Conrad - Inside: one womans journey through the Inside Passage

Susan Marie Conrad

Epicenter Press

Pictures and text copyright 2016 Susan Marie Conrad
http://www.SusanMarieConrad.com

Published by Epicenter Press, a regional press publishing nonfiction books about the arts, history, environment, and diverse cultures and lifestyles of Alaska and the Pacific Northwest.
For more information, visit http://www.EpicenterPress.com .

Section maps reprinted by permission of Garmin LTD:
Copyright 2015 Garmin Ltd or its Subsidiaries. All Rights Reserved

Chart image of author and entire route reprinted by permission of the artist, Alan James Robinson, http://www.TheMapGuy.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Permission is given for brief excerpts to be published with book reviews in newspapers, magazines, newsletters, catalogs, and online publications.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015960539
ISBN: 978-1-935347-57-6
ISBN eBook: 978-1-935347-65-1

Editor: Janet Kimball

Cover and Text Design: Jeanie James, http://www.Shorebird-Creative.com

Administrative Assistant: Aubrey Anderson

For Jim Chester

My forward bearing
and back azimuth.

Map reproduced by permission of the artist,
Alan James Robinson, The Map Guy.
http://www.TheMapGuy.com

IN THE LATE SPRING OF 2010, Susan Conrad stood on the threshold of a great adventure. Before her stretched a landscape of incomparable beauty. Abundant with wildlife, congregations of sea birds, pods of whales, lone bears, forested islands, fjords of great majestyall awash with ancient history. But beauty comes at a price. She faced danger from storms, riptides, huge tidal surges, ever-present bears, enormous ferries lumbering through the channels, and unforeseeable circumstances. There would be few people along the way. But behind her stood an icon of exploration, Jim Chester, noted caver, paddler and hiker, and dearest friend. He would be watching from the sidelines to guide, to inspire and pull her along through his tender yet demanding will. But ahead, she was alone, and most of all alone with herself, something most of us rarely experience any more in our hectic wired world.

Susan was embarking on her dreamto paddle the Inside Passage, a revered waterway along the Pacific Coast of Washington State, Canada and Alaska, winding through myriad islands and along fjords carved out by glaciers eons ago.

It is an area long inhabited by Native Peoples. The Passage is believed to have been a major pathway for peoples who came over the Bering Land Bridge from Asia on their way south to the Americas some 15,000 years ago. More recently, the Passage was visited by Western Explorers who hoped it would lead to the elusive Northwest Passage, the water route from Europe to China. In the nineteenth century, Russians colonized a few islands before selling out to the fledgling colonizing Americans, and the remains of their settlements can still be seen. Today, the Passage is home to more than forty groups of Native Peoples. The Passage is also a challenging, and oft sought destination for a handful of intrepid kayakers like Susan. But Susanlike her bookstands out. In vivid immediate detail, she has written a rapturous book that recounts her journey, bringing her odyssey and the majestic land she traveled through into sharp focus.

Susan threads her narrative with personal insights, a history of betrayal and sadness that led her to this challenge. One constant is the presence of Jim Chester, whose notes and encouragement help her in even the most dire of times. It is a great testament to her courage and determination that she found the strength to see the journey to the end.

I was lucky enough to meet Susan when she was planning her journey with Jim on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia. I was instantly captivated by her quiet charm, inspired by her and not a little jealous at what lay ahead for her. Years earlier, a much younger me stood in a similar place looking out onto the vast stretches of the Egyptian Western Desert, camels in hand, wondering what lay ahead. Such journeys are life changing. I went on to found and lead WINGS WorldQuest for fifteen years, where I had the honor of working with and helping the leading women explorers of today. Susan belongs in this pantheon.

Susan captures the splendor of the lands she traveled through. Her evocative and sometimes searing tale is immediate and revelatory. While it is the story of one woman, it is a book for the adventurer in all of us, men, women, young and old. In one sweeping tale, Susan takes us on a journey through a breathtaking land of challenge and reward.

Milbry Polk
Founder, Wings WorldQuest, co-author of Women of Discovery
and the Looting of the Iraq Museum, Baghdad:
The Lost Legacy of Ancient Mesopotamia

Believe that you can do anything you set your mind to.

Your passion should be your path
and your path should be your passion.

Rosita Arvigo

IT HAS BEEN SAID that a person doesnt take a trip, but rather a trip takes a person. The Inside Passage took mein a kayakfrom Anacortes, Washington, to Juneau, Alaska. The Inside Passage pulled me forward, into the now, as my past ebbed away and my future flooded in. In turn idyllic and epic, it took me through glacially carved landscapes and impenetrable forests, narrow channels and wide ocean passages, spellbinding seas and mixmaster waves. And it took me deep within myself, humbling me, reminding me that I had much to learn. I have still only begun to understand its impact.

In Spring 2010, with my world scaled down to an 18-foot sea kayak and a 1,200-mile ribbon of water known as the Inside Passage, I launched a journey of the sea and the soul that took me both north to Alaska and inward to the discovery of the depths of my own strength and courage. My journey took 66 days, during which time I lived in a wetsuit, paddled marathon distances for weeks on end, forged friendships with quirky people in the strangest of places, and pretended not to be intimidated by seven-hundred-pound grizzly bears and forty-ton whales. I lived my dream.

That dream entailed paddling through wild, steep country, subject to strong currents and wind, and extreme tidal differences. The realities of hypothermia, dwindling food supplies, nonexistent beaches, and alarmingly high walls of water rising over twenty feet were part and parcel of the journey. At times I floated in a magical world among whales and icebergs and immeasurable beauty; other times I paddled wildly with fear at my back.

I didnt set out to research, discover, or prove anything, although the logistical planning often took on Olympian proportions. And, of course, the concept of paddling to Alaska was astronomical in itself. Id never been to Alaska, let alone kayaked to it. Although I was an experienced kayaker and had some knowledge of the Inside Passage, I expected lessons would be presented along the way and prepared myself for mental, emotional, and physical extremes.