Bute Inlet:

Canada's Himalayas

Bute Inlet is a long and deep fjord 300 kilometres north of Vancouver. Some call it “Canada’s Himalayas” because of its striking glacier-covered mountain slopes and rich temperate rainforest. Loggers know it as a place where nature can’t be tamed, where avalanches and rockslides tear down steep mountainsides and mini-tornadoes funnel down the fiord in legendary winter storms. Mountaineers think of Mount Waddington, the highest summit entirely in British Columbia, its crisp white peaks clearly visible from the top of the inlet on a sunny day.

Rich in Wildlife

Accessible only by boat or float plane, the 75 kilometre-long Bute Inlet offers abundant wildlife as well as dramatic scenery. The inlet’s surrounding forest and mountain slopes encompass the southernmost range of BC’s coastal grizzly population. In the fall, you can view grizzlies catching and eating salmon at the mouth of Bute’s Orford River as they fatten up for the long winter hibernation.

The inlet is also home to all five species of salmon, as well as steelhead, Dolly Varden and large cutthroat trout. The elusive and endangered marbled murrelet seabird nests here, high in old-growth trees. Eagles and Pacific white-sided dolphins are often sighted alongside Bute’s steep granite bluffs and cascading waterfalls.

A Grand Fjord 

The tourist website vancouverisland.com describes Bute as “one of the grandest fjords” in the world. Beautiful BC magazine recently named a trip to Bute Inlet one of “50 things to do before you die.”

In his book “Towards the Unknown Mountains”, mountaineer Rob Wood recounts the first of many boat trips up the emerald inlet: “Bute Inlet proper starts at Fawn Bluff where already the stage is set for an escalating natural drama which greets the first-time visitor. On the west side, Estero Peak’s North Face can be seen in profile, a clean-cut 1800 feet sheer wall reminiscent of Half Dome in Yosemite…at Orford Bay the much bigger and more impressive snow spire of Sir Francis Drake looms nine thousand feet above the two mile wide ocean inlet. We pass the spectacular ‘Needles’ with their hanging glaciers poised precariously above us. On the port side the balance is maintained by the less precipitous but elegantly carved form of Granite Mountain and by beautiful waterfalls chiselling their crisp lines down sheer granite walls.”