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Berry Island Lodge

Packing list · Berry Island Lodge

What to pack for Berry Island Lodge

What to bring for a stay at Berry Island Lodge. The lodge lends rain gear and rubber boots, the way in is a water taxi rather than a floatplane so there is no weight limit to fight, and the island is off grid with no laundry. So the list is about layers for fog, a long lens for wildlife from small boats, swimwear for five o'clock, and the things that stay in the car at Alder Bay. Tick things off as they go in; the ticks are saved on this device.

Compiled from the lodge's own pages, with the fog note from late-summer days photographing the lodge. What the lodge provides, the ages, the times and the gratuity figure are the lodge's. It sends its own detailed packing list about 45 days before arrival; this one is for the day you book.

Some gear links on this page are affiliate links. If you buy through one, I earn a small referral fee at no cost to you.

Get this list as a PDF

Layers, for fog

The lodge sits in the coastal temperate rainforest and says rain is not uncommon even in summer. It lends rain gear and rubber boots for the whole stay, so a shell of your own is optional. What it does not lend is warmth. Mornings out here are often fogged in, sometimes for the whole day, and the boats are out most of the day whatever the sky does. The rooms have gas fireplaces; the layers are for outside.

Packing items laid out on grey gravel: a steel water bottle, a black cap, a tube of mineral sunscreen, a headlamp, a battery pack, a can of insect repellent and a paperback

Feet

Rubber boots are provided and they are what you wear on the boats and the shore. Everything else on your feet comes with you. The lodge asks that guests can get in and out of its boats, manage its ramps and docks, and walk on uneven terrain.

The 5 pm swim club

The boats are back by 4:30 and at five whoever is willing walks down to the dock and jumps in. The lodge calls it optional and promises a warm towel waiting. The cold is the point.

A guest on a stand-up paddleboard on calm water below a wall of old-growth forest
Berry Island Lodge

Camera and glass

Wildlife here is found from small boats, zodiacs and on foot, and the lodge follows NIMMSA and CBVA viewing distances, so the animals are where the rules keep them. A long lens does the work. On drones, the lodge's pages say nothing, and the rule on this site is to assume no: the aerials on this site were flown with the lodge's permission, for the lodge, and without that in writing a drone stays at home.

Personal

The lodge is off grid on a marine park island. Once the water taxi leaves there is no shop, no laundry and no way to send for anything. Children are welcome from seven, with full-time parental supervision.

  • A good first aid kit at Amazon · or REI

  • Nitecore USB-rechargeable headlamp at Amazon

  • BLACK+BLUM insulated steel bottle, 850 ml at Amazon

For the water taxi

The boat leaves Alder Bay between 12:00 and 12:30 pm and the lodge asks you to be there by 11:30 to deal with parking and luggage. Parking is complimentary for the stay, so the car is your left-luggage. There is no published weight limit, but it is a boat, a dock and a ramp at each end.

Kit budget

What this list costs, bought new

The kit for this trip, bought new, is about CA$5,251 (US$3,834), across the 24 of 30 items above that name a product. Tick the items you already have and the figure below becomes what is left to buy.

Still to buy CA$5,251 US$3,834 · 24 of 24 items Approx., at 1.37 CAD per USD. Street prices, not quotes; a sale or a used one changes the sum.

Some gear links on this page are affiliate links. If you buy through one, I earn a small referral fee at no cost to you.

Checked against: Berry Island Lodge, FAQs , Berry Island Lodge, getting there , Berry Island Lodge, sample itinerary . Operator limits, especially helicopter baggage weights, are theirs and change; confirm with your booking.

Where this list came from

The weeks behind it