British Columbia White Water

This past weekend, a group of 5 paddlers drove up the east coast of Vancouver Island to explore a largely unknown watershed: The Memekay River. The Memekay River is situated on northern Vancouver Island, close to the town of Sayward. It flows into the Salmon River upstream of the Island Highway. Shayne Vollmers from the VIWPS raised awareness that micro hydro threatens this watershed with 2 applications for diversion dams on the main stem and on the Middle Memekay. (more…)

I got this from Murrough O’Brien today:

There is a pristine creek valley minutes past Sooke that is slated for helicopter logging by Timberwest and many people feel it is too fine an area to be lost. To date 2 of us in the Muir Creek Protection Society have measured 12 old growth giants that may qualify for entry in the Big Tree Registry of B.C., (more…)

This information cam from Shayne Vollmers today:

Bad news, the Piggott/Harris creek system referral is now in front of me for a microhydro project to start up June 2008. (more…)

With all that heavy rain in the last few weeks, the Victoria creeking crowd had been looking at some steep creeks close by that only run with a lot of rain. One day, Kevin, Conor and I hiked up Muir Creek and found a very steep canyon. That was remarkable because we had been driven over Muir all the time on our way to other rivers but had no idea that it had such a steep canyon just a couple hundred meters from the road. The day we scouted it first, the creek was flooding and looked….well, crazy. (more…)

We tried to paddle the classic Upper Nanaimo River creek run today and found the gate to be closed. There was no operator anymore and a random person ionformed us that the access to that area is closed due to vandalism issues. This is very sad. We lost access to an ultra classic island run.