A panorama taken beside the tallest Douglas Fir tree in Cathedral Grove. The park has walkways which wind between some of the oldest and tallest trees on Vancouver Island. It is preserved to show the wonders of 'Old-Growth' temperate rain forest on the island. Even the width of the tree dwarfs the three people in front of it. It is impossible to capture the full height of the tree in this type of panoramic image.

Cathedral Grove - Tallest Tree - Central Island visitor guide showing a virtual tour of 'Cathedral Grove - Tallest Tree' linked to an interactive map with local and travel information. 360° panoramas from Vancouver Island.

Cathedral Grove is part of MacMillan Provincial Park, near to Port Alberni. The park has been set aside from logging by the company that owns it and preserves some of the 'Old Growth', unlogged, temperate rainforest that covered much of Vancouver Island in times past. Cathedral Grove Park covers some 157 hectares and is designed to protect the Douglas Firs within the 'Coastal Douglas Fir Biogeoclimatic Zone'. These are some of the oldest and tallest trees in Canada, some are over 800 years old and up to 75m high and 9m wide.

Easy access walkways wind through the trees, allowing thousands of visitors each year to get a glimpse of what the Old Growth forests must have been like. With so many people walking through, the chances of spotting much wildlife is low, but you can still appreciate the enormity and majesty of these forests, trees covered in mosses and lichens reaching majestically for the skies. The paths are easy to walk round and are wheelchair accessible.

Cathedral Grove was suffers sometimes from storms which can fell the trees. Fallen trees act as nursery logs, keeping seeds that fall onto them off the forest floor where faster growing plants would prevent them from getting enough light to survive. Raised up, seedlings grow on the fallen logs which slowly decay underneath them. It is not unusual to find straight lines of mature trees in these forests, signs of where previous monoliths fell.

Cathedral Grove located is in MacMillan Provincial Park, 15 kilometres east of Port Alberni on 4 Highway, and about 18km west of Coombs.