![]() The mountains were almost always shrouded in cloud, making route-finding challenging and risky.Īlthough the lowland collecting was rewarding, especially for the bryologists, the Vancouver botanists managed to push on to a high gravelly ridge on the one fine day they experienced. A stiff wet bushwhack of several hours was required from the beach to the base of the mountains, where the work really began. Foot travel through the dense coastal forest and spongy muskeg of the lowlands was difficult. Beset by poor weather, they worked over primarily the lower elevations of the area. The UBC team spent six days collecting vascular plants, mosses, and liverworts. This watershed includes the largest of several cirque lakes clustered in the rocky high country. The stream drains boggy lowlands and part of the main mountainous backbone of the peninsula. 3) and estuary at the mouth of an unnamed stream. This beach fronts a picturesque tidal lagoon (Fig. 2) south of Orchard Point, on the northwest side of the peninsula. The UBC botanists travelled by boat from Coal Harbour, and established their base camp behind a superb sand beach (Fig. Sand beach, tidal lagoon, and the nunatak, Brooks Peninsula ![]() Tidal lagoon, evening light, June 1977.įigure 2. Schofield inspired and sponsored the expedition, although he was unable to join it.įigure 3. The group included Judy and Geoff Godfrey, Richard Hebda, and John Pinder-Moss. However, it seems that the first botanists to visit the peninsula were a party from the University of British Columbia, in August 1975. Even so, I had supposed the mere location and configuration of the area would have been sufficiently intriguing to attract exploration by early naturalists. Inaccessible as it is, it is not surprising that few contemporary people have visited the Brooks Peninsula. Brooks Peninsula, northern Vancouver Island. No roads even approach the area boat and helicopter provide the only reasonable access.įigure 1. ![]() ![]() The peninsula thrusts at right angles from the west coast of northern Vancouver Island, forming a rugged mountainous abutment to the edge of the continental shelf (Fig. There are few wilder, more remote stretches of coastline in all of British Columbia. The Brooks Peninsula lies 350 km northwest of Vancouver, but the distance might as well be three times as great. THE BROOKS PENINSULA, VANCOUVER ISLAND’S ICE AGE REFUGIUM See the complete pdf file here: NUNATAKS and NOOTKA_jimp This paper describes the unique assemblage of vegetation and geology of the area.Ĭurrently the closest Ecological reserves are Solander Island ER #14 just to the west off shore and Checlesset Bay ER #109 to the south. The area is now a BC Provincial park, but it had all the earmarks of a potential ecological reserve. “a small intact west coast drainage system, biologically representative but with several floristic rarities vegetation modified by extreme exposure an estuary and a sand beach ecosystem and the possibility (which needs further investigation) that the Brooks Peninsula may have to some extent escaped continental glaciation.” Jim Pojar in February of 1981, as a member of the British Columbia Forest Service wrote this paper. ![]()
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