British Columbia Coast - Major Inlets

Major Inlets

The great fjords of the British Columbia Coast rival those of Norway in length and depth but have even higher mountain scenery with a more alpine flavour. Many of the mountains offshore are much larger than those along the Norwegian coast, many large enough to have major fjords of their own, as well as their own mountain ranges. This is also of course even more true of the very large islands farther offshore, Vancouver Island and Graham and Moresby Islands in Haida Gwaii, which together form the Insular Mountains, distinct from the Coast Mountains of the mainland.

Here are the most important fjords, inlets, straits and sounds, including those important for reasons other than their size, listed south to north:

The many fjord-like waterways between the coast and the islands, and within the archipelago, cannot be fully listed here, and there are many more others that are not so much fjord-like as flooded valleys between what had been mountain peaks many thousands of years ago, when the shoreline was lower.