It was the spring of 2004, and I was poring over an old Western Canada Wilderness Committee (WCWC) map when four simple words caught my eye: Owl and Talon Creek. The name alone sounded intriguing enough, but there was also a grove of trees there called the Pipe Organ Firs. Recently, I’d had the chance to meet Ralf Kelman, perhaps British Columbia’s most established tree hunter, and he had told me about all the trees in the Seymour River Valley he had rediscovered. Owl and Talon Creek, he said, was not to be missed. The Douglas Firs there were as straight, true, and tall as any he’d seen. One in particular, the Will Koop Giant, was nearly eight feet in diameter and over five centuries old! Then, he added, with a smile, “There’s an incredible canyon there that you need to see!”

In order to locate the “trail”, you have to make your way to just past the 7 km mark on the Seymour Valley Trailway, after a bridge over the creek. Generally speaking, I almost always take my bike when exploring the valley because that way you can save yourself a lot of time. These days, there isn’t much to distinguish the trailhead other than the remains of a fair sized cedar stump. If you can find the old flagging, it will lead you westward about a hundred metres before turning left and swinging southward toward Pipe Organ Grove.

Will Koop, by the way, was a key figure in the conservation history of the Greater Vancouver watersheds. He was involved in an organization called SPEC, or Society Promoting Environmental Conservation. Will played a crucial role as a watchdog, exposing the activities that were taking place in what was then called the Seymour Demonstration Forest, as well as the Capilano and Seymour Watersheds. He was particularly concerned that timber harvesting was endangering Vancouver’s water supply. Since the watersheds have always been off limits to the general public, much of this occurred out of sight, out of mind, but I have distinct memories of regularly seeing logging trucks loaded with old growth timber on the old Seymour Mainline back in the 1980s and early 1990s. In the end, Will’s efforts, along with those of Ralf Kelman and the WCWC, paid off. Logging was banned in the watersheds in 1999, officially, though it actually ceased before that. The former Seymour Demonstration Forest, now controlled by the Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD), has changed not only in philosophy, but in name as well. It is now known as the Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve, or LSCR. The forests of the Seymour Valley are now fully protected!