The Journal
The wilderness you will not find on a booking site, written from the dock and the deck: my stories, as a filmmaker and photographer, from the places I explored, photographed and filmed in person.
Gateway Stays
Every trip into the Rockies or the Columbias needs a spare day in Canmore in case the flight or the weather slips. Here is how I would spend it: the Bow River path, Grassi Lakes and Ha Ling, Main Street and the breweries, the drive to Lake Louise and Moraine Lake, the Icefields, and the day tours that do the driving for you.
Ben Taft ·
Bear Viewing Lodges
The question every first-timer asks, answered from two seasons in the boats and on the stands at Glendale Cove: the distance rules, why nobody lands on an estuary, how a guide ends an encounter, the spray, the minimum ages, the certification, habituation against food conditioning, who owns the bears' rivers, and the photographer's rule I hold myself to.
Ben Taft ·
Bear Viewing Lodges
The verdict on Knight Inlet Lodge after a spring and an autumn there with a camera: who it is for, who should look elsewhere, the rooms, the food, the guides, the boat season against the platform season, the floatplane and its bag limit, what it costs from the 2027 tariff, and what I would change.
Ben Taft ·
Sea Kayaking Tours
You do not need to have sat in a sea kayak before. What a guided camp on the BC coast asks for instead: moderate fitness, a morning of instruction, a willingness to be cold and wet on purpose, and a bit of trust in the person in the other seat. What is provided, what you pack, why the water is ten degrees, and which camp I would send a nervous beginner to.
Ben Taft ·
Wellness Retreats
I built the 360 tour of this floating lodge in Clayoquot Sound when it was Tofino Wilderness Resort. In 2022 the Ahousaht hawiih bought it and reopened it as Wahous. This is the place as the tour shows it, from the channel in to the longhouse fire, and what a stay there costs and includes now, from the lodge's own pages.
Ben Taft ·
Sea Kayaking Tours
The northern resident orcas come back to Johnstone Strait every summer for the salmon and the rubbing beaches at Robson Bight, and the humpbacks have come back with them. The season as the operators publish it, the reserve nobody may enter, kayak against boat, and the three ways on this record: Orca Camp, Spirit of the West, and a whale day from Knight Inlet Lodge.
Ben Taft ·
Bear Viewing Lodges
Knight Inlet Lodge, Berry Island Lodge and Wildcoast's grizzly week, compared on what they cost, when they run, how you watch and how you get there, by the photographer who has been to all three. And the lodges I have not been to yet, named honestly.
Ben Taft ·
Bear Viewing Lodges
Where the bears are, the two ways you are shown them, the rules a guide will not bend, what it costs and how you get there. From two seasons at Glendale Cove with a camera, and the rest of the coast as the operators publish it.
Ben Taft ·
Bear Viewing Lodges
The package, the tax, the night before, the flights to Campbell River, the tips, the bar and the insurance: a grizzly trip priced line by line from the operators' own tariffs, for one person and for two.
Ben Taft ·
Bear Viewing Lodges
Sedge in May, cubs in June, berries and whales in July, the salmon from the last week of August, and the stands until mid-October. The grizzly year on the coast as I have photographed it, with what each month costs and what it looks like.
Ben Taft ·
Gateway Stays
Every trip into the Rockies or the Columbias starts with a night in town. I photographed, filmed and built the 360 tours for five Basecamp Resorts properties, four in Canmore and one above the Columbia River in Revelstoke. This is which one to pick for which trip, and what the nights there are like.
Ben Taft ·
Bear Viewing Lodges
I spent late summer days photographing this lodge on a rocky point in the Broughton Archipelago when it was still called Farewell Harbour. It is Berry Island Lodge now, same cedar, same floating rooms, same 5 pm swim club. This is what a stay there looks like, what I saw from the boats, and how to get to it.
Ben Taft ·
Sea Kayaking Tours
A tented base camp on a beach in Johnstone Strait where the hard parts are done for you. Guided ocean paddles that run like clockwork, meals cooked fresh, cookies and coffee whenever you want them, a wood-fired hot tub and a sauna on the shore, a campfire under real stars, and a crew who seem glad you came. Bring yourself, some clothes and a camera.
Ben Taft ·
Fishing Lodges
Steep Island is a few minutes off Campbell River by water taxi and about as far from ordinary as that distance allows: first-growth cedar, cabins in the trees, and Discovery Passage running past the dock hard enough to make its own noise.
Ben Taft ·
Fishing Lodges
Newton Cove is the furthest out of the three Nootka Marine resorts; a floating lodge in Esperanza Inlet with the open ocean a short run away, thirty guided hours on the water, and a four-course dinner at the end of them.
Ben Taft ·
Fishing Lodges
Nootka Sound Resort is tied to the shore of Galiano Bay rather than built on it. Three nights, a private ensuite, thirty hours of guided water, and a sound sheltered enough to fish on the days the open coast says no.
Ben Taft ·
Fishing Lodges
Two hours west of Campbell River, past Strathcona and Gold River, the pavement runs out at a marina on Nootka Sound. Moutcha Bay is the only one of the three Nootka Marine resorts you can drive to, and the only one that works for a party where not everybody fishes.
Ben Taft ·
Bear Viewing Lodges
I've flown into Glendale Cove twice now, camera in my lap, to photograph the largest gathering of grizzlies in British Columbia. This is what the viewing-stand season actually looks like, and how to time your own trip.
Ben Taft ·
Backcountry Lodges
I've flown into both Purcell and Mistaya with a drone case in one hand and skis in the other. Fifteen helicopter minutes from Golden, a full world away from it; here's how BC's heli-access backcountry lodges work, and how to choose between meadow and glacier.
Ben Taft ·
Dive Resorts
Jacques Cousteau called this stretch of current-swept coast the best cold-water diving in the world. I spent a week on Hurst Island with cameras topside and below deck to see what a quarter-century of family-run diving actually looks like.
Ben Taft ·
Sea Kayaking Tours
Orca and humpback move through Johnstone Strait all summer, and the best seat is eighteen inches off the water. I paddled and filmed with Spirit of the West out of Quadra Island, base camps, expeditions, and the hot tub that ruins you for ordinary camping.
Ben Taft ·
Fishing Lodges
Fifteen private lakes in the Interior, a heli-fishing lodge on the Gold River, and a charter fleet working Tofino's open coast year-round. I've photographed all three, here's how to choose between them.
Ben Taft ·
Coastal Retreats
An oceanfront farm on Salt Spring Island's quiet south end, where breakfast is grown on the property and the ferry schedule is the only deadline. I brought cameras to a place designed for putting them down.
Ben Taft ·
Heli-Ski Lodges
Package prices are the starting point, not the total. A breakdown of vertical guarantees, overage billing, down-day policies and the line items that move a $20,000 week to $26,000.
Ben Taft ·
Fishing Lodges
What actually separates a $580-a-night lake outpost from a $6,079 three-night coastal package; inclusions, guide ratios, the transfer, the weather day and the questions worth asking before you commit.
Ben Taft ·
