New on Sidetracked:

Channel Crossing

Cape Horn by Kayak
Words and Photography: Will Copestake

As children, Seumas and I had waded and wandered through the nooks and crevices of the rivers behind our gardens. Finding new and exciting gorges to explore became an obsession. The adventure was in finding what lay above the next waterfall, and I used to imagine that we were in some far-flung corner of the world, exploring places few people had ever seen. Now here we were, two best friends at the edge of the earth, still wading up rivers and sharing the thrill of seeking what lay around the next bend – but this time, as adults, we had kayaks. The adventure was just as real. It was reassuring to find that the awe and wonder had never left us.


Pushing our kayaks into the Strait of Magellan, Seumas Nairn and I embarked on our third Patagonian expedition. Our aim: to connect Punta Arenas to Puerto Williams via Cape Horn. It was a journey defined by three major crux points: crossing the Strait of Magellan, the portage, and then the Cape Horn Islands and their open crossings. Years of planning and preparation had culminated in this moment. We had packed our kayaks with 120kg of provisions to last 40 days, and our permissions had been signed off by the Chilean Armada. Now nothing lay ahead but fjord and mountain.

The Strait of Magellan

It’s an odd feeling being far from shore in a kayak. There is a thrill in the sense of isolation, and a heightened awareness of one’s surroundings. On our first day we turned towards Cabo Froward, the southern tip of the continent, and spent the final hours fighting gale-force winds along the coast. The whole time we stared out into the exposed sea of white-capped waves with trepidation. ‘You know what?’ Seumas called across the wind. ‘Crossing the Magellan Strait in weather like this would not be fun.’

The following day, however, brought a rare lull to the fjords. Feeling confident, we decided against our shortest planned crossing point, instead taking a more committing 21km sprint to the southern side. Watching the clouds gave reassurance that our forecast was accurate – they looked stable. As we paddled, a black-browed albatross landed on the surface nearby, watching us serenely. That too was a good sign of calm weather to come.

As we neared the southern side, despite calm conditions, the tide churned the sea into steep overfalls on the point of an island, just enough for us to lose sight of each other between the sets. But we had done it – we had passed our first crux without drama.

Triumphant, we tucked in and landed on the island. I went first in my plastic kayak that could take a hit from a rock in the rolling waves. Leaping out, I then made a ladder of driftwood for Seumas to land his fibreglass boat upon. This process would become easier once we had eaten our way into some food and there was less kit crammed between our legs. Landings, we knew, would be seldom and camping options limited. As if mocking us, tempting grassland on the foreshore often invited a tent, but bitter experience had taught us that high tides would swamp this grass.

As we rested there, our kayaks hauled up on the shore, we checked maps and reviewed the plan. ‘Paddling as hard as we can now will buy us time later,’ I said to Seumas, and he nodded in silent acknowledgement. We needed a weather window if we were going to reach the Horn.

This is why I’d picked an unusual route inland, avoiding the exposed Canal Brecknock – which could trap us with strong winds – in favour of a dead-end fjord and a 5km portage across a mountain pass. We knew all too well the arduous nature of portaging here, but this adventure offered the opportunity to follow the long-forgotten paths of the Kawésqar people, who had navigated these fjords by canoe long before the West had arrived.

Portage

We caught our first glimpse of the portage at the end of a 45km day of paddling. Until now our only knowledge consisted of a map we had found in the Kayak en Patagonia staff room, with a line drawn on it labelled ‘Portage?’ and a description by a Chilean explorer that the route would likely be ‘a difficult step’. We looked up at the wall of rocky bluffs. Dense forest lined both sides, and towering above it were two huge mountains capped in ice. Even from afar it looked like it would hurt. But it did look possible – or so we thought then.

It did not take me long to realise that I had vastly underestimated this portage. Three years away from Patagonia, a global pandemic, and the fact that dragging boats over steep ground does not feature in regular life had clearly dulled my memories.

For the first 1.5km we managed to follow the river channel by floating our kayaks through a maze of fallen trees. At times we pushed them under, ducking and diving through neck-deep water, or hauled and lifted them over. For my plastic P&H Scorpio this was relatively stress free – these boats are invincible – but for Seumas’s three-piece fibreglass kayak more care was needed.

Leaving the river less than 1km from the foot of the climb, we dragged a route between what scant open ground we could find. Much of the terrain was thick scrub or forest. Our progress slowed to an arduous 100m per hour or less as we fought and clawed our way through vegetation, around and over trees, scraping and scrabbling and hauling. After that first eight-hour day we set camp at the foot of the climb, having managed just over 2km. Our hands were in agony – wrinkled like prunes, bloodied knuckles, full of thorns – and our knees and joints ached from carrying and dragging the weight of the kayaks. Seumas said what we were both thinking: ‘We’re not even halfway.’

It took us the entire next day to reach the summit. The satisfaction of seeing water at the other side was almost worth the pain it took to reach the top. Now at an elevation of 145m, Seumas quipped in the tent: ‘At what point does this stop being kayaking?’

We reached the eastern shore three days after leaving the sea in the west. To celebrate, we gave ourselves an extra cheese ration and indulged the thought that the pain in our hands might subside soon (it took a week). Looking back uphill, trying to imagine the indigenous Kawésqar pulling a wooden boat over that terrain with basic tools, I felt incredible respect. They were the true tough travellers of this land.

The Beagle Channel

A cohort of austral dolphins escorted us into the Beagle Channel and followed us to the entrance of a hidden side channel, which we took behind the islands at the entrance to the sound. Scraping our hulls over the mussel beds, we snuck into the Beagle and turned our bows east.

That night took particular effort to find a suitable landing for camp. Eventually we settled into a bay 2km off route and put the tent up on a low tussocky hill as the light was almost gone. Then, later that evening, a satellite text bore devastating news.

‘What the hell? The Puerto Williams Navy has revoked our permit to continue to Cape Horn!’ I read the text again, hardly believing what I was seeing. It cited a new requirement that we must have a support boat. What a punch in the gut. We spent much of the evening re-reading our signed permission. The four years of planning and negotiations, months of follow-up interviews, inspections, and the 6,000-word itinerary I’d presented to get it now felt like a fool’s errand.

Nature often has a way of lifting spirits. As we left camp the morning after receiving the news, still processing what it meant, we saw our first humpback whales. With a blow they rose ahead of our bows, close enough to hear their spout before raising their flukes with a majestic dive. From this point on we would see humpbacks almost daily along the Beagle Channel.

Over the following few days our emotional state ranged through all five stages of grief. Initially we believed we might be able to negotiate, but attempts by satellite connection came to nothing. ‘Why were we approved at first but rejected now?’ I could feel my confusion boiling over into resentment. Resentment and anger. Still, though we were gutted to have our dream denied by bureaucracy, we managed to keep good humour going on the surface.

With our new orders to ‘Return to Puerto Williams Immediately’, we figured we had approximately 350km to cover – and in doing so would traverse almost the entire length of the Beagle Channel. This, we decided, was an adventure in itself. Our new, slower schedule meant that we had more food than we could possibly eat, and enough time to linger to our hearts’ content. The bureaucracy that constrained us had, ironically, also liberated us – and a sense of adventurous holiday took over from our goal-oriented expedition.

Our first detour took us into Seno Heli, a narrow fjord leading to a spectacular glacier at its head. This was our first time paddling with icebergs on this journey and brought back memories from our first trip, during which ice was the primary adventure goal. The glaciers boomed as they calved more icebergs, adding to the stately, sculptural shapes floating in the fjord.

Pia Fjord came next – arguably one of the most spectacular places I’ve visited in Chile with a huge escarpment that rose over the fjord a little like Half Dome in Yosemite, and a colossal broken ice face leading into it. We camped directly in front of the glacier, high up at a safe vantage point.

Our camp was broken the following morning, to our surprise, by the sounds of a clattering anchor. Poking our heads outside the tent we were taken aback to find a hundred or more passengers from a nearby cruise ship disembarking directly at our doorstep. The ship’s guides proceeded to sanitise the wilderness by placing little road cones in pathways for the passengers – to us they looked like modern art installations. We spent a morning as celebrities to their guests. We brewed coffees, talked, and generally acted like startled rabbits. Then they left as quickly as they had arrived, and our sense of isolation resumed. The morning felt like a strange dream almost immediately.

Our crossing to Isla Navarino took us to the final few days of our expedition with a 30-knot tailwind. Albatrosses soared across our bows as waves broke behind. Picking our way along the coast, we arrived into Puerto Williams on the afternoon of our 21st day at sea, and our arrival was timed – rather satisfyingly – with some of the biggest seas we had experienced on the journey. Seumas and I surfed 1.5–2m breakers into the harbour. Looking ahead to the large naval base, I hoped they might see us.

Over the coming days we found refuge in a hostel, and there we rearranged our return to Puerto Natales and them home via ferry and plane. Reflecting on our trip, we had put energy into the incredible experience we’d enjoyed beyond the disappointment of not reaching the Horn. Our true goal was to prove to ourselves that we had achieved a mastery of expedition kayaking, especially in the fjords of Patagonia.

Although I’m not sure that we achieved true mastery, one thing is for certain: Seumas and I had never felt stronger on the water. Throughout this trip we had experienced bigger winds, longer crossings, and greater commitment both mentally and physically. And we’d come out the other end smiling. As for the future? Our thirst for seeking what is around the next bend, above the next waterfall, has never wavered. There are many other channels to follow in the future.

First published in Sidetracked Volume 27


Words and photography by Will Copestake
@willcopestake // willcopestakemedia.com

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