Jervis Inlet and Princess Louisa Inlet

Only 14,000 years ago much of the Pacific Northwest was covered by the Cordilleran Ice sheet - grinding, carving, smoothing … shaping the present landscape. Today we passed up Jervis Inlet - a long fjord that cuts 55 miles into the mainland of British Columbia from the Strait of Georgia. During the Ice Age it was filled with ice; today it is flooded by the sea. We looked up at steep slopes carved and smoothed by ice, now covered with a green mantle of the rich coastal rainforest of the Pacific Northwest. Myriad waterfalls like Chatterbox Falls at the end of Princess Louisa Inlet bring water down from persistent snowfields in the mountains that loomed above us. In addition to the natural forces of geology and biology acting upon the landscape, we gazed out at changes brought about by man - patches of forest in various stages of regrowth following clear-cut forestry. A dilemma: the beauty of the landscape versus man's ever-growing need for resources. Something to ponder.