Port Renfrew maps two giant Douglas-firs reached by rough logging roads on Vancouver Island's west coast. Big Lonely Doug stands alone in a 2012 clearcut that spared it, an accidental monument to old-growth logging. The Red Creek Fir, an hour further out, holds more wood than any known Douglas-fir on Earth. Neither has a documented age, both are free to reach, and both are worth the drive.
0 of 2 visited in Port Renfrew
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Big Lonely Doug
Coast Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii var. menziesii) · roughly 1,000 years · Gordon River Valley (Tree Farm Licence 46, Pacheedaht traditional territory)
In 2011, timber cruiser Dennis Cronin walked into an old-growth stand marked for logging and found a Douglas-fir too big to ignore. He wrapped it in ribbon reading Leave Tree, over and over, and in 2012 the forest around it came down anyway. What was left standing was a single 66-metre fir alone in a clearcut, and the photograph of it made the tree famous before it had a name.
Activist and photographer T.J. Watt gave it one in 2014: Big Lonely Doug. Measured that April by forest ecologist Andy MacKinnon, it came in at 66.0 metres tall with an 11.91-metre girth, second in volume among Canada's known Douglas-firs and worth 701 points on the BC Big Tree Registry. It carries roughly a thousand years of growth, seeded around the year 1000, though nobody has counted its rings.
It stands on Crown land, no permit needed, about 15 minutes from Port Renfrew on the Gordon Main logging road. The road turns rough past the Gordon River bridge and a short, steep trail drops to the base, though the best view of it, alone in the clearing that made it famous, is from the road itself.
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Red Creek Fir
Coast Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii var. menziesii) · roughly 1,000 years · San Juan River valley (often loosely called 'the Walbran' by visitors, but it sits in the San Juan valley, not the Walbran Valley proper)
The Red Creek Fir holds more wood than any other Douglas-fir ever measured: 349 cubic metres of trunk, a girth of 13.3 metres and a diameter of 4.23 metres taken just above the base. Even that undersells it. The scarred, forked crown shows it has lost its top to storms at least twice, which means the tree standing here today may once have been taller than the 74 metres it reaches now.
It seeded around the year 1000, by the same rough estimate applied to its rival Big Lonely Doug an hour's drive away, though nobody has cored it to count the rings. It sits inside a Forest Service Recreation Site and an Old-Growth Management Area rather than under any protection written specifically for it, which has been enough so far.
Getting there takes commitment: about 45 minutes from Port Renfrew on rough, largely unmaintained logging roads that a high-clearance vehicle should handle and a low one probably should not, past several large old cedars, then an easy kilometre on foot. Road conditions shift year to year with storm damage and logging nearby, so check before you go.
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