VICTORIA AND VANCOUVER ISLAND - British Columbia: Including the Alaska Highway - page 199

CARMANAH WALBRAN PROVINCIAL PARK
If you're looking for a day trip to escape the tourist-clogged streets of Victoria,
you can't get any more remote than the Carmanah Valley. Eyed by logging com-
panies for many years, the Carmanah and adjacent Walbran Valley were designated
a provincial park in 1995, providing complete protection for the 16,450-hectare
(40,650-acre) watershed. For environmentalists, creation of the park was a major vic-
tory, because this mist-shrouded valley extending all the way to the rugged West
Coast holds an old-growth forest of absolute wonder. Many 800-year-old Sitka
spruce and 1,000-year-old cedar trees—some of the world's oldest—rise up to 95
meters (300 feet) off the damp valley floor here. Others lie where they've fallen,
their slowly decaying moss- and fern-cloaked hulks providing homes for thousands
of small mammals and insects.
The only way to reach the park is via Lake Cowichan, following the south shore
of Cowichan Lake to Nitinat Main, a logging road that leads south to Nitinat Junction
(no services). There the road is joined by a logging road from Port Alberni. From this
point, Nitinat Main continues south to a bridge across the Caycuse River. Take the
first right after crossing the river. This is Rosander Main, a rough road that dead-ends
at the park boundary. The park is signposted from Nitinat Junction, but the signs are
small and easy to miss.
From the road's-end parking lot, a rough 1.3-kilometer (0.8-mile) hiking trail
(30 minutes each way) descends to the valley floor and Carmanah Creek. From the
creek, trails lead upstream to the Three Sisters (2.5 kilometers/1.5 miles; 40 minutes),
through Grunt's Grove to August Creek (7.5 kilometers/4.6 miles; two hours), and
downstream through a grove of Sitka spruce named for Randy Stoltmann, a le-
gendary environmentalist who first brought the valley's giants to the world's atten-
tion (2.4 kilometers/1.5 miles; 40 minutes).
COWICHAN LAKE AND VICINITY
Head west from Duncan to reach Cowichan Lake (under 30 minutes' drive), Vancouver Is-
land's second-largest lake. The 32-kilometer-long (20-mile) inland waterway, called Kaatza
(Land Warmed by Sun) by local Coast Salish, is a popular spot for water sports, most not-
ably tubing down the river and fishing.