Cougar and Rainbow Mountain Wilderness Areas Threatened
Thousand-year-old cedars along trail on Cougar Mountain less than 10 km from Whistler, B.C. Photo credit: Clinton Webb
Wow! You say that British Columbia still has a huge trees like those pictured right, unprotected but not yet reduced to stumps? And they aren't growing in some place so remote that I could never find the time or energy to visit them?
Yes there are! Two areas with giant trees thrive on the doorstep of British Columbia's best known resort town. Whistler, already internationally renowned for its ski slopes, has a chance to be equally famous for its ancient cedar groves.
The Pocket Wilderness Coalition proposes that Cougar Mountain and Rainbow Mountain be protected as Wilderness Areas. But logging roads could be pushed into both regions this summer. Before most people realize what is happening, these great international treasures could be destroyed. Only if enough people demand full preservation now, will these areas be saved.
A Once In Forever Opportunity
Ever walked in a fern-floored forest with trees as tall as sky scrapers and clumps of devil's club with thorns like cactus spines? Loggers call our old growth forests decadent slums of rotting cellulose. But most who visit such areas believe that they are about as decadent as the majestic medieval cathedrals which give Europe its character.
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Nine kilometres from the world class resort village of Whistler, you can visit a grove of ancient cedar where trees are as big in circumference as an average limousine. They are earmarked for the shake and shingle mills. But the Pocket Wilderness Coalition (PWC), a small but growing group of Lower Mainland residents, is determined to save these monarchs from such a fate.
On March 3, 1988 the PWC met with B.C. Forest Service officials at Squamish to propose permanent protection for a 1,700 hectare Cougar Mountain Pocket Wilderness Area and a 10,000 hectare Rainbow Mountain Wilderness Area. New amendments to B.C.'s Forest Act make such protection possible.
During recent construction of a mountain bike trail on the lower part of Cougar Mountain, workers discovered a large stand of western red cedars, many of them over 10 feet in diameter. Core samples taken from the tree trunks indicate that some of the cedars may be as much as 1,000 years old. Some of the Douglas firs growing there are more than 650 years old. The new bike trail winds through this mysterious prehistoric terrain of gargantuan trees, thick green moss, and trickling streams. It takes less than an hour to reach the trees on bicycle from downtown Whistler.
The Rainbow wilderness, an extremely popular hiking area, is also right in Whistler's back yard. An excellent trail leads through old growth forest to a pretty alpine bowl that cradles Rainbow Lake. The possibilities are endless - a quiet snooze in Rainbow Meadows or an energetic but easy assent of Rainbow Peak. The old pack trail to Madeley Lakes is hard to follow, but takes the adventuresome on a wilderness ramble down to the old growth forests in the western section of Rainbow.
Rainbow is criss-crossed with old trails and narrow roads that wind through the virgin forest.
Both Cougar Mountain and Rainbow Mountain harbour the most endangered form of B.C. wilderness, its lush primeval rain forests.
