weather you can't really ask for very much more in [Music] lifee and the wind is gently ringing brings the [Music] morning I'm scared it's like a slaughter house it is teaming with black flies I'm like legit concerned that these things might just like grab me by the Cuffs of my shoulders and like fly off with me to their lir did you ever read Kurt bonic at slaughter house number five no yeah it reminds me of that
2023-11-20 23:05
