Elk Falls Provincial Park is located minutes away from Campbell River. We stayed for 2 nights here during our 3-stop tour of Central Vancouver Island, after camping for a week at the Living Forest Campground in Nanaimo.
This park offers 122 vehicle-accessible campsites. Approximately 25 of these sites border the Quinsam River and the rest are set in a second-growth forest. The Quinsam campground entrance is located on the west side of the Quinsam Bridge. Campsite reservations are accepted and first come, first served sites are also available.
Our site was very spacious and the surrounding forest was mature and quite impressive.
Elk Falls Hike
We went for an obligatory hike to the namesake Elk Falls (Alltrails Link), which was an easy 1.4km loop with minimal elevation gain. The start of the hike was detoured due to ongoing construction to remove defunct penstocks, dredge the upstream John Hart Reservoir, and fill in the penstock corridor. Construction is scheduled to complete in 2030.
After the first few hundred meters, the hike entered the forest and became much more pleasant. We did the loop counter-clockwise to keep the suspension bridge at the end as a finale.
Elk Falls was quite impressive, and can be viewed from several different angles, the best being from the suspension bridge and nearby viewing platform. The other end of the bridge was somewhat anti-climatic as there wasn’t much to see.
At the end of the hike, we stopped by the small BC Hydro Discovery Centre to learn more about the history and ingenuity of the area.
Fishing on Quinsam River
Back at the campground, we went on a short walk along Quinsam River. An enthusiastic group of campers were cleaning salmon they just caught. They fished an impressive 11 pink salmons right off of their campsite!
They were kind enough to let our boys look at one of the fish, and even let us take one back for dinner. They were also from Vancouver, and it’s their annual summer tradition to come to Elk Falls in August with a group of 4-5 families. They snorkel in the actual Campbell River where they swim with salmon too, which makes me badly want to add snorkeling gear to our toybox.
Rain came for us on the last day at Elk Falls. We put up our small tarp in record time and kept things relatively dry. After taking down camp, we stopped by the Strathcona Gardens Recreation Complex for a swim and a badly needed shower.
We then hopped on a ferry and braced a stormy sea to continue our tour onto Cortez Island.
