August 2026 British Columbia

We were up and moving early, off the hook at Lowe Inlet by 6:30, and hadn’t even gotten our bearings before the morning handed us its first surprise. As we swung the bow around to take one last look back at the falls, there was a bear standing right on the rocks beside the waterfall, taking its own long look at the water. We held our position for a minute, cameras up, trying to close the distance enough for a decent shot — but it disappeared back into the trees just as suddenly as it had appeared, gone before either of us could quite believe we’d seen it. We floated on out of the channel and left the anchorage to two other boats still sitting quiet on their hooks — asleep, maybe, or just in no hurry. Hard to tell from out on the water.
Out in the main channel, Jennifer caught something splashing off the starboard side, and whatever it was closed the distance on us fast. Dolphins — a small pod that fell in alongside the boat and rode along with us for a stretch, shepherding us down the channel like they had somewhere particular they wanted us to go, before peeling off and vanishing just as abruptly as the bear had. Looking back at Jennifer’s photos afterward, the build and coloring point to Pacific white-sided dolphins, the dolphin most likely to escort a boat through these waters — dark backs, a pale flank patch, and a habit of throwing up a “rooster tail” of spray when they’re moving fast, which is exactly the spray-soaked shot she managed to catch. 
The gauges gave us their own kind of excitement today. The depth sounder read 4,076 feet — a new all-time record for us, and a good reminder of just how deep these coastal channels cut. Overhead, the clouds sat low on the mountains most of the day, occasionally breaking apart just long enough for the sun to get a look in, before closing back up again. By the time we were closing in on Butedale, that pattern gave way to steady rain, and we came in wet.
Wet or not, Butedale delivered. Jennifer and I warmed up with tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, and then, because apparently we hadn’t had enough weather for the day, pulled on our rain gear and headed up the hill anyway. The trail took us past the old cabin and kept climbing, all the way up to the lake on the far side, where the old dam still sits. That little dam is the whole reason the town could exist out here in the first place — Butedale generated its own hydroelectric power off Butedale Lake, and by most accounts still could, if anyone got the turbine running again.
A Little History on Butedale
Butedale was built in 1911 by John Wallace, a Scottish immigrant from the Isle of Arran, and the name itself is a nod to home — “Bute” for the Isle of Bute, and “dale,” honoring the family and place that shaped it. Western Packers ran the original cannery, then sold out to the Canadian Fishing Company in 1923, which modernized and expanded the whole operation between 1936 and 1940. At its peak, Butedale carried a summertime population of more than 400 — its own bunkhouses, cookhouse, general store, customs office, and post office, all clustered on pilings around the bay.
That power came straight from the falls we walked up to see — a small dam on Butedale Lake fed a turbine that could generate up to a megawatt, enough to light the whole town and run the plant, long before most rural BC communities had any power at all. The cannery’s end came almost by accident: heavy snow collapsed the roof in 1950, and rather than rebuild, Canadian Fishing Co. simply shifted production to a new plant it was opening in Prince Rupert. Even after the cannery itself went quiet, the hydro plant kept running for years, mostly so the generator wouldn’t seize up from disuse — which is how Butedale picked up its reputation as the town where the lights were left on long after everyone else had gone. A long-time caretaker named Lou lived on site for decades afterward, giving generator-house tours to passing boaters and telling anyone who asked that the plant had run continuously from 1909 until 1967. Today the buildings we wandered through are the focus of an active preservation effort run by the Inside Passage Marine Corporation, which has spent over a decade documenting the site and stabilizing what’s left of the old town — new access docks, a shored-up warehouse, and a long-term plan built around the same water rights and hydro infrastructure that powered Butedale a century ago.
Standing up at that lake in the rain, looking down at the old dam, it wasn’t hard to picture the place a hundred years ago — full of people, running on nothing but the weight of falling water.
We made our way back down the hill and spent the rest of the afternoon poking through the old buildings at the bottom — pantry shelves still stocked with rusted cans and bottles, an old wood stove sitting exactly where someone left it. There was another couple anchored behind us, the only other boat in the whole bay besides ours. And then, coming down the last stretch of the hill, we got the shot of the day: our boat sitting at anchor far below us, with a full rainbow arched right over the top of it. About as fitting an end to the day as we could have asked for. We got back down, dried off, and there was hot chocolate waiting for us — the good kind of tired that comes from a day that gave you a bear, dolphins, a record depth, a rainstorm, a hike to a hundred-year-old dam, and a rainbow, all before dinner.