Jones Island (7-9 January 2025) - Paddling Alone & Dodging Death

My winter kayak camping ritual is pretty consistent, I keep an eye on the weather using the 6 week forecast on AccuWeather for Lopez Island. When I see a 4 day weather window with a possibility of light wind and some sun, I added it to my calendar. I typically have a couple at any given time. Mostly these optimistic weather windows slam shut as the date closes in, so I just move on to the next possibility. And as it turns out, the weather Goddess decided to smile on me and the weather window for my birthday week was still open. I don’t use AccuWeather as my final go / no go check. But after confirming the forecast with Windy, NWS 6-Day and the NWS Marine Forecast I was good to go.

I had a number of thoughts on where to go, but in the end decided to revisit Jones Island. With the conditions and very short days, I wanted a sweet campsite with lots of southern exposure. In addition, I had a number of upgrades and tweaks to my tarps, hammock suspension and cook system that I want to try. And since I did a pretty thorough scouting on my last visit, I’d have a nice choice of sites to choose from.

The only, small, fly in the ointment for this trip was the currents. The tide was turning around 10:30 in San Juan Channel so I would need an early morning start to snag the last of the flood to keep from having to fight the ebb on my trip north. So the plan was a predawn trip to the Weeks Point Way beach access and launch around 8:15am.

Campsite 16

At some point, I plan to try out some of the other campsites that I scouted on my last Jones Island trip but not this trip. With such short days, a bit over 8 hours, I decided to grab the most open sunny spot on Jones Island. Which to my way of thinking is site 16. Especially since the wind was mostly cooperative and choose not to scream up San Juan Channel.

There was one other reason I choose site 16, I wanted to tweak and upgrade some of my camping systems. And having recent experience with the availability and spacing of trees gave me one less thing to worry about for my tarp and hammock testing.

Shelter Tarp

One of the first additions to my backpacking kit that I wanted to add for kayaking was a separate “shelter” tarp in addition to a tent or hammock tarp. I settled on the Hammock Gear Traverse Ground Tarp. This is a 9’ 6” square flat tarp made of silpoly with 16 perimeter tie outs. It seemed like a pretty perfect entry tarp for the tarp newbie. This tarp has worked out pretty well, but I wanted to tweak, upgrade and perhaps lighten this setup. So after a bit of research I ended up stumbling on Myers Tech Hammock Lab on eBay & Etsy. My first upgrade was a new ultralight 33’ ridgeline with Nama Claws & toggles. This was a huge upgrade over my previous paracord ridge line. In addition it was super quick to setup.

I upgraded the guy lines with two sets utilizing Lawson 2mm Reflective Glowire. I cut 8 (green) at approximately 6’ and 4 (red) at approximately 12’. Currently I’m thinking the 6 footers are my typical first choice. But when I need longer I can grab the 12 footers. In addition, 2 of the 12 foot guy lines have pole caps tied to them with prussiks. This allows me to move my kayak paddles along the guy lines as needed to prop up portions of my tarp.

The last “upgrade” is a Dutchware Gear 1 piece Tarp Sleeve. I’ve used one of these on my hammock for a few years and really like how it simplifies setup and take down. I also thought it might be handy to be able to “zip up” my tarp should the wind come up suddenly. This last idea was heavily inspired by Alex Sidles’ D’Arcy Island BC December trip when an uncooperative weather forecast resulted in the demise of his tarp.

Hammock

I confess that have a bit of a love affair with my Amok Draumr Ultralight Hammock. So finding any reason to upgrade or make changes wasn’t really something I gave much thought to. But when I was researching info on shelter tarps and ridge lines, I also stumbled down that deep rabbit hole that is hammock suspensions. I didn’t think that there was anything particularly wrong with the Draumr system of cinch buckles and tree straps other than, perhaps, weight and length. And sometimes the trees I needed to use were pretty large so I needed to added an extra set of daisy chain tree straps just in case. This made the system a bit bulky and heavy so I thought I’d upgrade the system to lighten my load.

So another trip to Myers Tech Hammock Lab. This time a pair of 2” 15’ hammock straps and fast shackles. This saved me about a pound over my existing setup. I also added a pair of 24” Amsteel dog bones in case I need a bit more length to accommodate larger trees. This turned my hammock setup into a hardware free system using soft shackles and a becket hitch. I confess that I was a touch nervous with this setup at first, but now like it quite a lot.

Cook Kit

My original cook kit was a left over from my backpacking days. It was basically there to boil water for coffee, tea and freeze dried meals. For kayak camping I wanted more options. My first change was to switch from an alcohol stove to gas. After a bunch of false starts, I settled on the Soto ST-340 Butane Stove and the Soto Navigator Cookset. This stove has a nice simmer ability and butane canisters are locally available. Butane does have the disadvantage of working best with temps above 40s. Those temps are also more likely to get me out camping so it’s all good, so far.

I don’t plan to carry this whole kit, just the two pots, lids, pot grabber and sack. I don’t really need the cozy. For the type of cooking I’d like to do, I want to have two pots. For my Jones trip, dinner was Andouille sausage with baked beans the first night. And garlic shrimp pasta the second. Both were easy and worked well with this kit and I’m planning to continue to work to expand my recipe options.

Why the Intense Focus on Weight?

I confess that I’ve spent way too much time and energy weighing, tracking and working to minimize my kayak camping weight. Some of that is my minimalist nature and some if it is due to the modest size and load capability of my Norse Embla kayak. But ultimately, I’d like to expand the scope of my kayak journeys to include photography. So all this weight, and space, management is working towards allowing me the ability to carry “proper” camera gear and to lengthen my trips.

I’m sure some might argue, why not have a larger kayak? But then I’m in that situation where loading and unloading becomes a burden. Currently, I can pretty easily load, pack and haul my kayak for a solo trip, both during launch and when I arrive at my destination. For me, this is no small thing. While it has been nice the few times I’ve had help, I don’t like having to have it just to go places. Plus being lighter on my feet, allows me the space and freedom to help others. Hopefully a “win-win”.

Hiking the Eastern Loop

Okay, enough about the darn gear since I didn’t just kayak to Jones Island to tinker. I came because Jones Island is quickly becoming one of my favorite winter destinations. One of the reasons I enjoy kayaking to our local islands is the chance to hike and explore. During my last visiting I pretty well covered the south, west and north portions of Jones Island. But didn’t get to the eastern side. This is, actually, quite a nice hike. And by the looks of it, not quite as well traveled as the rest of the trails on Jones Island. During my trek, the weather was a bit stormy and grey, with a foul northwest wind. So definitely no “tourist” quality images, but there is a beauty to Pacific Northwest winters.

Yellow Island

On my last, and first, trip to Jones Island, I thought I might visit Yellow Island on the way home, but “horse to the barn mode” got the better of me and so I paddled on by. But this visit I was more determined to stop and visit. It had been years since I visited Yellow Island, and then by a “proper boat”. So the plan for this trip was to leave Jones Island a bit early and wait for the ebb on Yellow Island entertaining myself with a nice walk and a spot of lunch.

For reasons beyond my understanding I listened to parts of two audio books on this trip. Walden by Henry David Thoreau, and Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. In a sense they seemed fitting for a winter kayak camping trip in the San Juan Island since being alone is the experience. And to be clear, I don’t have a plan to journey out into the wilderness and die. But both books expressed the importance of focusing on things that matter. And my visit to Yellow Island happened on my 63rd birthday and I had a chance to explore and relax and was quite inspired by the previous inhabitants memorials.

SOMEHOW

I’VE TRIED FOR MANY AN HOUR AND MINUTE TO THINK OF THIS WORLD WITHOUT ME IN IT. I CAN’T IMAGINE A NEW BORN DAY WITHOUT ME HERE… SOMEWAY. I CANNOT THINK OF THE AUTUMN’S FLARE WITHOUT ME HERE… ALIVE… AWARE. I CAN’T IMAGINE A DAWN IN SPRING WITHOUT MY HEART AWAKENING.

THESE TREASURED DAYS WILL COME AND GO AT SWIFTER PACE… BUT THIS I KNOW… I HAVE NO FEAR... I HAVE NO DREAD OF THAT MARKED DAY THAT LIES AHEAD. MY FLESH WILl TURN TO ASH AND CLAY BUT I’LL BE HERE… SOMEHOW… SOME WAY.