“My favourite mushroom in here is spirit gummy bear,” biologist Amber Peters said as she ascended into the dense forest from the west shores of Lake Revelstoke, her dog Akash in tow.
She was referring to toothed jelly fungus, just one of hundreds of colourful fungi species found in the damp old-growth stands around Frisby Creek.
It was Oct. 9, the day before Peters and the Valhalla Wilderness Society (VWS) screened their highly-anticipated film, Safe Haven: The Rainbow-Jordan Wilderness, about the biodiverse and nearly-untouched inland temperate rainforest just north of Revelstoke.
The presence of other fungi, such as angel wing, make this ecosystem a “real old-growth forest,” said Tyler McKendry who, along with companion Václav Kuželka, joined Peters, Akash and Black Press Media on a boat ride to the Rainbow-Jordan.
“This is the best example of a fully-intact inland temperate rainforest,” Peters said. On this side of the lake, “you could basically walk for 20 kilometres through old-growth, which is unheard of. There’s nothing like that anywhere else (in the region).”
Besides faint remnants of heli-logging about 40 years ago and a deteriorated foundation and buckets from an old trapper’s cabin, “it’s a totally untouched forest.”
Passing by a sun-struck marsh, Peters commented that western toads and Pacific tree frogs have long “made this wetland part of their life-cycle habitat.”
Following moose tracks for an hour down a seldom-used human path, she stopped at the foot of towering 1,500-year-old cedars and admired their rich range of coastal lichen she noted shut down when the climate dries.
Pointing to dens under trees, and a trunk pockmarked with scratches and back rubs by black bears, Peters stressed the need to protect these many-centuries-old homes for mother bears and their cubs.
Until then, “I’d never seen such biodiversity before,” she recalled from her earliest expedition.
Turning to a hill of talus slopes, she emphasized that ecosystems such as these host all kinds of species, from insects and bats to amphibians, reptiles and small mammals.
The Rainbow-Jordan is likely “the largest pocket of intact temperate rainforest in the region” around Revelstoke, Wildsight Revelstoke branch manager Reanne Harvey said. “The forest itself has been in that space for over a thousand years.”
Along with remaining largely untouched and totally inaccessible by road, Harvey said the ecosystem provides prime bear habitat and would’ve historically been accessed by the region’s extirpated Frisby-Boulder herd of southern mountain caribou. Today, Peters reported the herd has just six caribou.
Safe Haven, originally planned to premiere in town last January but ultimately screened Oct. 10 at the Revelstoke Performing Arts Centre, chronicles the ecological value of this 84-square-kilometre ancient inland rainforest, which was first visited by biologists in 2017. Initial expeditions identified more than 360 species, including at least 20 rare species, and one biologist confirmed more than 100 fungi species within several hours.
The 30-minute film, produced in collaboration with Damien Gillis, advocates for the B.C. government to protect these expanses of hard-to-access and undisturbed old-growth from logging as a Class A provincial park. Unlike an old-growth protected area or Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area, park status would ensure legislated protection for the Rainbow-Jordan, Peters told some 200 attendees at the screening.
For Revelstoke, “this is something so special that we can have and enjoy so close to home,” she said. More widely across B.C.’s 140,000-square-kilometre interior wet belt, “we’re working to protect the last remaining scraps of this important habitat.”
Also filming just across the lake in the cutblocks around Downie Creek, Craig Pettitt, Peters’ mentor at VWS, described the atmosphere being night and day.
“When I come into here, it’s like being hit in the gut,” he said.
Before VWS even encountered the Rainbow-Jordan while using Google Earth, “the first thing we were looking for was forested valleys that weren’t industrialized, and that eliminated 99 per cent of the environment,” Pettitt explained.
Asked by an audience member why the Rainbow-Jordan was any more special than other old-growth stands throughout the Revelstoke Valley, Peters replied that most of these ecosystems are put at risk by increased drought and wind exposure, and bear little long-term resilience when the forests are small and logging has encroached all around them.
“They don’t have nearly as much of a fighting chance as (Rainbow-Jordan) does,” she said, noting it’s a “complete ecosystem.”
And while the Rainbow-Jordan’s three-metre-wide cedar hemlocks continue to stand the test of time, undisturbed by lumber licensees or motor vehicles, “if cut down, no one will ever see a tree of that stature on that land again,” Pettitt told attendees.
Wildsight Revelstoke helped bring VWS’s film and vision for a protected area to town, despite initial comments from snowmobiling and heli-skiing proponents — concerned about potentially losing parts of their recreational tenure adjacent to the Rainbow-Jordan — leading to Wildsight’s choice to postpone the original screening planned in January.
In a subsequent February meeting, Wildsight, snowmobilers, heli-skiers and other stakeholders managed to identify a shared goal of conservation while recognizing the recreational value of the land, Harvey explained, paving the way for a delayed but successful October screening. This time, VWS organized the event independently, with Wildsight arranging the date.
While VWS continues to push the province to protect the Rainbow-Jordan, Harvey said Wildsight has focused this year on engaging community members — the people closest to these old-growth ecosystems.
“We’re at the stage where we’re trying to build support for this site,” she said, noting the provincial government continues to make no commitments in response to the proposal. “We really need to sort of gain the public’s support to move this forward.”
At the same time, VWS is concerned about how mechanized recreation such as snowmobiling impacts landscapes for native species, especially caribou.
“We’re compacting the snow and increasing the efficiency of these predator highways for hunting,” she said at the screening, referring to wolves.
To put more pressure on the province for a Class A park, some 900 residents in Revelstoke and beyond have already signed a petition or written to B.C.’s Ministry of Environment and Parks, according to Wildsight. Peters encouraged attendees on Oct. 10 to hand-write their own letters to the province.
As for the film, “I think it’s a great opportunity for people who can’t access the (Rainbow-Jordan) area to learn about it,” Harvey said.
Peters expects Safe Haven will be made available free online in 2026, following VWS’s tour this year screening the film across B.C.
If the Rainbow-Jordan can be preserved in its current form, “we still have something that remains that we can pass on to our future generations,” she said.
Perhaps Toby Spribille, a University of Alberta botanist featured in the film, put it best.
“One thing I really do hope for a place like Rainbow-Jordan is that it can serve as a safe haven.”