At the end of August - beginning of September I paddled with five other people in the Saguenay fjord in Quebec. The fjord is about a hundred miles long. We paddled from a town with the charming name of La Baie des Ha! Ha! (honest!) to L'Anse de Saint Etienne, which is about ten nautical miles from mouth of the fjord at the St. Lawrence River. (Nautical Charts 1202 and 1203 in Canada).
At Le Baie the fjord is 120 meters deep, at places underway it was 300 meters deep. The cliffs on shore are sometimes 400 meters high where the fjord is half a nautical mile wide, so you can imagine how spectacular the scenery was.
This is what Quebec calls a "national park" (it is not a Canadian National Park), so permits are required and campsites are assigned. We saw one other kayak and shared a campsite with that kayak, a double, only one night. Very quiet. Each campsite that we used has six tent platforms, each of which can hold two 2 man tents and even three if you don't mind crossing guylines. No stakes are needed - each platform has wire cables around the perimeter to attach lines to. Each campsite has an outhouse too. I have camped in some really nice places on kayak trips. These campsites were among the most nicely placed I have ever seen. The view from the platforms was obviously chosen with great care - great views of the fjord.
There are bears in the area, but we never saw any signs of any and never hung our food in the trees. The best thing about the fjord is that it is a sanctuary for beluga whales. We saw minke whales as well, but the belugas were the stars of the show. At L'Anse de St. Etienne we literally had our kayaks bumped by them as they swam under us looking up right into our eyes.
The winds were epic for the whole trip. Fortunately, they were generally behind us, but they caused the less experienced members of the group some anxiety. One day we went downfjord from our campsite to look for belugas in a bay that they are supposed to always be in. Of course, they weren't. We had to paddle upwind to get back to our camp. The twenty minute outbound trip took ninety minutes back. At one point I had to tow one of the doubles because they were making no headway against the tide and wind. The marine radio said the winds were 35 knots. It was a good learning experience for me. I had never paddled a fully loaded boat in winds that strong before. I discovered that paddling up against the cliffs (sometime with closed eyes, Tom) is no different with a loaded boat than an empty one. Same with hand paddling and reverse paddling. The biggest difference was towing. That was just harder, not otherwise different.
We spent six nights in the fjord. After taking out there we went to the town of Les Escoumins and spent three night in the cottages there rented by L'Essipit, the commercial enterprise of the local tribe. These cottages are simple A-Frames right on the St. Lawrence. This part of the St. L is a marine sanctuary. About a quarter mile off shore it gets to be almost 300 meters deep. This canyon attracts whales like crazy. We saw belugas, humpbacks, fins, and minkes while were sitting on our front porch. Blue and sperm whales sometimes stop by, but we didn't see them. We didn't see any whales when we padled out to find them, but the high winds made water-level visibility pretty bad. The town of Les Escoumins has a choclatier and some really nice restaurants. Seafood is great and I learned to like the local dishes as well.
This was a really nice, easy trip. It's pretty tricky to travel in Quebec without speaking French. We found that when we would attempt to speak what little French we knew, the locals would have pity and speak English. But if we started with English, no one knew English at all. The signs in the park were in English and French but the English was translated by an illiterate. For instance, one of the rules on the sign in every campsite says that "All rubbishes must be brought back." If you read the French equivalent, it says that you have to pack out trash.
If you don't mind a 22 hour drive, this is a nice paddling destination. Whales, tides, seals, salt water, wind, loons, foreign languages. All the stuff that makes sea kayaking seem like kayaking on the sea.
~ Jim Tibensky ~
