Vancouver Kayaking Tours and beach bbq with hotel pick-up

Vancouver Kayak Tours. Seakayaking in Vancouver. Vancouver Kayak Tours with hotel pick-up. Have a BBQ Lunch on a remote Island on a Vancouver Kayak Tour. Our wooden Kayaks are made in Vancouver. Vancouver Kayak.

Vancouver Kayak & Beach BBQ Wilderness Adventure

The adrenalene rush on this guided Vancouver kayaking and bbq adventure come from spectacular scenery, good food, and enjoyable company.

2 - 12 participants

Vancouver_Kayak Only 30 minutes from downtown Vancouver lies Indian Arm, a protected ocean inlet that is Canada's southernmost glacial fjord.

Experience a unique ocean eco-system with spectacular British Columbia scenery on a short, guided kayaking adventure. Highlight is a salmon barbecue served on the beach.

Vancouver_Kayaking Our mini-bus will pick you up from your hotel and take you along a narrow, winding road through mostly uninhabited rain forest that covers the south side of North Vancouver’s Mount Seymour as it slopes steeply into Indian Arm. This is where the mountains romance the ocean.

The road ends at Woodlands, a small settlement with the last northern public access dock to Indian Arm Inlet. Here you embark in comfortable two-seater sea-kayaks that will take you on an easy jaunt into some of British Columbia’s most breathtaking scenery. At all times you are accompanied by trained guides who interpret the wild life around you and ensure your comfort.

Vancouver_Kayaks Glacial fjords have unique characteristics. Visually they resemble the beauty and calm of mountain lakes. However, they are connected to the Pacific Ocean and contain a similar diversity of marine life. The rocky shores are covered with barnacles, mussels, anemones, sea stars and crabs, as well as various types of seaweed. The most common sea mammal here is the harbour seal. Their heads often pop up above the water and their curious large eyes follow your every movement.

Vancouver_SeaKayak_Purple_and_Ochre_Seastars Exposed by extremely low tidal drops, the shores attract a myriad of water birds and eagles at different times of the year. During the winter months Indian Arm is home to migrating ducks, loons, grebes, and other diving birds.

Your lunch destination is a small, uninhabited island with great views of the inlet. Refresh yourself with a tasty 3-course picnic lunch that includes freshly grilled salmon. After lunch there is some time for a swim on a hot day, a walk through the woods or just nap in the sun before you return to the city rejuvenated, invigorated and recharged.

Experience and fitness are not required.

Tour Details

Season	April 1 to October 15
Hotel Pick Up	09:00 - 09:30
Return	about 16:00
Duration	About 6 hours
Participants	Min 2 up to 14 adults
Price	Can$165.00 adults Can$149.00 groups of min 4 Can$125.00 children 4-12 Taxes and gratuities extra
Currency	All prices are quoted in Canadian Dollars. Click here for today’s conversion rate
Cancellation	up to 7 days before the trip - no charge 3 to 6 days - 50 % cancellation fee 2 days or less - 100 % cancellation fee
Inclusions	3-4 hour guided sea-kayaking excursion 3 course gourmet beach barbecue Hotel pick-up anywhere in Vancouver rain gear if necessary
Beach BBQ	Fresh salsa & chips Grilled wild salmon filet Pasta salad Fresh berries & cream Ice tea substitutions on request

Indian Arm: Natural & Cultural History

Kayaking_In_Vancouver_Indian_Arm_Fjord The north arm of Burrard Inlet, known as Indian Arm, is a fjord (or fiord) which extends for 20 km from Roche Point north to the Indian River estuary. The Indian Arm fjord, together with the one occupied by Howe Sound, are the most southern fjords on the west coast of North America. A fjord is a drowned U-shaped valley originally cut by a valley glacier. Even after over 10000 years of erosion and rock falls the steep walls of the fjord can still be seen in many places. Fresh water enters Indian Arm from more than forty creeks and streams. Many creeks have outwash fans of cobblestone gravel beaches. Only Indian River at the northern end of Indian Arm has a fully developed estuary with extensive mudflats, salt marshes, estuarine grasslands and estuarine forest including Pacific crabapple, Sitka spruce, black cottonwood and ninebark. Indian Arm is surrounded by steep mountains covered with second growth forest of western hemlock, Douglas-fir and western red cedar at lower elevations. Huge stumps of old-growth Douglas-fir and red cedar and the occasional isolated old growth Douglas-fir (rarely red cedar) are all that remain of the lower elevation old growth forests after the logging between 1865 and 1995. High up on the slopes many old growth trees can be seen with their distinctive dead and broken tops protruding as grey spires above the forest canopy. Vancouver_Kayak_Canada_Geese

Indian Arm once nourished animal, bird and marine life in rich variety. Elk roamed here, along with black bear, grizzly bear, cougar, wolf, wolverine, bobcat, mountain goat and deer. The smaller forest animals included beaver, skunk, otter, marten, fisher, mink and weasel. All were here in plenty until the turn of the century, many until much later. Only occasional glimpses are seen of these wild creatures today. Many such as the elk, grizzly, wolf and mountain goat have disappeared altogether.

Many different birds still nest, winter or migrate in the inlet. Major wintering species include Barrow’s goldeneye (over 2000), surf scoter (over 1000), western grebe (over 500) and glaucous–winged gull (over 1000). Summer breeding birds include gadwall, bufflehead, hooded merganser, green-backed heron, sora & Virginia rails, spotted sandpiper and killdeer. Feeding in the estuary while nesting upriver Kayaking_Tours_Vancouver_River_Otter or on a mountain lake, are common merganser, harlequin duck, common loon, belted kingfisher, great blue heron and dipper. Bald eagles nest along the shores of the inlet and congregate at the estuary during salmon runs. Eighteen breeding pairs of marbled murrelets lived in Indian Arm in 1990, but in recent years only one lone murrelet has been seen. Trumpeter swans once wintered at the estuary; the last were killed in the 1970s.

Humpback whales lived in the Straight of Georgia until the 1920s. They travelled all the fjords, as did killer whales and porpoises. Harbour seals are once again plentiful and can be seen in huge numbers when the salmon are running in the estuary of Indian River.

Indian River is the birthplace and spawning ground for five of the six species of salmon. Chum and pink salmon still run in substantial numbers. Tiny runs of 100 chinook, 700 coho and less than 100 steelhead, are haunting remnants of what once was here. The pink run in August & September of odd years. Kayak_Tours_In_Vancouver_Dungeness_Crab

Crabs and prawns are still subject to commercial harvest in Indian Arm. Commercial shrimp fishing boats drag their fine-mesh nets along the bottom of the inlet, scooping up a “bycatch” (non-target species) including immature cod, snapper and prawns. Up until the 1960’s five species of clams were readily harvested on all the beaches in the inlet; none can be found today.

Indian Arm is traditional territory of the Tsleil-Waututh (slay watooth) people, and was also visited by Squamish and Musqueum nations. The first Europeans to visit here were the Spaniards who arrived in June 1792. Galiano named the inlet “Floridablanca” and reported that the native people called it “Sasamat.” This is probably a Spanish rendition of “Tsleil-Waututh” meaning “Go Inside Place” or “The People Inside.”

In the first part of this century, Indian Arm was a busy marine thoroughfare. Logging camps, farms and stone quarries dotted its shores. Four transportation companies served the areas, as did the only floating post office in the British Empire aboard “The Scenic”.

After WWII, settlement of the area declined in those parts of the inlet without road access. In recent years, with developments including a major land acquisition by B.C. Parks Thwayre’s Landing), the inlet is once again becoming a bustling waterway.

Geological History
Indian Arm is a fjord shaped by the Pleistocene glaciation which lasted for 1.8 million years and consisted of three principal glacial (stades) and two interglacial periods. However most of the glacial features visible today were formed during the last of these three stades, the Fraser Glaciation. The ice left the area about 12500 years ago. The substrate over which the glaciers passed is formed of rocks of a very much greater age. They are:-

1. Rocks formed by volcanoes over 200 million years ago which have been greatly changed by heat and pressure to a variety of metamorphic rocks known as the Twin Island Group. These rocks now sit as remnants (pendants) on top of...

2. Granitic rocks which were formed in our area between 135 and 112 million years ago and are part of the great Coasr Range Plutonic Complex or Coast Belt, a batholithic complex which extends for 1900 km between the two US/Canadian borders. This complex is one of the largest geological features on earth.

What is a glacial fjord?

Excerpts from an article titled “Fjords: an Under appreciated Feature of Our B.C. Landscape”
published by David Cook, June Ryder and Bert Brink
in the Spring 2005 issue of “Discovery”, the Vancouver Natural History Society magazine

Vancouver_Kayaking_GLacial_Fjord A fjord (or fiord) is a deep, glaciated (V-shaped) valley now occupied by an arm of the sea. Valley-sides are steep, and features such as hanging valleys, cliffed shorelines, and spectacular high waterfalls that plunge straight into the sea are common. On a map, fjords are long, narrow inlets. Some follow a straight line for tens of kilometers while others have straight segments separated by sharp bends because they follow weaknesses such as geological faults. Mostly calm and protected, they are ideal for a Vancouver Kayak Tour.

The coastline of mainland British Columbia consists of many fjords that cut deeply inland into the Coast Mountains. There are about 50 major fjords and 400 smaller ones. In addition, fjord coastlines extend along the western sides of both Vancouver Island and the Queen Charlotte Islands. The fjords range in length from about 10 to 90 km (6-56 miles), and maximum depths range from 200 to 700 m (660 2,100 ft) -considerably deeper than the adjacent parts of the continental shelf where the sea depth is between 100 and 200m (330-660 ft).
The B.C. coastline, then, contrasts sharply with the "smooth" coastline to the south in the US.A. and Mexico. Why should this be so? The primary reason is that the B.C. coastline has been glaciated. British Columbia was covered repeatedly by the great Cordilleran Ice Sheet. At times huge valley glaciers flowed from the Coast Mountains to the sea. Also, the northern rocks are different from the southern ones, being more resistant to erosion and hence more conducive to standing in steeper slopes.

The Coast Mountains extend northwesterly for 1,600 km(1,000 miles) from Vancouver to the Alaska border, where they merge with the St. Elias Mountains.

Geologically, these mountains are youthful. The land was uplifted most recently only about ten million years ago, and then carved into mountains, mostly by river erosion. The underlying rocks, which are primarily granitic,! are older than the uplift. They were formed several tens of millions of years ago by magma that rose from deep in the earth's crust. This solidified into plutons as it cooled. Over time, many plutons coalesced to form a complex geological structure that consists primarily of the granitic rocks but includes remnants of the original, now metamorphic, rocks.

Glaciation Ice covered virtually all of British Columbia a number of times over an interval of about 1.8 million years, ending about 10,000 years ago. This period of alternating glacial and nonglacial intervals is known as the Pleistocene Epoch. During each glaciation, the great Cordilleran Ice Sheet formed over British Columbia, which would have looked like the present-day Greenland Ice Sheet. A massive, unbroken ice field occupied the interior while huge valley glaciers flowed westward from the Coast Mountains, coalescing over coastal lowlands and continental shelf to form what is called a vast piedmont glacier.

During the last glaciation (of which we have the most direct evidence in the form of landforms and deposits), the surface of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet was as high as 2,300 m (7,600 ft), above sea level over much of B.C., with ice more than 2 km/1.5 m thick over some major valleys. In the area around Vancouver, the ice surface reached a maximum elevation of only about 1,800 m/1,125 miles above sea level. Thus the rounded peaks of the Lions were completely overridden.

In general, glaciation significantly modified some aspects of the pre-glacial landscape, but it did not bring about drastic changes in major characteristics such as range of relief and the positions of valleys and mountains. Glacial overriding tended to smooth rough surfaces and make sharp ridge-crests round; valleys that contained moving ice were transformed into U-shaped glacial troughs with rock steps and rock basins.

Fjords are often referred to as "drowned" valleys, implying that water flooded into them after the valleys were formed, but this is not the case. Glacier ice actually eroded these valleys down below sea level, and in fact, sea level appeared to fall at the end of the last glaciation.

In Alaska, Greenland and other polar areas, present-day glaciers flow down glacial troughs into the sea. The east coast of Greenland is a good modern analogue of conditions experienced on the coastlines of B.C. during growth and decay of the Cordilleran Ice Sheet, when advancing or receding glaciers would have occupied fjords such as Indian Arm inlet.

Our Vancouver Kayaks

It is in these classic wooden kayaks that you took your girl on a date before there was a 1956 Chevrolet Bel Air convertible.

You will enjoy travelling in our unique kayaks. Handcrafted for marine plywood, they are easy to look at as easy to paddle.
The boats are hybrids of sea kayak and canoe. Stable and safe crafts, they seat 2 paddlers inside an open cockpit for easy entry and exit. You don't have to step into the water. You sit on comfortable seats. A foot operated rudder makes for easy navigation.

Vancouver kayak tours are perfect for a family outing. The younges family members also get to enjoy the paddle trip under the supervison of accompanying adults.

Here is a list of our Vancouver kayaks and a tribute to their builders.

Grebe
Built in Vancouver in 2003 by Mark Routen of Nomad Boatbuilding from a kit supplied by Chesapeake Light Craft.

Heron
This one-of-a-kind decked canoe was built in Vancouver in 2003 by Mark Routen of Nomad Boatbuilding

Osprey
Built in Barrington, Ill, in 2003 by Bob Scholke from a kit supplied by Chesapeake Light Craft.

Luna
Built in Portland, Or, in 2006 by Bryan Lee from a kit supplied by Chesapeake Light Craft.

Otter
Built in 2006 by the students of the Brother Rousseau Academy in Philadelphia, Pa, from a kit supplied by Chesapeake Light Craft

Whalecraft
This is a ollapsible kayak (hyperlon skin on a wooden frame) that fit's into 2 airline size bags so you can kayak in exotic places. It was built in Seattle, Wa, by Daniel Niblock in 2001