Adventures in Vertigo-Inducing Instagram Shots
With some of the first bits of nicer and warmer weather so far this year, today I went out with some family (including my YouTube famous family Steve and Denise, go check out their Vanlife Midlife Rocks channel for RV adventure content!) for my first visit to Englishman River Falls.
This set of waterfalls is a provincial park located just 15 minutes from Parksville and is a popular spot for trail walkers, picnickers, campers, and mountain bikers. The road outside the park was packed with Subarus and RAV4s unloading multi-$K full suspension beasts and middle-aged people with shorts-and-tights combos off to tackle the forest trails.
We drove into the parking lot and walked 200m to the falls instead.
The upper falls at Englishman River Falls Provincial Park.
I loved seeing the falls in full action, the mist and sound of so much water was amazing and to see how it fell into a deep crevasse really added to the scenic beauty of the place. There is a nice trail that crosses the gulley with a good view of the falls and that wraps around above the precipice for a view of the river above. The trails were nice, well maintained and with only a few sections still showing the packed snow/ice from last week. The smell of a wet, mossy forest is so nice…
We also hiked down to the lower falls where another bridge gives a cool look at a narrow point where a boulder is trapped above the water. In a lower flow I think you would be able to see the water going below it, but the winter rains and snow melt have the Englishman River running high with the result being a bubbling, swirling river coming out below the rock.
The whole loop, with ample stops for photo-taking and chats, took us less than an hour.
Standing on these bridges and adopting the two-hand photo stance was good preparation for a surprise stop my uncle wanted to show us. Little Mountain, on the other side of Errington, would make our stomachs drop!
After a long and winding steep road up to the cell towers at the top of Little Mountain, we walked a couple dozen steps to the edge of the biggest cliffs I’ve seen on Vancouver Island (which may not be saying much, I’m usually at the seaside). I am normally great with heights, I don’t get motion sickness, and I love the thrill of looking down from an airplane but wow this sure made my insides go wild!
The cliffs have a couple good places for peeking over to the forest floor below, a place that unfortunately too often gets used for dumping. We were glad to see a lot of the garbage that used to be there is now cleaned up though! The top was quite slippery with moss and the last few weeks of rain, so we were careful not to get too close to the edge. The loose gravel was not helping either!
With the fog rolling in, we got some quick views of the forested valley across the way, listened to a raven calling out, and carefully peered over the edge to get the perfect camera angle. Vertigo is real, my friends, especially if you are looking at your phone while moving it to get the right angle! It was a good reminder how “influencers” can sometimes end up in trouble when they’d do anything “for the gram.”
We played it safe, enjoyed the view, and nervously laughed about the way our stomachs felt, then headed back home with two adventures done before lunchtime!
