‘It’s just dried up’: B.C. earthquake pulls plug on centuries-old Haida Gwaii hot springs

  National Post

Tristin Hopper | Nov 2, 2012 12:31 AM ET | Last Updated: Nov 2, 2012 12:46 AM ET
More from Tristin Hopper | @TristinHopper

Margo Pfeiff A series of hot springs on Haida Gwaii — which once bubbled with water as warm as 77 C — has dried up since Saturday’s earthquake.

 

Days after the remote B.C. archipelago of Haida Gwaii emerged virtually unscathed from Canada’s second-strongest earthquake, locals discovered that the shifting earth had mysteriously switched off a centuries-old hot spring considered sacred by the Haida.

“It’s a very culturally significant site — even today Haida people would go down to take advantage of healing properties of the springs,” said Ernie Gladstone, a field unit superintendent for Gwaii Haanas National Park, of which Hot Spring Island is a part.

Parks Canada    Gwaii Haanas superintendent Ernie Gladstone stands in an empty cliff pool after last weekend’s earthquake off the coast of British Columbia.

Earlier this week, scattered reports began drifting in that the familiar cloud of steam over the island (known as Gandll K’in Gwaayaay in the Haida language) had disappeared.

A Parks Canada inspection party set out to investigate and stepped ashore to find that the island’s three main hot spring pools, which once bubbled with water as warm as 77 Celsius, were bone dry. “Not even a small puddle,” said Mr. Gladstone.

Surrounding rocks, once warm to the touch, were cold.

Renowned for their purported healing properties, the waters were mentioned by some of the first European visitors to the region. Boston fur trader Joseph Ingraham sailed into the area in 1791 and reported seeing steam rising from the pools, prompting him to dub the area “Smoke Bay.”

Francis Poole, a copper prospector who became the islands’ first white resident in 1862, later described the spring as “miraculous.” After being told that springs were a “cure for all diseases,” Poole advised his blacksmith, who had fallen ill with rheumatic fever to take a canoe to the sacred island.

A few days later, the blacksmith “reappeared … not only fully restored in bodily health, but quite altered in a moral sense also,” wrote Poole in an 1872 account of his time on the islands.

Parks Canada    Hotsprings Island hotpool after the earthquake along the British Columbia coast. 

 

The area surrounding the hot springs is largely uninhabited, although it is near SGang Gwaay llnagaay, a Haida village of 300 that was abandoned in the 1880s following a devastating smallpox epidemic.

On Tuesday, local lodge owner Tassilo Goetz Hanisch became one of the first to notice that the heated waters were gone.

“Normally, you could hear water bubbling but there was nothing to be heard,” said Mr. Hanisch, who was passing by Hot Spring Island enroute to his home on Kunghit Island. “It’s just dried up, green mud.”

Many other smaller pools around the island were similarly extinguished. Hot Spring Island’s heated ground has long spawned “thermal meadows” of unique flora and fauna on the island, all of which is expected to disappear in the coming years.

We don’t know if it’s going to come back. We certainly can hope,

In recent decades, the remote springs have become one of the area’s most treasured tourist attractions. Only 12 visitors would be allowed into the pools at a time to maintain an “intimate experience,” said Mr. Gladstone.

In books and travel blogs, kayakers, sailors and other visitors reported basking in the soothing water while occasionally spotting humpback whales in adjacent Juan Perez Sound.

Even passing commercial fishermen were known to slip ashore for a dip in the pools, although, like any visitor, they would first have to call ahead for permission from the Haida Watchmen, teams of volunteers that monitor cultural sites throughout Gwaii Haanas.

Striking just off the western edge of Haida Gwaii on Saturday, the quake has since been confirmed as the second-strongest ever recorded in Canada.

Coming in at 7.7 on the Richter scale, the tremor was much more powerful than the 7.0 earthquake that levelled much of Haiti in 2010 — yet the island’s largely wood structures were able to ride out the shaking with almost no structural damage.

In coastal communities, residents anticipating a tsunami immediately set out for high ground, although Haida Gwaii beaches were hit by waves no larger than 43 centimetres.

It is not known what shut off the water flow, although it may have been one of the hundreds of aftershocks that rattled the islands well into the week, one of which struck less than one kilometre from the site.

“We don’t know if it’s going to come back. We certainly can hope,” Brent Ward, an earth sciences professor at Simon Fraser University, told Postmedia.

National Post, with files from Postmedia News