Canada’s most celebrated remote lodge, Clayoquot returns to British Columbia’s wild west coast with three new bespoke adventures — including a rare chance to paddle glowing waters after dark.
There are places that resist easy description, where the standard vocabulary of luxury travel — impeccable service, exceptional cuisine, stunning views — feels inadequate to the task. Clayoquot Wilderness Lodge, perched on the edge of Clayoquot Sound on Vancouver Island’s remote west coast, is one of them.
For 2026, the lodge has opened its season with three new bespoke experiences that push further into the wilderness that makes this stretch of British Columbia so remarkable.
Paddling Light
The headline addition is nighttime bioluminescence kayaking — a guided private experience timed for late July and early August, when the calm inlet waters around the lodge shimmer with blue-green light beneath each paddle stroke. The phenomenon, produced by microscopic marine organisms disturbed by movement, is one of the more quietly astonishing things nature offers, and one of the least reliably available.
Clayoquot is candid about this: the experience will be offered when weather and tidal conditions are favourable, and cannot be guaranteed. That honesty, rare in luxury travel, makes it all the more worth chasing.
A Sauna on the Water
The second new experience, created in partnership with Tofino Boating Company, takes guests by boat through the wilderness to Lemmens Inlet — a 45-minute scenic journey around Meares Island — for a private floating sauna session in a secluded cove.
The half-day immersion encompasses time in the sauna, contrast bathing, stand-up paddleboarding, swimming and open-ocean plunges, all from an outdoor deck beside a firepit with the old-growth forest rising behind it. It is the kind of wellness experience that feels earned rather than engineered, and is well-suited to couples or small groups on longer stays.
Walking Ahousaht Country
The third addition, Walk the Wild Side, is the most immersive of the trio. An open Zodiac drops guests at Cow Bay on Flores Island, where a guide leads an eight-kilometre journey through Gibson Marine Park and into Ahousaht First Nations territory — a landscape of red sea urchins, starfish-studded shoreline, and old-growth Sitka spruce and western red cedar approaching a thousand years in age.
Guides share the stories of the Ahousaht people throughout: the significance of the land as a former trade route, the legend of the Red Rocks, the distinctive Sitka Bridge. It is wilderness travel with cultural depth.
The Rest of the Season
These new experiences sit alongside Clayoquot’s established programme of heli-adventures, canyoning, horseback riding — with two new horses joining the lodge’s string of fifteen — wildlife encounters and wellness rituals at the Healing Grounds sanctuary. Black bears are regularly spotted foraging at low tide from the shoreline or a Zodiac; whales, seals, sea otters and bald eagles are consistent companions across the network of waterways.
Conservation runs through the 2026 season in practical ways. Guests can plant trees along the lower river trail as part of the lodge’s regenerative work on the Bedwell River, and at season’s end the lodge team will volunteer to plant willow stakes along riverbanks in support of the Tranquil River salmon habitat recovery project led by the Redd Fish Restoration Society.
In the kitchen, executive chef Ben Godin returns with a record number of local producers behind him — Yarrow Meadows Farm duck, Northern Divine Aquafarms white sturgeon, Peace Country lamb, Nanoose Bay albacore tuna — and a forager’s instinct for the hyper-local ingredients that give Vancouver Island cuisine its distinct character.
