The Carmanah Giant

The Carmanah Giant: Diameter - 3 m (10ft), Height - 95 m (315ft), Age - 500 to 700 years

The Carmanah Giant is a monumentally tall Sitka spruce growing in the Carmanah Creek canyon in Carmanah/Walbran Provincial Park. It is the tallest tree in Canada, and the tallest Sitka spruce in the world. The Giant lives in one of the tallest forests on the planet, and is an excellent example of the vanishing primeval forest that once blanketed Vancouver Island.

The trees of the Carmanah and Walbran watersheds escaped the saw for a long time due to their remote location on the West Coast of Vancouver Island. But the arrival of the timber cruisers, bulldozers, road builders, and fallers was inevitable, and in the 1980s they finally came. 

If it were not for conservation efforts, starting with Randy Stoltmann, this magnificent tree and all its neighbours would have surely been razed in a clear cut that would have represented a huge global loss. It would have been a loss, as well, to the pairs of endangered Marbeled murrelets that nest only on the huge branches of old growth trees.

I am glad this incredible tree and the forest in which it grows were saved from impending destruction. However, the Carmanah Giant is not in the "See Them" category of big trees. Visitation to some parts of this park, including the Carmanah Giant, is discouraged in order to avoid the devastating potential results of unregulated access.

Even though I feel the lure of the big trees, many individual trees get loved to death by tourists. For me it is good enough to know that the Carmanah Giant is out there, growing, thriving, and perpetuating 12,000 years of continuous forest processes and cycles.

Photo credit: Iriemaan

Visit The Big Trees

I just posted a new page for VIBT which is accessed by a button under the banner. It is called "Visit The Big Trees", and in it I list some of the big tree places that I have visited, or would like to visit.

It is my hope that this list will encourage others to visit these ancient trees and endangered places. Some locations are in parks, others are on private land. A few are currently threatened by ongoing logging. By visiting these places we can recognize their importance and work toward preserving them.

Most of all, I want to introduce people to a beauty that is unparalleled globally. Vancouver Island has some of the most beautiful trees and forests on the planet. Plan to go see them, and prepare to be blown away. Be wary of wild and natural locations. And big puddles.

Link to the 'Visit The Big Trees" page here.

The Tallest Spruce Trees In The World: Carmanah/Walbran Provincial Park

My first visit to Carmanah Walbran Provincial Park was summer of 2006. It was a slow, rough drive into the heart of Vancouver Island's once-magnificent coastal forest. Our route took us from Sooke to Port Renfrew, past Cowichan Lake, and on to Nitinat Lake. The last services of the route are here, then the road climbs on toward the park. A sturdy vehicle, emergency supplies, and a good driver come in handy. A back roads map is essential.

While bumping along Rosander Main logging road past Nitinat, we were treated to vistas over the green mist-cloaked hills to the distant Pacific Ocean. Not far away is the West Coast Trail, but it is inaccessible from this side. We continued following the small provincial park signs sensing that we were getting close to Vancouver Islands tallest trees.

In addition to the coastal forest landscape you will witness "off-road" logging trucks carrying old-growth logs - only four or five huge columns of wood to each giant vehicle. This is a harsh and unforgiving forest environment and the road and industrial activity do not make it any safer. But without these roads most of this area would be largely inaccessible. Drive defensively - industrial traffic has the right of way and you must yield to them.

Knowing that in the mid-1980's the Carmanah valley was slated to be harvested makes it worth dodging logging trucks on roads riddled with potholes and stretches of washboard that will rattle your old fillings out. The park at the end of this road is unlike any other you have seen, or are likely to see anywhere else. It is a gargantuan green cathedral of mist-filtered light and stillness.

Carmanah valley was once considered too remote for profitable logging to take place. Then Randy Stoltman found the oldest, largest Sitka spruce trees in Canada, and the world. In the 1980's the B.C. government, without public consultation or notification, gave MacMillan Bloedel permission to clear cut the area.

Fearing a repeat of previous logging fiascos that ended in protest and protection, the logging company moved in quickly to harvest the valley. Randy Stoltman, tireless big tree defender, along with the Western Canada Wilderness Committee, mounted a campaign to protect the area's natural assets from destruction. In 1990, after sustained protests, Carmanah Park was formed.

At the end of your jarring ride you will find a pristine valley full of some of the world's largest trees. Today you will only see trees like these in small patches along the west coast of North America, and the forest of Carmanah Walbran holds some prime examples in a relatively large area. If you are not humbled here, you are not paying attention.



After passing through large clear cuts, one which extends right to the park gate, we arrived at the parking lot at the end of the road. I gazed up the trail at two tiny hikers dwarfed by the surrounding giants. I thought that the destruction of these trees to make plywood would be similar to going to the Temple of Karnak in Egypt, "harvesting" its 5000 year old columns (21m tall, and over 3m diameter), and crushing them to make gravel. Large Sitka spruce can be only a few hundred years old, but Western red cedar can grow for thousands of years. There are many large cedars in the park.


Canada's tallest (known) Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis), the Carmanah Giant, towers 95 metres (315 ft) over the lush valley of Carmanah Creek. Its 9.4 meter diameter makes Karnak's columns look like toothpicks. However, visitors are not encouraged to hike the deteriorating trail to visit this record tree for fear of compromising the areas ecological integrity. It is good enough for me just to know that the Giant exists.

The third largest Sitka spruce in the world with a wood volume of 298 cubic meters (10,540 cu. ft.). It is 58.2 m (191 ft) high with a diameter of 5.39 m (17.7 ft.) at 1.37 m (4.5 ft.) above the ground. (Van Pelt, Robert, 2001, Forest Giants of the Pacific Coast, University of Washington Press.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:QuinaltSpruce_7246c.jpg

The park is in the Very Wet Hypermaritime subzone, an area that is intimately affected by the nearby ocean, and can be wet any time of the year. When we visited it was drizzly, but the real problem was the cloud of mosquitoes hunting us down. Our meals were eaten with one hand shoveling the food in, and the other hand waving the mosquitoes away. When even that became too much the only option was to run through the parking lot taking hasty stabs at our food.

Mosquitoes may be the most obvious wildlife here, but they are not the only wildlife. The old growth forest here maintains a rich web of life that can not exist in the second and third-growth forests that have replaced the original forest on much of Vancouver Island. This is a special place.

Spotted owls, marbled murrelets, wolves, trout and salmon, black bears, bats, pileated woodpeckers, red-backed voles, salamanders, banana slugs, flying squirrels. All of that and more is here to be discovered, enjoyed, and protected.

Carmanah Walbran Park is isolated and difficult to get to, and once there you will find no comforts of civilization. This park is about wilderness, and in that regard it delivers. However, encroachement continues. Without a buffer zone, clearcuts extend right up to park boundries. As we hiked and camped in this magical place we watched helicopters swinging giant columns out of the surrounding forests to staging grounds. Their thundering rotors resonated in our chests, or was that our hearts going out to the destruction of the 10 000 year old forest and the creatures that used to live there?

If not for Randy Stoltman, the Western Canada Wilderness Committee, and thousands of regular big tree supporters, Carmanah valley and the largest Stika spruce on the planet would have been reduced to a ravaged landscape.


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For now it remains one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited. If the government works for us, and we want big trees saved, then why is the government backing the logging companies and the temporary jobs that old growth harvesting represents? What will they do when all the old growth is gone?

Visit Carmanah Walbran and try not to become a big tree enthusiast. This is the kind of place that can change your life. It did mine.