![]() We were armed with plenty of tarps, and Doug’s sturdy MEC Wanderer tent, which has served as basecamp for many of our adventures. More showers ushered in a somewhat gloomy night, but to us that hardly mattered. That night, clutch hitting by Pablo Sandoval and a gritty pitching performance by veteran Barry Zito of the San Francisco Giants was enough to down the Detroit Tigers and their ace Justin Verlander, if you’re a baseball fan. We’d been listening to the World Series on the radio while we drove, and so the drive seemed to fly by. The rains persisted right up until the time we arrived at the campground. The goal, from there, was to make our way to Cowichan River Provincial Park where we’d camp the first night. Naturally, the trip began on the ferry at Horseshoe Bay, bound for Nanaimo. It was on a late October afternoon that Doug and I would finally see ourselves enroute to the west side of Vancouver Island. It was not until the autumn of 2012, however, that the right opportunity to visit these forests would present itself for me. The Cheewhat Cedar is now protected within Pacific Rim National Park Reserve, while Carmanah-Walbran Provincial Park gives sanctuary to the Carmanah Valley. Carmanah features great stands of ancient Sitka Spruce, and is among the last intact valley bottom ecosystems to escape the saws of logging. Cheewhat is notable for the discovery of the world’s second largest Western Red Cedar, perhaps as old as two thousand years. One was Cheewhat Lake, and the other was the Carmanah Creek Valley, both on Vancouver Island. Two particular areas captured my imagination more than most others. Through his book Hiking Guide to the Big Trees of Southwestern British Columbia, I learned of numerous incredible finds. big tree hunter and conservationist Randy Stoltmann. Years later, when I began to research the whereabouts of these remaining giants, I began to follow the exploits of legendary B.C. ![]() I have spent countless hours in search of the province’s remaining forest giants. It was that sense of awe that kindled my interest in trees, which remains strong even today. The very scent of the forest was something completely unknown to me, and I can recall spending an inordinate amount of time gazing upward in admiration. When I first found myself on the west coast of British Columbia after arriving from Quebec in the late 1970s, the very first thing that captivated me here in British Columbia were the towering conifers.
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