---
title: "A private island in the tide"
description: "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."
author: "Ben Taft"
published: "2026-09-06"
updated: "2026-09-06"
canonical: "https://wildernessledger.com/guides/a-private-island-in-the-tide"
about:
  - "Steep Island Lodge: https://wildernessledger.com/experience/steep-island-lodge"
---

# A private island in the tide

> 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.

Words, photography and film by Ben Taft. Published 6 September 2026, updated 6 September 2026. Canonical page: https://wildernessledger.com/guides/a-private-island-in-the-tide

Photograph: The lodge at Steep Island lit from within at dusk, its deck and boardwalk running along the bluff above Discovery Passage

Discovery Passage is a tidal squeeze. The whole of the northern Strait of Georgia drains through it twice a day, past Campbell River, and the water does not so much flow as leave. Stand on the dock at [Steep Island](https://wildernessledger.com/experience/steep-island-lodge) at the wrong hour and you can hear it.

Photograph: Steep Island from the water, guest cabins tucked among first-growth cedar above a rocky shoreline

Caption: From the water. The cabins are in there.

A few minutes off Campbell River. Close enough that the lights of the town are visible, far enough that there is no way to reach it except by boat.

A note on these photographs. They are frames pulled from the virtual tour I shot here, which is why the framing is a little wider than I would normally choose. It is also why they are honest: nothing is composed to hide what is next to it.

Photograph: Steep Island at dusk from across Discovery Passage, cabin lights along the shore under a low sunset

A window onto moving water

## One rate, and then the boat

The pricing here is unusual enough to be worth explaining, because it changes who the place suits.

Photograph: The dining room at Steep Island Lodge, one long table beneath a vaulted cedar ceiling facing a wall of windows onto the water

The detail

### One rate, and then the boat

There is a single all-inclusive nightly rate of $545 a person, and it covers a genuinely complete list: the shuttle from Campbell River Airport, the water taxi across, an ocean-view cabin and every meal. Fishing is not in it.

Fishing is booked separately and priced by the boat rather than by the head. It is $190 an hour, and the standard day is an eight-hour tide, so $1,520 for the boat with guide, tackle, rain gear, lunch and fish boxing included. Four anglers to a boat is normal, which makes a fishing day $380 a head; do it with two and it costs $760. Priced by the head, a lodge quietly penalises the party where only half the group fishes. Priced by the boat, it does not.

[Check availability](https://wildernessledger.com/experience/steep-island-lodge#request-availability)

> What you get is a window onto moving water and a wall of cedar between you and everybody else.
>
> Field note

Photograph: The games room at Steep Island Lodge, a pool table and wood stove under timber rafters

Photograph: A guest cabin sitting room at Steep Island, cedar-panelled walls and a patterned sofa beneath framed prints

## Where you go when the weather comes

A games room with a pool table and a wood stove, and a sitting room in every cabin. Neither is decorative. This is a coast where a front can close the water for a day and a half, and a lodge without an indoors is a lodge with a problem.

Cedar, everywhere, and it smells like it. The whole island is first growth and the buildings were put up among the trees rather than in a clearing cut for them.

Photograph: A guest bedroom at Steep Island Lodge, white bedding and a row of windows facing the trees

Caption: Every cabin has an ocean view; the trees do a lot of the framing.

## Twenty-two guests, spread out

There is no main building with rooms stacked in it. The cabins sit through the trees along the shore, which is why a lodge taking twenty-two people never feels like it is taking twenty-two people.

Every one has an ocean view, and the trees do a good deal of the framing. What you get is a window onto moving water and a wall of cedar between you and everybody else.

Photograph: A second guest bedroom at Steep Island Lodge, cedar walls and a window onto the passage

Photograph: A writing desk and window seat in a Steep Island guest cabin under a vaulted cedar ceiling

## Inside

The rooms are plain in the way that expensive rooms on this coast usually are not, and they are better for it. Timber, white bedding, a window doing the work that a television would be doing anywhere else.

There is a desk in most of them. Nobody uses it for work, and there is no signal to work with anyway, but it turns out to be the place where the tide table ends up and where somebody leaves a book.

Photograph: A carved wooden marlin mounted on the cedar wall above the sideboard in the lodge dining room

Caption: The dining room presides.

Detail

### A fish nobody here will catch

A carved marlin hangs above the sideboard in the dining room. There has never been a marlin within three thousand miles of Discovery Passage and there never will be.

I like it enormously. Every lodge on this coast has one object that has clearly been there longer than the current owners and is not going anywhere.

[Check availability](https://wildernessledger.com/experience/steep-island-lodge#request-availability)

## What else the water is for

The same boats run wildlife and shoreline tours, and Discovery Passage is a recognised cold-water dive site. Drysuits and a divemaster are available, and rates for diving and eco-tours are quoted on request rather than published.

That matters for the same reason the boat pricing does. A party that does not all want to fish is the normal case rather than the exception, and this is one of the few lodges on the coast set up to admit it.

Photograph: Kelp beds and rock shelves in clear water off Steep Island, the forested island rising behind

## Why the water here is worth the cold

Kelp and rock shelf on the island edge, and the reason the diving is worth the temperature. The same tide that makes the passage loud is the one that keeps the walls fed.

Off the southern headland the water is deep straight away. There is no shelving beach and no gradual anything; the island simply stops and the passage begins.

One caution, and it is on me rather than on them. The lodge does not publish its season dates anywhere. The May-to-September window on our listing is inferred from the Discovery Passage salmon season and is the one thing here I would confirm before booking flights.

You can [walk the island in the virtual tour](https://demo.360immersion.com/steepislandlodge/final/), which is where these photographs came from. The [Steep Island listing](https://wildernessledger.com/experience/steep-island-lodge) has the rate, what it covers, and a way to ask about dates.

## Questions

**How do you get to Steep Island Lodge?**

The lodge collects you from Campbell River Airport and runs you across by water taxi. Both legs are included in the nightly rate; there is nothing else to arrange.

**What does the rate include, and what does not?**

One all-inclusive nightly rate of $545 per person covers the airport shuttle, the crossing, an ocean-view cabin and every meal. Fishing is separate and priced by the boat rather than by the head; $190 an hour, and an eight-hour tide is the standard day, so $1,520 for the boat.

**Does everyone have to fish?**

No, and the boat-priced model makes that easy. The same boats run wildlife and shoreline tours, and Discovery Passage is a well-known cold-water dive site with drysuits and a divemaster available.

**How many guests are there?**

Up to twenty-two, in cabins spread through the trees rather than in one building.

## The experience in this story

- Steep Island Lodge: https://wildernessledger.com/experience/steep-island-lodge (plain text: https://wildernessledger.com/experience/steep-island-lodge.md)
  Steep Island Lodge: $545 CAD per person a night, single, double or triple, all inclusive, 2026 rates, before tax, bar and tips, with the airport shuttle and the 10-minute water taxi included and guided salmon fishing on top at $1,520 per boat for an 8-hour day. Read from Steep Island Lodge, Packages (2026 rates) on 14 September 2026.

Written by Ben Taft, Photographer and filmmaker, The Wilderness Ledger (https://wildernessledger.com/about). Ben Taft stayed at the place this story describes and wrote it afterwards. Every photograph and film is his. Publisher: The Wilderness Ledger. Corrections: hello@wildernessledger.com.