We have just returned from a 4-day trip in the Johnston Straits, billed as an “orca” kayaking trip. Several companies run these trips, some based in Campbell River, some in the Telegraph Cove area. We went with an outfit named Coastal Spirits. I can only speak to our experience, though I suspect the other outfits are pretty much the same.
Our camp was based immediately adjacent to the Robson Bight Ecological Reserve, prime orca turf, and our trip went out in the last week of July, which is prime time for orca viewing, as the salmon are running full force. As far as orca sightings were concerned we were fairly unlucky. We had several distant sightings—all the way on the other side of the straits, perhaps a couple of miles away—could barely make out anything with binoculars. One morning we had a pod swim by the beach where our camp was based, and that was quite wonderful, though quite brief. That was it though. I do realize that you are either lucky or unlucky in such endeavors, and we were unfortunately quite unlucky. However, the group before us did not see any orcas until their fourth and final day, so I suppose we were a bit luckier than they. I think these tours oversell the orca viewing—remember that seeing them a couple of miles away though binoculars is still seeing them, so they might tell you that every group “sees” them, but what does that really mean? Again, I do understand that you cannot orchestrate these sightings, but our expectations, based on the websites, were quite high.
But that was not my main problem with the trip. Rather, the main difficulty was that we were essentially “captive” at our campsite. There was absolutely nowhere to go! There are no hiking trails anywhere. The water is far too cold to swim in. We couldn’t even go after the salmon that were literally jumping all around us because no one had told us that we needed a rather inexpensive fishing license in order to do so. And kayaking? Forget it! Our kayaking excursions consisted of a single outing each day, lasting for about 2 hours. One day, with strong urging by the group, we were able to go out for another 30 or 40 minutes in the evening, as a second kayak outing of the day. An attempt to do so the other nights was vetoed by our guides, as they had “chores” to do.
The “chores” consisted of making meals and cleaning up after meals. All quite time consuming, to be sure, but who cares much about meals when you’ve paid over $1000 and invested a tremendous amount of travel time for a four day trip in which the goal is to kayak out on the Johnson Straits and see orcas. No one remembers the meals a week later, but kayaking with orcas……that’s a real experience! Keeping the meals simpler and more time out on the water would have kept our very disgruntled group a bit happier.
All ten of us on the group—several couples and a couple of singles all agreed that the trip was a real disappointment. It essentially consisted of sitting around a campsite and eating. Two hours out of the camp for a kayak paddle and that was that. Sit. Eat. Sit. Eat. I want to stress that we all liked our guides—they were both very personable. But the trip itself was really quite awful.
My advice, if you want to come to the Johnson Straits with the hope of seeing orcas, would be to take a couple of days and do the daily whale watching boat trips that leave out of Campbell River or Telegraph Cove. You’ve a much better chance of seeing the orcas, and you can take a hike afterwards. Unless, of course, you like sitting at a campsite and eating all day. And sitting. And eating. And sitting. And eating.




