SUCH GREAT HEIGHTS
Life in Canada’s Rainforest Canopy
by Richard Boyce
Richard filming while high up in a Sitka Spruce tree.
The West Coast of Vancouver Island’s Ancient Rainforest is on the brink of extinction. Cinematographer and local resident Richard Boyce uses experimental climbing techniques to film the canopy of some of the tallest trees in the world. Below, loggers, activists, and Natives battle for the future of the forest.
This film will take you on a journey into a place that nobody knows exists, by climbing high up into the canopy of one of the densest rainforests on this planet. Gliding between the tops of gigantic trees to reveal aerial gardens that have taken centuries to evolve into lush ecosystems that are teeming with life. An abundance of life, flourishing at such great heights, forms a dense canopy that grows hundreds of feet above the forest floor. All of this in a wilderness so remote that few have any idea that it even exists yet is on the brink of extinction at the hands of men.
This feature length documentary is shot from a unique perspective high up in the canopy of some of the last temperate rainforest on earth. I explore this extreme environment first- hand, as a cinematographer and lifelong resident of Vancouver Island, documenting an ecosystem that is the last of its kind. Lush aerial gardens, suspended in the tops of massive trees and growing elevated far above the forest floor, that have never before been documented.
I spent much of the past year embedded in the remote wilderness where this film is set. Rugged mountains, long fjords, a wind-swept coastline with steep, exposed cliffs and thousands of dangerous reefs isolate the primeval rain forest on the shores of East Creek, geographically. The annual rainfall is more than 4500 mm or 14.76 feet, setting world records. The rain forest of Klaskish Inlet is at the base of the Brooks Peninsula, which held off the glaciers during the last ice age, and was inaccessible by land, until today, now that logging roads are being blasted into the upper valley.
Klaskish Inlet is fed by two rivers: East Creek and Klaskish Creek (see photo section) |
