by Keith and Heather Nicol
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| Heather enroute to Tree Island |
Tree Island is located off the northern tip of Denman Island
and makes a perfect half day paddle (or longer if you plan to explore the
island or want to linger). We do the trip on an annual basis and usually launch
at the Union Bay Boat launch. This makes
it easy to launch your kayak and there is a large car park for your vehicle
(GPS coordinates are: 10 U 0363691 E
5494107 N). Be sure to drop your launch fee money in the box. From here you
can’t quite see Tree Island but as soon as you take a few paddle strokes out of
the harbour it looms 4.4 km in the distance. Since it is an open water crossing
you want to factor in the weather and wave conditions and be competent at doing
a self rescue if you run into trouble.
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| A moon snail egg casing is in the foreground |
On Sunday, June 16 the wind forecast was
for light NE winds which made for a very pleasant trip to Tree Island since the
breeze was in our face keeping us cool. Although temperatures were in the low
20’s C the following wind made it quite warm on the
return trip. Be sure to bring water! We saw very little wild life in terms of
birds or seals but we had fine views of the snow capped mountains of the BC
mainland in the distance as we paddled toward the island. When we arrived at Tree Island due to the very low
tide we had to paddle to the Denman Island end of the island to have a sandy
beach to land on. And it being Father’s Day there were lots of other boats enjoying a lunch or snack on the island. We counted 5 power and sailboats pulled up
while we had our lunch. We also saw lots of sand dollars and some interesting
moon snail egg casings which looked like pottery vases. They were exposed due to the very low tide. We
recommend this trip because of the sandy beach and scenery but do keep an eye
to the weather. Allow about 1 hour each
way for paddling depending on wind and wave conditions.
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| Several other boats were also at Tree Island on Sunday |
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