At Tahsis we're lucky to have a relatively large pristine watershed right in our backyard. McKelvie Creek flows in a low-elevation flat valley bottom that has never been logged. Until very recently it was the water supply for the village. Unfortunately, WFP has indicated they intend to start logging the valley very soon.
Mount McKelvie sits at the headwaters, and it is the most prominent mountain visible from my office window. Over the (extended) labour day weekend I climbed the mountain, and explored the valley.
Besides some new flagging in the lower valley, and a few bits of old flagging further up, I found no evidence of human activity except in the alpine (where there is wreckage from some repeater station, probably similar to the one on Mt. Tahsis, and other debris). I came across large trees fairly often, but none that were particularly remarkable (an exception being a cedar log lying on the ground whose diameter seemed at least twice my height); large trees don't characterize this forest.
One interesting thing is that McKelvie Creek emerges from under a dry creekbed a few kilometres in. The creekbed was dry for the entire three or four kilometres of it that I explored beyond that point. Any tributary that made it to the creekbed would vanish within three or four metres. There is a lot of limestone around Tahsis, so we get karst and underground creeks (e.g., Ubedam and Upana), but I didn't notice any limestone in the McKelvie Valley. Mostly basalt I think. I know the Tahsis River is also dry upstream at this time of year, and I'd heard that this happened only after they logged it out in the early 20th century. Obviously, logging can't be blamed for the dry McKelvie creekbed.
There was lots of evidence of elk in the valley, but I didn't see any large wildlife.
I put captions in the photos where appropriate.
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