Only one paved road, Hwy. 4, accesses the wild, virtually undeveloped west coast of Vancouver Island. The Pacific Rim Hwy. leads to the popular Long Beach Unit of Pacific Rim National Park Reserve. Neither of the reserve’s other two units is easily accessible, but all offer enough sites and activities to capture their beauty and diversity of the island’s untamed coast.

You can explore Pacific Rim by car, foot, floatplane, tour boat, or kayak. Some hikes trace sandy beaches. Others wind along rocky shores where waves explode against barnacled rocks and bright sea stars steal through quiet tide pools. If you venture out in a boat or kayak, you will cruise through a maze of small islands dotted with conifers and occupied by seals and sea lions. Just behind the beaches sprawls the temperate rain forest, where trails thread moss-festooned cedars and hemlocks.

South Beach waits at trail’s end. It is cozy, hemmed in by massive rocks, including a double arch. The beach consists of smooth pebbles that ring like chimes as waves jostle them together. At the northwest end of South Beach, the surf rampages through surge channels shaking the earth and shooting spray 15 metres high.