Small Craft Route - Bishop Bay - E of Mile 462

"Yeah, ya just take that next right, north of Butedale, head up there, take the second bay on your right and go all the way in.. You'll see kind of a log float coming down from the woods; that's the hot springs."

On such skinny advice, my wife, Mary Lou, our crew, and I set out to find the Bishop Bay Hot Springs. It was late October, 1981, and we were headed back to Seattle after a long, almost 5 month season of buying salmon and herring. On board was a basic set of charts, showing the Seattle to Alaska route, but not much of the myriad channels that branched off in many directions. But when we first left the beaten path, and then off my chart, I got a little nervous, especially in a leased boat.

"The second bay on the right" was a gash between the hills, winding back into the forested interior, and as the channel bent around to the south, I wondered if it was the right place, and I began to feel nervous, and anxious to be back on my chart! But then at the very head of the bay we saw a rough log ramp leading down to a crude float and knew we'd found it.

We walked the short trail and found the hot springs, feeding into a cement pool in a cinder block building, perched on the rocks close to the water. There was no one else there and the nearest town or settlement was many miles away.

You may imagine how it felt to sit in that steaming water, while looking out at our vessel lying so gracefully in the cove below, feeling the cares of a long, hard season slip away. As we sat in the water up to our necks, we heard an odd sound and looked out. For a long time we saw nothing. Then I made out the graceful tails of a pair of humpback whales, lifted for a moment above the waters of the bay, then disappearing. It was magic.

It was too bad Vancouver's Lieutenant Whidbey and his boat crew didn't come a bit farther when they were looking for the Northwest Passage that July evening in 1793. Instead, they stopped at Goat Harbor, the next bay to the south. They found a hot spring there too, but it issued out of the rocks below the low tide mark and was too hot for comfort. If they had made Bishop Bay before resting for the night, they might have dammed the hot water and made a pool to bathe in. Probably they could have used it.

Ahhhh, nothing like a good hot soak to take away the aches and pains of a long, cold season in the north! That's me in the outside pool where you can soap up and rinse off before going inside! Photo by Mary Lou Upton.

Our tender, or fish buying boat, Emily Jane, tied to the hot springs float, October, 1981. Imagine looking out at this while you soak up to your necks in the clean hot water, after a long, hard season! Originally built by a shop class from the Kitimat High School, I was told, it has eventually become a park, and in the years since this photo was taken, has an aluminum ramp and an improved float and even several mooring buoys, thanks to BC Parks!