Hello, Sunshine

SUNSHINE COAST, B.C. – Somewhere near Deserted River, our pilot begins to circle, nosing the floatplane toward the water like an eagle closing in on a salmon dinner. Below, two small figures, one dressed in sunflower-yellow fleece, wave wildly from a one-slip dock that butts up against dense forest. “I don’t know if those are the people I’m supposed to pick up or not,” Chad Dodds yells to his four passengers over the engine’s roar. “I’ll drop down and see. Sometimes people just come out to wave at me because they don’t see many people up here.”

James Neal does, indeed, want a ride. He’s been visiting his mom, who’s been staying in a backcountry cabin and hiking this wilderness for weeks. Now it’s time to end a brief holiday with her and get back home to Tampa, Fla., and his computer job.

Not long ago, only the hardiest of souls made their way into the fjord-fractured coastal country northwest of Vancouver, B.C., even though it’s only minutes from the city by yacht, ferry or floatplane.

But these days, both baby boomers and 20-somethings like Neal are discovering equal parts heart-pounding adventure and soul-satisfying culture in its lush forests, serene island communities and glacier-strewn highlands.

Canadians call it the Sunshine Coast. They say its location in the rain shadow of mountains west across Georgia Strait allows it 2,400 hours of sunshine a year, nearly 500 hours more than Vancouver and 400 more than Toronto. To put it another way, that’s 200 sunny 12-hour days a year — many more than most of this soggy corner of North America can expect.

The Sunshine Coast stretches through 100 miles of jaw-dropping mountain scenery along the Strait of Georgia from the seaside village of Gibsons — 10 miles north through Howe Sound from Vancouver — to the forested tip of the Malaspina Peninsula.

This is what the rest of the coastal region of British Columbia was like 50 years ago, before Vancouver and Victoria sprouted skyscrapers and close-cropped suburbs. It’s still naturally rugged, with a slow pace and a recently transplanted artsy heart.

The only way to get here from the city is by air or water. Ferries, not bridges, link segments of Highway 101 as it rambles northwestward from Vancouver.

For the past decade, Dodds has made daily flights up the Sunshine Coast, transporting loggers who shave the hillsides for lumber to build houses in Japan and the occasional wilderness junkie coming to kayak, climb, hike or fish in solitude.

Most tourists bypassed the area, heading instead for the hip ski culture of Whistler Mountain to the northeast or the exotic wildernesses of the Yukon or Alaska to the north.

But now, Dodds acknowledges (and tourism officials who track this sort of thing from Vancouver agree), a new way of experiencing the Sunshine Coast is gaining popularity. They’re calling it “eco-cultural tourism.” A better term might be “roughing it lite.”

To give the boomers what they want, artists and entrepreneurs have flooded into the region, opening pottery shops, art galleries, B&Bs and rustic lodges. And First Nations people, as Canadians call their original inhabitants, are adding a native touch.

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The first stop for the Sunshine Coast’s eco-cultural experience is Langdale, near Gibsons, a 40-minute island-studded ferry ride from Vancouver. Twice a day Dodds eases his floatplane out of the Langdale harbor to fly loggers to work, take visitors like Neal in and out of the wilderness, or give tourists a two-hour bird’s-eye view of the area.

It’s a great way to get an idea of just how untouched this coastline is. Glacier-spawned mountains, capped in ice, drop precipitously to water’s edge. Waterfalls course down steep mountainsides like faucets running at full bore.

Even at 1,000 feet, we can pick out the splash of seals in inlets below. All signs of human activity huddle near shore. A logging road snakes up a denuded hillside; a plume of smoke wafts from a woodsy cabin; a rickety dock juts into the water.

Dodds’ stops have colorful names: Earle Creek, Stakawuus, Malibu, Deserted River.

It’s uncharacteristically overcast as he makes his last touchdown at Odyssey Camp, near Deserted River. The logging camp consists of a weather-stained black-and-white barge tied to shore, a dilapidated dock for the floatplane and a raft of fresh logs, mostly cedar and hemlock. A helicopter hovers nearby. It’s just dumped a load of freshly cut timber from the inland forest into the water. Tugboats will tow it from here to nearby mills.

Dodds drops off one worker in standard uniform: logger-plaid, thick red suspenders and enormous, scruffy boots. He pulls a 12-pack of Budweiser from under the pilot’s seat, where he’d stashed it before takeoff.

The beer, Dodds explains, is a “docking fee” for the logging crew, who live for weeks at a time in Odyssey’s bunk-barge.

At the end of the run, Dodds puts the floatplane down again at Langdale, where we pick up our car and drive to Gibsons for one of the “lite” parts of roughing it on the Sunshine Coast.

Gibsons and Roberts Creek, a sister community just up the beach, are art-driven and crafts-possessed. Of the 4,000 people who live here, some 400 claim a modicum of fame and compensation as artists or artisans. Many belong to the Coast Cultural Alliance, founded six years ago to foster the passion of potters, painters, jewelers, sculptors and glassblowers. They fly purple banners in front of their studios to let tourists traveling by car know they’re welcome to drop in.

“There’s something blossoming here for the arts,” says Erin Dolman, a jeweler who moved to Roberts Creek a year or so ago from Vancouver with her husband, Eric Montgomery, a sculptor and glass artist.

“It was getting hard to get inspired in the city,” she says as she shows a grouping of silver pendants with a slightly aboriginal, flying-crow motif. “In the city it was all pop culture. Here I look out from my studio and see fruit trees and my pond out back. Nature inspires me now.”

A few miles up the coast from Gibsons and Roberts Creek, road signs point tourists to more “eco” endeavors. By the time we get to Egmont, we’ve passed a number of dive camps, fishing lodges and kayak- and bike-rental shops.

Two couples, Paul and Patti Hansen and Ian and Donna Hobbs, have built guest lodges offering city slickers outdoor adventure and creature comfort. (Hansen calls it “camping for grown-ups.”)

There’s a guided wilderness experience for every day of a stay in the guest lodges. Gourmet dinners are often something fresh-caught just offshore.

The Hansens run West Coast Wilderness Resort, a rustic, wisteria-draped lodge just outside Egmont, an upcoast settlement overlooking the intersection of two of the region’s main water arterials, Jervis and Sechelt inlets.

Turbulent Skookumchuck Narrows is nearby. “Skookum” means strong in Chinook, the language of the Sechelt First Nations people who still live in the nearby town that bears their name; “chuck” means waters.

The natives were right. At slack, the water appears calm, but when the tide rushes into the cramped intersection, it creates yawning whirlpools that have claimed boats and lives. On a 10-foot tide, 200 billion (yes, that’s a B) gallons of water gush through the narrow opening to become one of the fastest-flowing tidal currents in the world.

These waters are popular with kayakers, but they keep their distance when the rapids come in with the tide twice a day. It is a popular sight to see, and visitors can take a boat or hike to a hill overlooking the strong water.

The coast is unbelievably rich in animal life. Sea lions bask on sunbaked beaches. Low tide uncovers starfish and sea anemones in a rainbow of colors. The world’s largest octopuses haunt the shores.

Chiton, a shellfish shaped like a Chinese laborer’s hat and usually about as big as the bowl of a teaspoon, grow so big here, Hansen says, that “it takes two hands to pick them up.” Bald eagles perch on snags along the shore to watch for salmon in crystal waters. And, of course, there are the black-and-white orca, also known as killer whales.

Once, Hansen tells visitors, he and a group of kayakers came upon what they thought was a big log bobbing in the water not far from the narrows, “except it was going so fast we knew it wasn’t just floating.”

They paddled over and came nose to snout with a black bear swimming for shore.

“I never saw anything like that in my life,” Hansen says, shaking his head. “We have magic moments like that up here.”

Don’t tell Hansen you’ve never hiked before, haven’t biked since sixth grade and wouldn’t consider hauling yourself 20 feet up a rock precipice. He doesn’t believe in “can’t.”

His most memorable kayak partner was an 88-year-old woman who paddled out to a postage-stamp island just off the beach in hopes of seeing one of those giant octopuses.

“I don’t care how old you are. I don’t care how much you weigh. With me, anyone can kayak that far,” he insists.

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At Earls Cove, a 15-minute drive from Egmont, a ferry takes us across Jervis Inlet to Saltery Bay, where hikers can pick up the Sunshine Coast Trail.

The trail meanders over forested hillsides and loops around inland lakes on its way, 100 miles in all, past Lund, the last of the Sunshine Coast villages, to the tip of Malaspina Peninsula, the upper reach of the Sunshine Coast.

Lund is literally the end of the road for most Sunshine Coast visitors. Fishermen and yachters take off from here for Desolation Sound and more remote island groups to the north. But Highway 101 stops at the Lund Hotel, just short of running into the sea.

The Hobbses’ Sevilla Island Resort is separated from Lund by 100 yards of oyster beds, some of which dry to a prickly pathway at low tide. Guests are picked up at the town dock in a 20-foot aluminum skiff. There’s room on the island for only nine houses, including the resort.

Hobbs is still something of a tenderfoot in these parts, an easterner who carried a briefcase to work in Toronto before “retiring” and moving with Donna to Lund. But he is the gourmet chef-cum-wilderness guide for guests who rent the resort’s four rooms. When he doesn’t have his guests out hiking the Sunshine Coast Trail, biking at nearby Savary Island or diving offshore, he’s motoring them out in the skiff to pull shrimp pots and crab traps or pick up oysters on a deserted island beach.

Hobbs’ neighbors, members of the Sliammon Nation, recently acquired majority interest in the Lund Hotel. Since 1977, the 900 tribal members have run a fish hatchery near Powell River. Last year 30,000 chum salmon returned to spawn in Sliammon Creek.

Now the band is combining the two enterprises into cultural tours. They include a visit to the workshop of Jackie Timothy, a master carver of totem poles whose artistry is recognized at coastal townships and far-flung museums. He has applied for an internship at the Field Museum in Chicago to help oversee the return of art and remains to native people along the coast. But for now he oversees apprentices working on totem poles for the seawalk at Powell River.

A masked eye with a pupil of abalone shell emerges from a yellow cedar log he’s been working on. It represents the survival of the culture of the Salish people, the coastal groups to which the Sliammon belong, he says.

The visit with the Sliammon people also includes a tour of the hatchery a few miles down the road at the village of Sliammon. Afterward tribal members gather along the banks of the creek below the hatchery to show visitors how to weave baskets and carve masks, canoes and bentwood boxes. Some bring drums for dancing later. Everyone grabs a plate when the salmon, slow-cooked over an alder campfire, is ready. It’s served with silky Indian bread and boiled potatoes.

“We try to exploit the culture a little bit,” says Scott Galligos, a fish data coordinator at the hatchery who sometimes invites visitors to tag along when he leads school groups on cross-cultural treks. “Kids will see a dead fish and don’t realize salmon die after spawning. So we’re explaining the birds and bees to them. We try to be careful about it, though.”

Everyone stops eating to watch Ivan Rosypskye, a native of the town of Bella Bella up the coast, “dance” a mask he just finished carving. The mask portrays a “wild woman of the woods,” and his wife cut her own hair to attach to it for extra meaning.

Rosypskye dances Indian-style to the thrumming beat of a native drum, turning tight circles around the picnic tables where elders and travelers sit.

“When you make the first full turn of your dance with the mask, it becomes you,” drummer Eric Blaney explains later. “You imagine how that figure would be in the wild and that becomes the dance you do.”

As we examine a canoe created by tribal members, Rosypskye wanders over.

“We’re trying to make visitors want to come here,” he says. “My grandfather always told me you can tell if people are prosperous by how many canoes they have in the water. Before long, we hope to have lots of canoes in the water here.”