7 Days Sea Kayaking Lake Superiors Rugged North Shore

This is one of the routes on Lake Superior that is not many people have paddled it. I'm Zach Kruzins. I run Such a Nice Day Adventures. We're doing sea kayaking on Lake Superior and this trip in particular that Mary Beth from Paddle Adventurer has come to help me guide goes from Little Pigeon Bay which is the closest place from the Pigeon River just north of the border and hopefully we'll finish in Amethyst Harbor just near the bay's end in Thunder Bay west of the Sibley Peninsula. It's Such a Nice Day! Packing the kit. Gearing up at Pigeon River just at the border of the U.S. and Canada. Just headed back and around across Thunder Bay to Sibley Peninsula around Silver Islet. Sorry raining. Not the best start but it's not too cold. We'll see where we can make it today okay. So we're right here Little Pigeon Bay and we can see Pigeon Point just out there and that's that's the U.S. Given our time and like that we already have a decent amount of distance to cover follow the shoreline up here and we'll cross Pine Bay and we can make a stop for lunch here. It's like four and a half kilometers so I think we'll go there for lunch and then we'll continue going around. It's a really nice shoreline here rocky lots of volcanic rock formations around here with some dikes and some sandstone coming through but from here once we get around here we'll see what the northeast wind's doing and then check the point and go out to McKellar Point and then go to Tiger Rock and then get in to cross Cosgrave. We're looking out here it doesn't look too bad uh it said like 10 to 15 knot gusts on Rock of Ages Light which is like off here. That's a wind finder buoy that's mostly where I get my live weather for this area and then as we get closer to Sleeping Giant I'll look at Passage Island and then I look at the Slate Islands down that way so wind finder but you look at windy I look at Environment Canada Marine Forecast we can Always a little bit of nerves right before a trip. This is uh one of the routes on Lake Superior that is seldomly paddled. I've spent a lot of time over the last 20 years exploring it. This group of people are pretty competent paddlers they've paddled most of the other sections of the lake and they are seeking somebody who knows a little bit more about the area to uh to make safe decisions because there's some crux crossings and exposure and islands and different weather systems that can come up anywhere especially uh going from Thompson Island to Pie Island and Pie Island to the Thunder Cape on Sleeping Giant and then navigating the whole western shore all the way to Amethyst is it's quite an endeavor it's about 110 kilometers 120 kilometer trip in total. Victoria Island where we're camping tonight just has felt like it's been coming from the distance for so long we've been battling into the wind for most of the day and I am feeling exhausted. Made it to our spot on Victoria Island for night one over 18 kilometers. Felt a lot longer than that probably because of the wind and it's been a while since I've been in a sea kite. Let the adventure continue. That was hard to do. Super refreshing. I felt good on the muscles though. A nice cold plunge after 18 and a half kilometers paddling. I feel fresh. I'm gonna sleep well tonight. Got that ready-made chicken $10 bang just kind of split it up into chunks froze it and got some fresh veg Blake Spear keeps it fresh. Yeah ready-made rice easy green curry pack just gonna throw it all together. Keeping it simple but delicious. That's what we do on the self-catered trips. Friday for that crossing same wind southeast 15 knots in the morning. Okay wind finder buoy is saying less but um we'll have to see. Yeah life can change but right now it's a beautiful day and waking up on Lake Superior shores with coffee and oatmeal and taking it easy before we pack up and hit up for day two. Not a bad life is that? Zach needs more coffee. The packing struggle. All of the fun. I think the most interesting paddling for us is going to be kind of weaving in and around all these islets. We can go out the tiger rock through these little islets uh and then right on this uh this sugarloaf here by the sugarloaf on the north side there's a little beach and we can get out and check out that old boiler and mine shop for like a quick little stop. So I said it's like between 19 and 21 kilometers so like I said it was similar uh to yesterday's paddle. They said there's fog on the lake but there isn't and this is wind variable. Then you're gonna have a competition around the campfire who can stay the longest. Last night everyone shared what they love about sea kayaking, what they want on this trip and two things really stood out to me that spoke to me. One was the appreciation of land meeting the water and the contrast of that. I just never thought about it that way and it's beautiful. And the other one was someone had mentioned that they really love being quiet and hearing the water on their paddle and their kayak going through the water. That was two things I'm gonna think about for today. Day two to Thompson Island. Days like this where it's so calm and there's so many little islands and different rock formation. Choose your own adventure. It's gardening time baby. Get your paddles out. Get your attitude in the water. Let's go. It's a parade. Pick up trash on the beach. No coffee though. I don't know. Should I try it? Yeah I think I'm too high even the deck but we'll see. Oh yeah we can make it. This is my kind of paddling. So fun to play with. I think it would do nothing but way easier on my shoulders. Hey it's fun. You can do some pretty big sweeps. More leverage. Get artsy with it. There's a deep history of mining in the area between like the 1860s and the 1920s and 30s. These islands were heavily mined and explored for different minerals like silver and barite and feldspar and copper as well. They're digging deep into the rocks on the shoreline of Lake Superior. Spar Island is an interesting site where you can actually see the old boiler and mine shaft. It's a big feldspar vein sticking out and it's quite an interesting stop along the way for us and it's super scenic to paddle over this crystal clear water and see the veins going all the way into the infinity of Lake Superior. That's Thompson Island. There's a saunas on the other bay where voters go. Okay. But we have our own bay there and it's a beautiful sunset spot as well. Okay so we're camping now. Yeah beautiful spot. Pile Royale in the U.S. is right there. It's so big we've been paddling essentially next to it this entire time. Epic! How incredible is this? Lake Superior is so flat and calm and we're so lucky to be able to come into something like this overnight. Wow. Really special. Beautiful. Spar Island. Whoa. So many cool waterfalls. Check this one out. Whoa nice one. Come around every corner there's a different little treat. I love the sparkle of the sun off the water. Yeah on the rocks. The rocks are dancing. There's other evidence of mining and sea cave type formations. Super fascinating shoreline as we cruise northeast along this island chain. Pulling into Thompson Island just over 22 kilometers on day two. Thompson Island is a mecca for boaters. The Thunder Bay Yacht Club and volunteers for many many years have upkept the sauna here as a safe harbor for boaters to come and enjoy this area. So as you can see there's some boaters here. It's the summer months and it's a popular place for power boats and sailboats to come as well as kayakers. And for us as kayakers we have a nice private beach that's a 200 meter walk across the sauna site. There's also a whole series of hiking trails around this island that provide beautiful vistas of the surrounding area. Success eh? Oh that's a that's a pretty good size. Lively. He's a lively guy. It's a good size. I don't know what the weight is. Thank you for your perfect eating size. Four pounds, five pounds. Beauty. I love the water. In and out of it. Tasty. So good. Hot and good. Wind southeast 10 knots tomorrow evening, Thursday evening. Today's Wednesday. We just had a sauna. Now we're gonna go for a swim in Lake Superior. Look how beautiful it is. That's cold. Keep going the island chain that there's like four or five islands that go out. Day three. We have a beautiful spectacular day and you need absolutely perfect weather to do this. We're gonna go up to the South McKellar Mine. This was a mine from the 1890s era where they they mined barite here actually. And there's still the shafts and the tunnels are still here for us to explore. It's a little bit tricky to get out but we're gonna get out here and take a walk through the tunnels and you can kind of go back in time to imagine what these miners had to deal with and the type of weather they had out here on this remote island off the coast of Lake Superior. Checking out the mine shaft. This is creepy. Oh dang. So insane. This was worth getting out for sure. Like a little kid. Next level. Next level. Highlight of the trip so far. So now we're gonna cross the Pie Island. It's about a two and a half kilometer crossing and we're super lucky to have the weather we have to paddle along the coast here. Pie Island's an interesting island. It's quite a large land mass. Partially owned by the First Nations and partially private and also some public land. It is home to a lot of abundant wildlife. Healthy population of moose and wolves and bear. Welcome to Pie Island. It is a beautiful island. It's always held its mysteries and I've had a bit of a fear of Pie Island over the years because every time I've come out to Pie Island I've had challenging weather to deal with. Not sure if I want to continue and I've turned around several times. I've also had some struggles with the weather to get back from Pie Island and been stuck out there. The weather can pick up and be so wild here and we're just so lucky to have such a nice day here. Such a nice day? There's no other way to say it. Look at this. This is insane. It's calm and beautiful. Yeah I can see the weather really slamming into the cliffs eh? You get southeast winds pick up on this coast it's like. Gnarly. Look how stunning this wall is. I was just talking to another sea kayaker and you really can't capture it on film. It's so beautiful and moving. I feel a little emotional. It's a really mysterious place. A lot of people feared it but it has a lot of significance to the First Nations people of the area and also the Voyageurs. There was a Voyageur in the 1700s that actually signed an affidavit that that sworn statement that he saw a mermaid off the island on Pie Island so we're always on the lookout for the mermaid. We don't know uh what's going on. The mystery of of the island remains really. Oh we've got the most incredible dike coming up and it's being carved away so it's almost as if it's a rock face like a wall like a stone wall that was built like a house and the house has gotten but the wall still there. A lot of this island formation's a combination of volcanic lots of different volcanic dikes that are sticking out as well as uh Sibley sandstone layers that compose um an ancient riverbed system that once flowed through this whole area well before the Great Lakes ever existed. A whole different time period there's different volcanic activities that caused these dikes to jet out into the lake and now that's what we see today and it's quite impressive to to paddle right up beside them and just be awestruck by how large they are in uh in the scheme of us compared to us in our kayaks and how close we are to the water. We're going to cross over to Angus Island Lighthouse, an old lighthouse station where not many people get to go. There's a whole series of lighthouses that go all along the north shore that lit the waterways for ships for navigation and now it's been automated and not been in use for many years and there's also a lot of ants on the site too so we gotta be careful walking around here. Sleeping giant! The toes are at this end and the head is down at this end. A beautiful waterfall right here. High Island for night three! We did just under 20 kilometers. It's such a nice day! It's such a nice day! I'll stick to your analogy. Yeah! It's about your reverse who gets you. So the 6.30 forecast uh for western Exeter says wind southeast 10 knots becoming variable 10 late overnight then becoming southeast 10 friday morning scattered showers friday evening fog patches forming late overnight. Packing up for day four. We've got the big open water crossing across to the Sibley Peninsula. Sleeping giant! 10 kilometers and then from there 9 to 10 kilometers to Sawyer's Bay for night four. Here we go onto the Sibley Peninsula. Last pee for about two and a half hours. Had to go as late as possible. So it's quite the endeavor to make the crossing from Pie Island to the sleeping giant. It's called the sleeping giant because if you look at it from Thunder Bay it looks like a giant person sleeping and it's quite amazing that this landform exists. It's a natural wonder. For us to actually navigate right to it is is an amazing feat. This is a major shipping lane so it's super important that we monitor the marine traffic and now you can get it through the app and see what ships are traveling to and from. Going through the shipping chain. Trying to keep everything together. The crossing is 10 kilometers across and there is a significant amount of current and wind. We have slight southeasterly 10 knots kind of picking up late morning so we have to proceed with caution and we want to go as efficiently as possible and get right across to the cape. We actually have to set our bearing off about 15-20 degrees to account for the slight wind and current coming from the southeast so we can get a straight line right across to the Thunder Cape. At the Thunder Cape is a bird observatory that's where they tag birds spring and fall so they're actually not here from June 8th to July 28th so there's nobody on site right now but we can have a look around and see some of the the paths and the walkabouts that they have where they set up nets and cage the birds and they measure their fat content and their wingspan and weigh them and see how healthy they are and what kind of species they are so it's just like a monitoring program of migratory birds going through the area. And then we're going to cruise up the coast around to Sawyer Bay. So glassy and beautiful on this side view of Sleeping Giant. Welcome to Sleeping Giant. Sleeping Giant is a very large provincial park that encompasses most of the Sibley Peninsula. The Sibley Peninsula is actually quite a large landmass when people look at it from Thunder Bay sometimes they think it's an island but it's not actually an island it's a peninsula. So we're going to be camping in the park and have opportunity to do some hiking and have some beautiful vistas of the area. If you do the top of the giant trail at Sleeping Giant Provincial Park and you hike to the gorge it has this gnarly vertical drop that feels so next level and then you see it from down here this is the gorge right here and then you see the other vertical drops oh so insane. What an absolute treat to be paddling next to Sleeping Giant when the conditions are so peaceful. I feel like we earned a yasha that 10 kilometer crossing where the winds and the waves started to pick up. It was a bit of a grind to get to uh Thunder Cape but now we are being rewarded. There's something about being here Thunder Bays on my left Sleeping Giants right here that just sits so heavy in my heart in the best way. Birds are singing still really emotional but loving it. Day four 21 kilometers we're in Sawyers Bay and we are at the voter access campsite. Noodles and chickpea korma, fresh vegetables, no dehydration. Hell yeah bon appetit. Walking around Sawyers Bay to catch the sunset and it is a lot buggier here on the St. Louis Peninsula. Good thing I brought my bug jacket. Hanging in the bug tent. In the bug tent. No bug zone. Waiting for the rain. With our bug jackets. Such a nice day here. It is wet. We're gonna head to Silver Islet General Store. Just beyond Sleeping Giant the remnants of the Silver Islet mine and a little mining community is now the hamlet of Silver Islet. Now it's a bustling tourist attraction in the summer months with uh Jeff and Sandy who have a wonderful store that they've reopened and continued on in their family to service the community and the tourists that come through. We made it to the general store. Such an epic beautiful spot. We made it back and it is pouring rain again. Got soaked. Had some nice tea. Pie. Got to see Jeff and Sandy at the general store. Warm up. Dry off. Hike back and get wet again. We'd made a group decision not to travel today. It'll be sunny but there's gonna be some strong 15 to 25 knots. More or less it'll be perfect sunny. Lighter winds and there's more to do here than if we got to caribbean today. We're doing a hike today up to a viewpoint Nanabushu trail which is also known as the chest trail and uh hopefully get a viewpoint. Lots of wildfire smoke today but it's hot and sunny. We made it to the chest of giant. There's the head and there's the bay we're camping in. Last night dinner. Black beans and chickpeas. Sloppery. Good night Lake Superior. It's been an incredible trip and we have one more day in the water to go. It's been weird being on land for for three days. Day seven. Back on the water. Wow. Oh my moss. We're paddling from Sawyers Bay to Caribou Island along the west side of the Sibley Peninsula and it was just a little bit too windy to go so we're going to go today and conditions are looking good. It's about 25 kilometer paddle down to Caribou Island. We're going to enjoy some of the cliffs on Caribou Island and then finish at Amethyst Harbor. On such a nice day. You can hear the loons but you can't see them. Super foggy from the wildfires in northern Ontario. So this route Pigeon River to Silver Islet. Sometimes we go and finish in Silver Islet. This time we're going down to Amethyst and exploring the west side of the Sibley Peninsula. Thunder Bay lookout. Crossing over to Caribou Island. Five kilometers. Wind's going this way. Cruising to Caribou with the lake. Caribou Island. Such a nice raft. Rock faces and views like this. Just they're so magical. It almost takes your breath away. Caribou Island. Made it to Amethyst Harbor. Today we did almost 26 kilometers and that is day number seven. Pigeon River to Amethyst Harbor. Thanks for joining on that adventure.