Russ Olivant: Wildlife search on Vancouver Island

Campbell River on Vancouver Island was the location for our first wildlife search - Salmon Snorkelling; basically kit up in a semi dry wet suit and drift snorkel down the river (at around joggin pace) whilst the salmon swim up river to spawn. We saw thousands of salmon as we drifted over small rapids, and floated over deeper water - great fun.

We then popped up to the salmon hatchery where they hatch salmon to repopulate stocks (ultimately for commercial fishing).

On route from the hatchery we saw our first real Canadian wildlife - deer hopping across the road. To get a better chance to view wildlife (bears), we decided to take a detour to the east of the Island (to Gold River) and then north via a logging trail - the first people we asked about the viability of this route, said there were no roads north of Gold River. We asked a few more people, and the answers were - there used be a route but the bridges were washed out, there used to be a route but the forest fires closed it, and sure - there's a route.

So we chanced it.

The scenery enroute to Gold River was stunning;

On the highway to Gold River I was stopped by a 'plain-clothes' police car travelling in the opposite direction (117 in an 80!!). The officer had clocked Caroline at a lower speed, and before I could say much he offered the excuse that I must have been trying to catch her up - to which I responded with 'Yeah, I was stopping to take photos of your breath-taking scenery, and was trying to catch up'. Anyway, I was let off with a warning :-) The copper was more interested in where we wer from and why we were going to Gold River - bonus.

After a quick lunch at Gold River, we headed for the loggin road to Woss;

After 70km-odd on the logging road, we returned to the asphalt for the blast to Port Hardy, enroute, we spotted a sign for Telegraph Cove, so diverted off;