These are the Chronicles of Famous Surf Writer Ben Marcus and his trip into the Wilds of the Alaskan Frontier.
Latest Update: November 4-6, 2000

NOVEMBER 4, 2000 11:41 BC TIME ROOM 111, SEA RAVEN MOTEL, QUEEN CHARLOTTE ISLANDS, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA

Funny, I'm watching Clint Eastwood in Hang Em High and I just got an e-mail response to my Clint Eastwood.net post. Someone thinks the yellow schoolbus in Dirty Harry is a GMC Bluebird with a 4.2 diesel. Maybe yes. Maybe no.

Now I need to find someone who can make custom seats for the bus, and a high-tech video screen attached to a laptop that will play movie clips.

I was just at the tire place in Queen Charlotte City and I saw a big, red Humvee, also a diesel. That is one big, roomy, expensive vehicle. It's owned by West Coast Fishing Charters, and I can only wonder what they get into.

I got my tire repaired, and found out, to my surprise, that they actually are mud and snow tires. "It's not the tires that are the problem," the tire guy said. "It's your vehicle. These vans slide all over the place."

Indeed.

So, I got the tire fixed for $20 Canadian. I'm going to watch Clint until I get bored, then hit the road and check out the island. I'm gonna go the paved way this time, up to North Beach, where there are rumors of surf.

That's it for now.

NOVEMBER 6, 2000 22:46 BC TIME ROOM 111 OF THE SEA RAVEN MOTEL

Total fricking disaster.

Well, I know a truck driver who's going to church this Sunday. That would be the driver of the Esso fuel truck who rolled a full load of diesel off a creek bridge along Highway 16, a few miles south of Masset. That driver suffered a blown tire while heading north, lost control, bounced off the bridge, made it to the other side of the creek and then rolled the thing off the bridge and into a field. I can only imagine what went through his mind during all that, but he wasn't injured. The diesel fuel didn't explode for some reason, it all drained into the creek. The driver walked away.

What a mess.

I saw the aftermath of all this while driving south on Highway 16, from North Beach and Masset, back to Queen Charlotte City. I'd spent the afternoon poking around the beach to see what the surf was doing, and found some fun, offshore little waves at the beachbreak and the rivermouth. There are dozens of surf spots along the east side of the island, but not much in the way of surf. It's too protected. Somewhere past Masset I saw a bunch of cars and flashing lights along a bridge. I saw the truck and the tanker, and they looked liked they'd been picked up and thrown down by King Kong. A total wreck.

I spent the next half an hour watching the rescue operation. The driver was lucky, he had tens of thousand gallons of fuel on board. It didn't explode, and most of it got dumped into a creek. There was already an emergency spill response team on hand. Apparently they had come from a nearby harbor and were on hand for spills there.

I helped them carry big bundles of absorbent cloth to the edge of the bridge, and then threw them overbridge. What a mess, but it could have been a lot worse. That was my big excitement for the day.

That was my second trip up to Masset and North Beach. The first one was two days ago, on Saturday, the day after the nearly disastrous trip along the logging roads. The day I got my tire fixed.

Remember that? I barely do.

The following is what I started to write about that day, before I added this prologue:

NOVEMBER 5, 2000

Okay, I admit that I do a lot of blundering around, getting stuck in mud, blowing tires and tangling with logging trucks. I've spent a lot of time blundering around and making mistakes on this trip. But sometimes blundering can be productive, and sometimes I blunder into the exact place where I should be. That's what today was all about.

No logging roads today. Instead, I blundered along paved roads up to the north end of Queen Charlotte Island looking for anything of surf interest that I could write about and make myself useful and justify the expense money swell.com sent to me. I didn't know much about Queen Charlotte Island. I knew that Doc Renneker and Grant Washburn and Chris Isaak had come through here a few years ago, and Danny Digiralimo and his brothers had been through here also on a fishing trip. I think I had seen some photos of Queen Charlotte at Doc's house, but I had no details.

It's about 113 K's from Queen Charlotte City to Masset, and a pretty nice drive. This time the road was paved and lined, no potholes or logging trucks. There was perfect surf everywhere on the drive up, but it was only six inches. The east side of Queen Charlotte Island was a little bit Northern California and little bit of Channel Coast England. The landed side was green and lush, with farms and hippie houses and bed and breakfasts and businesses here and there. There were a lot of creeks and trees and good pasture land and it was all very Land of Milk and Honeyish.

The east side of Queen Charlotte is also one of those coastlines perfectly set up for surfing. There were points and reefs everywhere, some of them with tremendous "po," as we used to say in Santa Cruz. But this is the east side of the island, and the surf was all about six inches. Perfect, but six inches.

After about 80k's I ended up in Masset, which is essentially a town for the Haida people. Indians! There's a little fishing harbor and it seems to be a prosperous enough little town. I drove around a little bit, looking for an ATM but didn't find it. Pushed on to the end.

It had been a while since I had seen true open ocean. You see a lot of ocean up here in the Pacific Northwest/British Columbia/Alaska, but most of it is tucked inside an inlet or something. Up at North Beach you're looking straight out into the North Pacific, with Kamchatka over the horizon. This was open ocean, and there were waves breaking all along a very long, open, empty beach.

There were rivers, too, the Sangan and the Choun, just as weird and tea-colored as all the rivers in Queen Charlotte. I threw a few flies into the Choun, with no luck. I'm too early for steelhead, and I wonder how catchable they are in water with the clarity of root beer.

I pushed on, along a road shrouded by trees and with deer jumping all over the place. There are a lot of deer on Queen Charlotte Island, and they don't seem to be too shy about cars. This road was mostly empty. I saw that red Humvee again, parked in the driveway of a house overlooking the beach. I couldn't really see the beach. There were too many trees, and too many deer. I caught glimpses of ocean and beach, and saw surf that was getting bigger as I moved north.

The boardwalk to the beach.

For some reason, I stopped at a place advertising "beach cabins." I saw some plank wood paths through a swamp and some cabins up on a hill. I passed it, backed up and parked and walked the plank. Knocked on the fence and scared the shit out of a guy working there, and got into a conversation about this and that turns out this was the very place Doc and Grant and Chris had stayed, a few years ago.

The caretaker showed me around and talked about some of the weather they get on Queen Charlotte: hurricane force winds every week in the winter, with gusts up to 100 MPH. A regular thing here out on the edge of the North Pacific.

The cabin where Doc, Grant, and Chris stayed.

Rick the Caretaker showed me where Doc and Chris and Grant had stayed, and showed me some other cabins. There were nice waves breaking directly out in front. It was a beachbreak that looked to be about six feet, and a little tricky to get out. Doc and them must have loved it.

Looks like a wave to me.

I took a few photos and got a web address for the place: www.beachcabins.com and pushed on up the road. Didn't really know where I was going, but that hasn't stopped me yet. I came across a nice little campground with fun waves breaking out front. This area reminded me of 17 Mile Drive a little bit. It was a long beach with points at either end. The surf here was much smaller than in front of the cabins. I could see this place staying surfable when the outside beaches are giant, which they probably are, often. The ocean was calm and nice on this day, but it must get wild and wooly. North Beach is at about 54 degrees north and Kamchatka is only a little higher, and they basically play pitch and catch with storms. The lows that start in Kamchatka end in Queen Charlotte.

An empty beach.

At the end of the road, I drove out onto the beach and found yet another root beer colored river emptying into the ocean. This place must be epic in steelhead season because there are a lot of rivers. And this rivermouth looked like it had some potential, too. There were offshore lefts wrapping around the top of the point, and I have a feeling that this place gets epic on the properly-angled swell.

So I got a look around, found some surf-oriented stuff to write about and then drove back, at night. There were dozens of deer along the roads. I didn't want to hit one.

That was two days ago. I spent yesterday in my hotel room, working on the Cinema San Francisco idea. I registered the domain name Cinema San Francisco, and now I'm putting together a business plan for a bus tour that takes San Francisco visitors to all the famous movie locations in San Francisco and a day's drive north or south. It's fun putting it together on paper. I've contacted insurance companies and the San Francisco business license office and companies that sell yellow schoolbuses and 42 inch flat screen displays and custom bus seats and all kinds of stuff. It might be really fun, and profitable, to do for real. We'll see.

And now I'm watching television. I just gave Mr. Walther a good cleaning, because it was time. Happiness is a clean gun.

Election day tomorrow. Gore deserves to win. If he loses to George W. Buffoon, it will be an injustice. Jump ball. It's going to be interesting.