Between 40 and 90 million
years ago, drifting land masses adhered to the
western edge of Vancouver Island creating a
landscape characterized by unique rock formations,
seismic activity and subsequent faulting. Along
the West Coast Trail, now managed as a wilderness
area, fossils of shells and crabs of the Tertiary
age have been exposed as erosion has carved
out sea caves, surge channels, sea stacks, tide
pools and coastal waterfalls. Glaciation, which
reached its maximum 20 000 years ago, deposited
silt, sand, clay and gravel throughout the park
area. As the ice melted, the Long Beach area
was submerged until rebounding and uplifting
claimed the land, forming the marine terraces,
wave-cut cliffs, and glorious strand of wild
wind-blown beaches backed by lush rainforest.
Wind and water continue to sculpt land surfaces,
the crashing Pacific breakers assaulting beaches
and headlands of the outer coast, most noticeably
on the wild and beautiful islands in the Broken
Island group. The park’s intertidal zone
is divided into the splash zone, the upper beach
zone of gravel bars and drift logs, which is
submerged by tides 10% of the time, the middle
zone covered in water for 50% of the tide cycle,
and the low intertidal zone, underwater 90%
of the time.
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