You can see my Clayoquot Sound Gallery at http://www.pbase.com/ccraft/clayoquot_sound_bc

Clayquot Sound made headlines in the late 80s and early 90s with real-life "tree hungers" facing off loggers. This is the area where environmentalists parked themselves in the tops of 500-year-old trees for months on end in a very public show-down. Clayoquot Sound is one of the largest and richest lowland coastal temperate rainforest known on the planet. Located on the west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, the Sound is 265,000 hectares (654,550 acres) of densely forested islands, valleys, and inlets. It is the largest area of intact temperate rainforest left on Vancouver Island. Of the 90 watersheds on the Island larger than 5,000 hectares, only five remain untouched. In January 2000, Clayoquot Sound was declared a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. This designation does not offer any additional protection to the area, nor does it require the implementation of new environmental standards. Industrial logging continues to destroy the Sound’s forests and fish farms continue to pollute its waters.

Tofino and Ucluelet are two fishing villages in the area and there is a fast-growing tourism business, bringing nature lovers from all over the world. The most famous beach in British Columbia is here -- the 13,715-hectare Long Beach with numerous rocky points and headlands, a surfer's heaven.

Unfortunately, it was fairly rainy and overcast during my last weekend there -- and I accidentally dropped my tripod mount off a dock so all my photos were hand-held. This made it difficult to photograph the area as much as I would have liked, but I still made the best of it.