BUILDING THE CLAYOQUOT VALLEY WITNESS TRAIL
Clayoquot/Kennedy Pass. Photo credit: Mark Wareing
Volunteers working hard to save a condemned rainforest
It begins as many trails do in British Colombia, in a devastated landscape. The trailhead is marked by a large cedar sign, hung in a clearcut high in the Kennedy Valley, just a few kilometres off the Port Alberni to Tofino Highway on Vancouver Island near Sutton Pass. Rocky, eroding, waste wood-littered landscapes bear witness to the ecological illiteracy of B.C.'s so-called "forest managers" who continue to cling to the brutal technique of clearcutting with fanatical zeal.
The Wilderness Committee's Clayoquot Witness Trail quickly takes you out of the clearcut carnage into the wild forest-at trailhead elevation, a magical world of lichens, bonsai-like ancient mountain hemlocks, and moss-covered rock outcrops. Soon you encounter a spectacular show of the powerful natural forces which fashion Earth's geomorphology. Several decades ago half a mountainside broke loose. Signs of the blast-wave this cataclysmic cascade spawned are still evident. A new lake about two kilometres long, filled with the ghostly spikes of thousands of drowned trees, now graces the upper Kennedy River valley.
Giant red cedar along trail. Photo credit: Glenn Heams
Suddenly the trail drops down into a dense, brushy forest with a wonderfully spongy, mossy floor, cris-crossed by elk trails. Before long, it winds along beside the drowned forest, then strikes off to the south and upwards towards the pass into the Clayoquot Valley. A climb up some rugged, highly variable terrain brings you past some large cedars, with their roots dramatically draped over huge boulders. Now about ten kilometres into the largest remaining tract of low elevation wild temperate rainforest left on Earth you enter a remote mountain landscape, dotted with hidden lakes surrounded by granite cliffs. Stands of miniature yellow cedar, no more than a metre high, make you feel like a giant striding through the rainforest.
Rock Slide Lake, Kennedy Valley. Photo credit: Joe Foy
Cascading falls along trail. Photo credit: Glenn Heams
An amazing botanical bonanza with all kinds of exotic flowers, lichen and tiny rhododendron-like plants-a rich exotic vein of biodiversity-lace the ground. A carpet of tiny blueberries in flower promises a sweet feast for those roaming here in late summer. The secret of this diversity may be the extremely variable pattern of dry ridges and tiny, magically dyked swamps that dot the ridges.
Two great mountain peaks stand as sentinels at the top of the Clayoquot Valley. In the distance, far down into the mystical Clayoquot Valley, a mountainside of what can only be huge trees is dimly visible. The terrain of this wild domain, on the far side of the windswept heather-clad high country, drops dramatically down a set of waterfall-covered ramparts, into the top of the Clayoquot Valley itself. Looking down this great granite wall, the bed of the Clayoquot River is visible as an already-wide, boulder-strewn water course. The shady, leafy valley bottom below seems a long way away from the headwaters ridge, and yet a short but exciting climb down brings you into a dramatically different world where towering Amabilis firs reign. Thrusting over 70 metres into the sky, they have the beautiful flared buttress roots that inform you that this is the heart of the coastal rainforest! No doubt, this hidden forest of Pacific Silver Firs, located by the two lakes in the headwaters of the Clayoquot River, is a sacred place.
Volunteers using loppers to clear trail. Photo credit: Mike James
The excitement of discovery beckons the trail building volunteers further into the valley. They're working hard in the belief that the Witness Trail can not help but inspire all who "trespass" into this B.C. government-condemned forest to join the battle to keep the giant bulldozers of MacMillan Bloedel at bay. Company plans call for road building into the heart of the valley next year. The rightful owners of Clayoquot Valley, the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nations, don't want their valley logged. They've sanctioned the Wilderness Committee's Witness Trail as a way to gain protection for this sacred place, its wild salmon and irreplaceable ancient forest.
