Waterfall near Sims Creek
Randy Stoltmann Wilderness Area
Save It Now!
Tony Eberts - special to WCWC
Just a 3-hour-drive from Vancouver (200 km north), touched by the headwaters of the Squamish and Lillooet Rivers, is a stretch of wilderness unique in the world.
Its champions call it the Randy Stoltmann Wilderness, in honour of the young mountaineer, conservationist and author killed last year in an avalanche.
One of the last things Stoltmann did was to put together a brief advocating the preservation of a 260,000-hectare roadless area. The Stoltmann Wilderness includes three large pristine watersheds, alpine meadows, glacial lakes, waterfalls, icefields, populations of grizzlies, moose, wolverine, mountain goat and wolf-and the last significant stands of old-growth Douglas fir on our mainland coast.
Fir-cedar forest near the mouth of Sims Creek.
This area is not a Carmanah Valley filled with high value trees. Little more than two percent of this wild, ruggedly beautiful proposed protected area (already known to growing numbers of backcountry skiers, mountaineers and hikers) is commercially valuable timberland.
But plans to blast in logging roads, compromise the wilderness and clearcut the rare remnants of old-growth forest in the valley bottoms are already well advanced.
The stands of big trees in the Stoltmann Wilderness are not only worth preserving in their own right; they are vital to the winter survival of animals including moose, deer, goats and grizzly.
Nearby Garibaldi Provincial Park has a somewhat similar range of mountainous terrain, but the rapid growth of population in the Lower Mainland is inevitably leading to such heavy use of the park that its wilderness aspect will be compromised. Furthermore, Garibaldi lacks both the herds of big game animals and the big tree wintering habitat to shelter them. Also it's cut off by roads and settlement from other wild areas.
The Randy Stoltmann Wilderness spreads from tidewater at Princess Louisa Inlet, across tributaries of the Squamish to the upper part of the Lillooet River system. Straddling the divide between the Toba and Elaho Rivers, it's true wilderness, yet it's southern border is easily accessible by road.
The person who knows the area best is John Clarke, a dedicated mountain man who has spent much of the last 35 years exploring the Coast Mountains of B.C. from Vancouver to Alaska.
- "Timber companies and the B.C. Forest Service have been challenged to come up with similar Douglas fir/western redcedar forests on the mainland, but they can't," says Clarke. "The Stoltmann Wilderness has the last of them."
- Unless the area is preserved--and quickly--they will be gone. Many animals will be doomed, and so will the wild, fragile wonder of the region.
4000 ft. icefall on Hunaechin Peak, south end of the wilderness area. Photo credit:
This year Interfor Ltd. is planning to bridge the Elaho River, main waterway of the upper Squamish, which forms part of the southeastern boundary of the Stoltmann Wilderness. Next year the chainsaws would be into one of the rare Douglas fir/redcedar groves. Waterfall near Sims Creek.
- "Many people think that there's one great expanse of untouched forest all up the coast from the Vancouver area," Clarke says. "They couldn't be farther off the mark.
- "As you fly up the mainland coast from Vancouver to Bella Coola, stretched below you is one of the world's grandest and most intricate coastlines. Your eyes search the fiords for an unlogged valley, but until you reach Kwalate Creek in Knight Inlet, every valley running in from tidewater has its system of roads and clearcuts.
- "What really makes an impression is the number of logged-out valleys that could still be providing employment if they had been harvested on a sustainable basis.
- "Historically, the classic, valley-bottom stands of giant fir and cedar were removed during the railroad and steam- donkey era of the 1920s and I930s. What followed was 50 years of truck logging that used zig-zag roads to log far up the sides and into the headwaters of these valleys.
- "Timber companies and the B.C. Forest Service have been challenged to come up with similar Douglas fir/western redcedar forests on the mainland, but they can't, " says Clarke. "The Stoltmann Wilderness has the last of them." continued from page one
- "What remains today in most mainland valleys are patches of forest on benches above cliffs and a fringe of high elevation sub-alpine trees that weren't considered valuable before. Now, even these remnants are being helicoptered off, removing the last trace of integrity that these watersheds still have."
Interfor logging road being built in Sims Creek.
Hunaechin Valley, south end of the wilderness area.
What does all this mean for the Randy Stoltmann Wilderness Area? First of all it means that our best opportunity to keep a classic old-growth Douglas fir/redcedar forest on the mainland is not hiding in an inaccessible fiord up the coast. It is right here, nearby Vancouver! It also means that the forest types in these valleys are now so rare that it's crucial they be protected. Saving the Stoltmann Wilderness means that future generations will have a chance to get a sense of what the great low-elevation forests were like in the old days.
The Stoltmann area was described by Stoltmann himself, after thorough exploration, as a key link in a chain of wilderness regions stretching up the spine of the Coast Mountains from Garibaldi to Chilko Lake and Tweedsmuir Park.
Like the montane ecosystem of the Rockies (from Banff and Jasper Parks in Canada to Yellowstone Park in the U.S.), the Coast Mountains form a migration corridor for grizzly bear, moose, mountain goat, wolf and wolverine. The groves of big trees in the valley bottoms (especially the Douglas fir/cedar forests) ensure the winter survival of these animals by keeping them sheltered from the snow and wind.
Stoltmann Wilderness expert, John Clarke, reports that in the spring the forest floor under the wonderful stand of Douglas fir in the upper Lillooet River is criss- crossed with game trails and covered with animal droppings clear evidence of its heavy use as an essential winter haven. "Previous logging of surrounding areas has further concentrated the wintering animals into this refuge, so it's a shock to be told that these trees are in the 1996 logging plans," Clarke says.
The mainland coast of B.C. is rapidly going the way of Vancouver Island, where only about one-half of one per cent of the once great Douglas fir forests have escaped liquidation by non-sustainable logging tactics. Dean Channel, some 450 km northwest of Vancouver, is the northern growth limit for all but stunted, `bonsai' Douglas fir. Within this 450 km long coastal zone, the stands in the Stoltmann Wilderness are unique.
- "It's a miracle that these fine old-growth Douglas fir trees still exist, so close to logging operations and so easily reached from Vancouver," Clarke says. "It would be a tragedy to see them destroyed."
- The Stoltmann Wilderness mix of forested valleys, high meadows, small lakes, soaring mountains, swift water and icefields adds up to incredible beauty.
- "In places you seem to be walking through a series of Japanese gardens," Clarke says. "The lakes show an unbelievable range of colours. Some of the animals, such as mountain goats, have little fear of people.
- "When you consider that it's close to 57 per cent of B.C.'s population and has so much to offer in terms of recreation and conservation values, preservation is the only logical course."
