Artlish River Cave

Horne Lake Caves

Useful Information

Location:	North of Zeballos, Vancouver Island. From Nanaimo, head north on the Inland Island Highway to where it connects with Island Highway at Mud Bay. Continue through Campbell River to Sayward to the gravel road turn-off for Zeballos which is about 50 km away. The round trip of 350 km takes seven to eight hours. (50.1425638, -126.9110708)
Open:	no restrictions. [2025]
Fee:	free. [2025]
Classification:	Karst Cave Ponor River Cave
Light:	none, bring complete caving gear.
Dimension:	Artlish River Cave: L=396 m. The Black Hole: L=740 m.
Guided tours:	self guided
Photography:	allowed
Accessibility:	no
Bibliography:	Anon (2003): MANAGEMENT DIRECTION STATEMENT September 2003 for Artlish Caves Provincial Park Ministry of Water, Land and Air Protection pdf Tamas Virag (2006): spelunking for medical miracles, insidetru, Thompson Rivers University’s Comprehensive News Magazine, volume 5, issue 2, spring 2006, p 8. pdf
Address:	Vancouver Island Nature Exploration, 140A Harbour Road, Coal Harbour, BC, V0N 1K0, Tel: +1-250-902-2662. E-mail:
As far as we know this information was accurate when it was published (see years in brackets), but may have changed since then. Please check rates and details directly with the companies in question if you need more recent info.

History

1932	first written mention in a report to the Canadian Geological Survey.
1974-1978	speleological exploration and survey of the Artlish River Cave and The Black Hole.
~1976	start of commercial tours.
1977	reserve around the two caves conferred by the BC Forest Service to protect the caves.
30-APR-1996	designated as a provincial park.
1997	park boundaries legislated by their inclusion in a schedule to the Park Act.
2000	Monitoring revealed problems associated with visitor use.

Description

Artlish River Cave is one of the largest caves on Vancouver Island, and in terms of flow volume and passage dimensions, it is the largest active river cave system in Canada. The Artlish River flows completely within the cave for about 350 m, leaving no flow at the surface. This hydrological system consists of several different caves, and includes also Black Hole Cave, which is an older and higher - now dry - level of the cave. The valley has about 20 known caves. The cave was named after the river, which was named after the A'licath or Artlish people which once livend in this area.

For several decades the caves could be visited through guided tours, four cave trekking operators used the park since 1976. The Artlish Caves Provincial Park was established in 1996 with the mayor goal to protect the South Fork of the Upper Artlish River with its spectacular and unique karst features. It seems the cave trekking operators stopped the tours and waited until the Park Service has decided how to develop the park. In the beginning they had the goal to present the park to the public, but without causing damage to the caves. As a result two caves were identified for careful management, the Artlish River Cave and the lower section of Black Hole Cave. There were plans to equip both caves with a sort of trails, markings which would guide cavers and thus spare the fragile areas of the cave. This is a procedure which has become established among speleologists worldwide. The number of visitors which was considered acceptable was set to 500 per year and a maximum of 20 per day.

The road to the park is a very bad single lane road built for logging, the hike from the end of the road to the cave is 25 minutes. But the park has no marked hiking trails and the original trails to the cave entrances are not marked or maintained. In March 2003 the owner of the road, the Canadian wood company Canadian Forest Products (CanFor), removed a bridge over the North Fork of the Artlish River, which makes it necessary to walk now 45 minutes to the cave. This caused a mayor drop in visitor numbers. Around 2005 Nimmo Bay Resort had an exclusive permit for cave guiding in the park. The guiding was done by Rob Countess from Vancouver Island Nature Exploration. But it seems this ended after some time, probably in 2009 when the logging road which leads to the park was officially closed. Twenty years later all those tours are abolished, Vancouver Island Nature Exploration does not exist any more and Nimmo Bay Resort does not even mention caves on their website. There is no cave trekking operator who offers tours any more.

The park as well as the caves are actually not closed or gated. Road access is pretty bad but not forbidden, they just warn that the roads are not maintained any more. Depending on the actual situation and your car, worst case might be a 4 km hike to reach the caves. All in all, if you like a hike, we can recommend to visit the park, the entrances of the through cave are rather large, and so this river sink is quite spectacular. On the other hand we would advise against visiting the caves themselves, they are not easy, require climbing and the right equipment. River caves are quite dangerous and prone to flooding.