Carmanah Walbran Provincial Park

We started out bright and early to head to the Carmanah-Walbran Provincial Park. This is a protected area of spectacular old growth trees. Our route this year will take us to an area just outside the park, where active logging is due to resume. We want to see for ourselves what the fuss is all about.
Leaving the traffic circle in the community of Lake Cowichan, the 76 kilometer route follows the south shore of the lake to the Carmanah main line logging road. The route is torturous and slow. It is a full 2 hours before we arrive at the bridge crossing the Walbran River.

A hundred or more anti-logging activists have just finished a brain-storming weekend at this site and the stragglers still remain. We are filled in that this area is now on the schedule to be logged within the next couple of years and many more first growth trees are to be felled. The goal of the weekend gathering was to find a way to get this area protected as well and added to the provincial park.

Throughout the area volunteers have built boardwalks through the forest so people can see the giant trees at risk. The have given specific trees names like the Tolkien Giant. We hiked up and down through the woods for the best part of 4 hours. In the woods the humidity is high, and even though the temperature was not high, we were sweat soaked from our exertions.

This is an incredible place and it deserves to be saved from logging. To see the forest as it was before man began to destroy it, is to see the past clearly. It is magnificent and there is but 5% of old growth trees left on Vancouver Island. Surely there is little economic value cutting down these giants.

Here is Victor demonstrating the custom built outhouse at the Walbran River. The views are stupendous:

The return trip was another 2 hours of bumping along the back roads towards Lake Cowichan. In all, it took 4 hours of driving to cover 150 kilometers in order to have 4 hours to hike amongst the giants. It is well worth the effort to go see these trees. Just make sure you have a high clearance vehicle to safely make the trip. Sully, our Honda Pilot was up to the task.