Wave and Range Cortes Island has decided it’s time to go public.
“This year we’re going to be putting on the Cortes adventure challenge, essentially a Cortes triathlon: It’s a kayak or a canoe, a swim and a trek. We’ve got a short course, and a long course. That’ll be on the 12th and the 21st of July, tentatively. I’ll need to confirm those dates with you, but we’ll advertise that. We’ll do a little bit of lead up training for that,” explained Kay Hope.
“There’s an opportunity with where we live to have not so much a love affair, but like a marriage with the physical place that we live in. I think a majority of us are really disconnected from our biophysical reality. All sorts of things have unfortunately corrupted a lot of people away from a connection with their body and the environment. I’m just trying to foray back into that. I think there’s a big opportunity for all of us to just keep doubling down on hiking up Easter Bluff, going to Mansons Lagoon, getting a sweat on, but then exploring in, around and up Desolation Sound. The beauty we have around us, it’s really underutilized by us as a community together. I don’t want to go out and just be exploring by myself. I’d love to go out on the weekend and see more kayaks than I see power boaters. That’s my wish, and my wish for my baby boy.”
“I’ve traveled to so many different places and the stuff that’s just in our backyard here, it’s world class. The longer term plan is just to connect more Cortesians to get outside together, and to get away from these damn screens and all the internet fights.”
“I’ve been interacting with Cortes for over 15 years now. We’re living in Vancouver for the most part and coming here in the summers. My partner Tiana grew up here and we moved here a bit over two years ago.”
“I’m pretty busy. I’ve got a young son, the business to run and that sort of thing, but I’m really passionate about this sort of stuff. I’ve been getting people outdoors for a long time. I run a business in Vancouver helping people do that.”
“Essentially we looked at what Quadra Island was doing. They have the Quadra Island Outdoor Club. It’s essentially a member led club. They do trips outdoors, hiking, skiing, kayaking, all that sort of stuff.
“We incorporated Wave and Range in April 2024. We get insurance through the BC Federation of Mountain Clubs as a nonprofit. There’s myself, Jordan Best and Tiana on the Board right now. We’re looking for more board members and more people to get involved. We are a bit over 20 members.”
“We’ve done maybe 32 plus trips. We’ve been canoeing and hiking. I’ve been putting on strength and mobility classes at the hall for our members as well, for people to build up the strength and mobility they need to go adventuring.”
“Josh Bannister does some of the hiking stuff. Aaron Ellingsen is going to be there and Sanchez is going to be there. Trevor Bass , Kenny and Evie have been coming to the strength and mobility classes. Kate Madigan and Mike Moore are coming out on the canoe. It’s just cool to interact with those people, and listen to the sea lions carrying on down at Mary’s Point and getting to know the different places.”
“I’ve got a big 22 foot, eight person canoe. I’ve done a bunch of canoeing and adventure trips, as much as I can with running a business. We canoed up from Vancouver to Cortes. I brought some of my coaches a few years back. Just a couple of years back, we canoed from Cortes and climbed up Mount Denman, which was really cool. Last season, Jordan Best, one of the board members and I kayaked around the Redondas in two days. We’re both busy fathers, and we crammed that in.”
Cortes Currents: How are these trips organized?
Kay Hope: “We have a group’s IO. I think there’s 70 different Cortes groups on there, and different non profits. It’s a mail listserv forum board. The members join that. Any member can be a trip leader and put up that they’re doing a hike, or something. Sancho put on a run. Josh has done some things. Mark Brataan’s volunteered to take people swimming. Anyone can do it. Truthfully for the most part, it’s been me a lot of the time which is fine. We are looking for more people who want to lead those sorts of things, but it’s early days.”
“There’s a little bit of inherent risk with it. Our insurance doesn’t cover people if they hurt themselves on these things. It’s more director’s insurance. We’re a nonprofit.”
“Ridge First Aid is coming to teach a remote first aid course on Cortes Island, May 5-7, 2025. I just posted up about that on the Tideline and the Facebook community groups. We’re encouraging people to scale up, be safe and train.”
Cortes Currents: Geographically speaking, are most of these trips on Cortes itself, or around Cortes?
Kay Hope: “So far it’s been mostly in and around Cortes. Like the little canoe trips we’ve been doing for an hour at Red Granite Bay down near Sadhu Johnston and Manda Aufochs Gillespie’s house. I have the big canoe down there. We go out at 7 AM and we’re back before work starts. We’ve all got a bit of a sweat. We saw the sunrise and saw some sea lions. It’s nice, quick and easy.”
“There have been a few bigger events, a few more hours. I did a kayak-bike-run with a couple of members last year. There were six hour things and then the two day trip around the Redondas. Thus far nothing too big with a larger group, but that’s what we’re building to. First the Cortes Adventure Challenge to give people the skills, confidence and the reason to do that sort of stuff.”
“If you’re going to do it short, hard, and fast, you’re better be prepared to go slow, longer, overnight, and multi-day. All of us don’t really have a big reason to do that unless we’re doing it for work, or guiding people, that sort of stuff. It’s cool to just keep up that skill set.”
“People talk about language dying, but just the language of physical literacy that’s my business in Vancouver. I run a studio with a bunch of kinesiologists. There’s 11 coaches and we talk about physical literacy.”
“I grew up in the suburbs behind screens, all that sort of stuff. You lose the ability to move through complex terrain. Thankfully, I went through the process of rediscovering that in my twenties. Just the outdoor skills like being cold, starting a fire, getting dumped in the waves, those sorts of things.”
“Now we’ve got no reason to really do it apart from a little bit of fun. So it’s cool to kind of keep that language alive of moving in the back country of moving in complex terrain.”
“I’m a big fan of Patagonia and Yvon Chouinard. I don’t know if you know much about that company. They’re really big about getting people in the outdoors. I definitely see a lot of people buying the Patagonia jackets and the Arc’teryx jackets, but their bodies just aren’t capable of moving in those environments.”
“There’s people who want it, but we start to see nature as almost this place that hurts us. We don’t care if it gets clear cut because ‘hey I can’t really move there, like it has no worth to me.’ I see that seeping into the broader psychology. People just don’t have the love for it because they’re not in it and they’re not experiencing it.”
“Some of the best memories of my life are with other people in nature, moving my body. That’s the stuff I’m going to remember when I’m on my deathbed. I think most people, when they think back: ‘it was that surfing trip,’ ‘I went and climbed that hill with my friends and it was amazing view and I saw the sunset.’ They’re the things that really stick. We can back it up from a neuroscience perspective, or neurochemicals, dopamine, oxytocin, but we don’t need to, it’s just damn fun!”
Cortes Currents: Is there a cost involved?
Kay Hope: “It’s $25 a year if you’re an individual, $40 if you’re a couple – just for the membership, for our insurance and that sort of thing. We’re not charging for any of the classes or any of the events or anything like that.”
“Ridge First Aid is an outside body, so people will need to pay them.”
“I’ve been putting on a bunch of free classes and we’ve received some small donations to pay for the hall and stuff like that through the winter. So just trying to keep it really low on the admin and the cost side of stuff.”
Cortes Currents: How do people get a hold of you?
Kay Hope: “Primarily it’s been word of mouth. They hear about us and then I give them my email and I email them the application form.”
“We do have a website called Wave and Range dot club. Any of our members can share that. My email is there and then they can contact me. Then I’ll send them the membership application and then the waiver that the BC Federation of Mountain Clubs needs us to have people sign. They e transfer to us as an organization. I deposit it and then they get added to the group’s IO.”
“We’ve had some people join and they don’t come to anything and that’s okay. People are super busy sometimes on Cortes. Like I said, we’ve just been getting started really trying to keep it small.”
“This interview is coming at a good time because I do want to start to broaden out. We are after anyone who wants to join the board and help keep us accountable, or any members who want to come get involved and lead trips. We’re super excited to help facilitate that longer term. We want to set up things like a gear library. We’ve talked to Kai at Cortes Kayaks. She’s already doing some great things for the community, but potentially looking at some discounts for our members to use the kayaks at different times and things like that. There’s so many resources that together we can tap into.”
Links of Interest:
- Wave and Range Club website
- Peeking into the world of the Quadra Island Outdoor Club – Cortes Currents (May 29, 2023)
Sound effects in podcast: wave sand beach 032.wav by Klandbeeld At freesound.org
All photos courtesy Wave and Range Cortes Island
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