Paddle and skedaddle in the wildest San Juans

CYPRESS ISLAND — We're just about to enter the shadow of a craggy rock promontory called Eagle Cliff when a bald eagle — as if on cue — soars in from who knows where. After a few awkward slow-down flaps of its 6½-foot wingspan, it settles high above us on the top rung of an island-edge fir snag. The eagle looks down on us and our four kayaks, its I-gotta-see-this visage implying that we're its amusement for the next little while.

We stop paddling so as to not disturb it. We stop talking. We even hold our breath a little. But as the flooding tide pushes us closer, the eagle drops, spreads its great wings and makes to get away. It's as if it owes us money and assumes we're coming to collect.

"Must be that dragonfly," says Erik Schorr, the cheery co-owner and lead guide for Anacortes Kayak Tours. He's leading this day trip through the chilly, kelp-riddled waters that surround the rocky, northern tip of Cypress Island. Schorr points out a tiny fury that I hadn't noticed buzzing gnatlike about the eagle's head.

JAMES BRANAMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES

The Anacortes Kayak Tours crew unloads a high-speed water taxi on a Cypress Island beach.

There're seven of us in four kayaks this midsummer afternoon, enjoying a lazy paddle around this 8½-square-mile island that's about three air miles north of the Washington State Ferries terminal at Anacortes. But, of course, the ferry doesn't serve Cypress, which has no roads and no cars and is 90 percent Department of Natural Resources land. We, and our kayaks, hitched a ride via a water taxi that dropped us off on a beach.

"No, wait," Schorr says. "That's not a dragonfly, that's a hummingbird."

By gosh, he's right. Like Tweety Bird pestering Sylvester Pussycat, the hummingbird circles the eagle with lightning quickness, first buzzing its head, then its torso, then its wings, then its head again.

After a few flaps to gain some serious altitude, the eagle leaves the hummingbird far below and soars into the sky. Such are the ornithological dramas during summers in the San Juans.

Kayaking with a twist

JAMES BRANAMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES

A harbor seal peeks out from a kelp bed.

Schorr, 36, and his wife, Megan Schorr, 32, started Anacortes Kayak Tours earlier this summer after both had worked several years as kayak guides and aboard whale-watch boats in the islands. They offer tours to some of the lesser-developed and lesser-traveled San Juan Islands. (That is, ones without towns such as Friday Harbor or Eastsound.) Places like Burrows, Sucia and Cypress islands

Along with their off-the-beaten-path destinations, the Schorrs' three- to six-hour kayak tours are unusual in the local kayak concession world because they transport kayakers and kayaks — whether it be 6 or 10 or 15 — via high-speed water taxi to and from whatever island they're paddling. People can paddle around some of the more remote San Juan Islands without having to catch — and take out a second mortgage for — a state ferry ($55.15 for a vehicle and two adults to San Juan Island). Pristine bays and backwaters that used to require two or three days to reach by kayak can be experienced in an afternoon.

"You can spend the day paddling in some of the most coveted spots in the San Juan Islands, and still make it back to Seattle before dinner time," Erik Schorr says.

As a result, lots of the Anacortes Kayak Tours clientele are out-of-towners, tourists who want to experience what the Northwest has to offer in a short period. On the day I went, the group included a New Jersey church group (which split off on its own tour), a young Texas couple celebrating their fifth wedding anniversary, and two co-workers from Southern California who couldn't have been happier to be off the clock.

A pristine isle

JAMES BRANAMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES

Torolf Torgersen loads a boat for Anacortes Kayak Tours, which in addition to Cypress offers trips to Burrows, Sucia and Lopez islands.

At 10 that morning, the Island Express arrived at the Port of Anacortes' Cap Sante Boat Haven. The Express is the 40-by-14-foot aluminum box of a boat that taxis our gear and us over to Pelican Beach on the northeast side of Cypress. With the help of a crane, Schorr, fellow kayak guide James Klicpera and Rey Rubalcava, owner and captain of the Island Express, load about 10 fruit-Popsicle-colored kayaks onto the boat's roof and open bow.

About 15 minutes later, we're inside chatting with our fellow paddlers while cruising at 25 knots toward Bellingham Channel, the narrow waterway separating Cypress and Guemes islands.

Cypress is one of the first San Juan Islands that ferry passengers see when they depart for the bigger islands. But along with no roads, there's no local ferry to Cypress (as there is from Anacortes to Guemes Island next door), and of the island's 5,500 acres, fewer than 600 are privately owned. The rest is Department of Natural Resources land, most of that preserved as either a Natural Resources Conservation Area or Natural Area Preserve.

JAMES BRANAMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES

Erik Schorr, right, the co-owner and lead guide of Anacortes Kayak Tours, offers some paddling tips.

That's a far cry from 30-plus years ago when some moneyed movers and shakers planned to turn the island into a high-priced resort and conference center. But that plan got the kibosh, and these days the island is a forested jewel outlined with pocket beaches, craggy cliffs, tidal pools and rocky reefs. For those who can get here, about 25 miles of hiking trails and three primitive camping areas await.

After about 35 minutes, the Island Express puts in at one of those campgrounds, Pelican Beach on the northeast side, where we begin our paddle. Kayaks unloaded — the Island Express' bow door drops down like a ramp allowing for easy loading and unloading — Schorr and Klicpera give quick paddling and safety lessons and then we're off.

We head north in the direction of Orcas Island — we can see the cell tower tiara adorning Mount Constitution — and bob gently in the wake of a passing boat. The southeast face of Lummi Island, just offshore from Bellingham, rises high to the northeast, an impenetrable forested wall 1,600 feet from sea to summit.

Soon we stop in the midst of a bull kelp bed. Schorr, who's traveled all over the world and has a University of Washington degree with extensive coursework in marine ecology, gives the first of what turns out to be several natural history lessons-slash-inadvertent Euell Gibbons impersonations. For just about everything we see, Schorr good-naturedly not only provides some interesting factoids — "bull kelp can grow up to two feet a day, that's an inch an hour!" — but also how we can cook and eat it.

"You can make really good pickles with this," he says, holding up a bull kelp bulb.

"You can make Cheetos out of these," he says, pointing to some fucus, a greenish brown algae that covers many of the intertidal rocks out here and has receptacles that resemble little puffy rabbit ears. "You just fry 'em up and they're great."

And so on.

Nature's amusement park

We stay close to shore where the paddling is easy and the marine life is plentiful. The Clovers, the couple from Texas, are intent on finding sea stars but because the tide is high, they're not so easy to spot. Bonnie Brown and Louise Messer, the friends from California, are dazzled by all they see.

Their kayak zigs and zags a lot as it cuts through the water, but they couldn't care less. With her paddle, Messer, who sits in the back, splashes Brown, who's sitting up front.

"It's starting to rain; can you feel that?" a faux-innocent Messer asks Brown, and they explode with laughter, which echoes off the island's rocky cliffs.

"Nothing makes me happier than seeing people having a great time out here," Schorr says.

After the eagle encounter, we paddle close to a black-tail deer buck picking its way from the edge of the forest down to the rocky shoreline. When it spots us, it freezes, hoping we won't notice him. Too late.

We paddle around and through a spectacular boulder garden with sheer blocky cliffs rising 40 feet out of the water. The Clovers find some sea stars, Messer and Brown continue laughing and splashing, and about 2½ hours after we started, we break for lunch at a sandy beach called Smugglers Cove.

Eagle Cliff rises 752 feet above us and if we had time we could hike to the top. (It's about 2.6 miles each way.) Squinting, we can see hikers at the top enjoying a summit view that takes in everything from the Olympics and Vancouver Island to Mount Baker and Bellingham to seemingly every emerald isle in the San Juan Archipelago.

We hear the rat-tat-tat of an agitated kingfisher and looking up we see the cause of its distress — a peregrine falcon that's swooped in. Capable of flying 200 miles per hour, the falcons are the fastest birds in the world and use their speed to snare birds in mid-air. If I were that kingfisher and knew that a peregrine falcon had me on its radar, I'd be distressed, too. The falcon's presence is not a complete surprise. Each February to July, the trail to Eagle Cliff is closed to protect eagles and falcons that nest on the mountain.

Back in the water, we retrace our way to the east side of the island for a quick foray to the Cone Islands, three rocky gumdrop islands with tenacious firs growing on top. A mama and baby harbor seal poke their heads out from a kelp bed, as curious about us as we are about them.

We have a water taxi to catch at 4 so we paddle back to shore. An eagle soars overhead (the hummingbird-harassed one?) and Schorr kicks in to naturalist mode.

"They're scavengers; they rarely kill their own food. They almost always eat animals that are already dead," Schorr tells us.

"It's circling us because it must not think we're going to make it," cracks Brown. "Louise, whatever you do, don't fall out of the boat. It'll think you're dead."

Their laughter echoes off the island's rocky cliffs and I bet anything that people can hear it all the way back in Anacortes.

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