According to the fabricated story, the K'omoks people sent their women and children to the plateau for safekeeping during raids by the Cowichan. When a warrior went looking for them, he found only red lichen covering the snow and rocks, which he took for blood. The plateau was declared taboo, haunted by spirits that had devoured the missing families. It is a compelling story -- which is precisely why it was invented. Comox Valley environmentalist Ruth Masters and Pat Trask, curator at the Courtenay Museum, have documented that the legend has no basis in K'omoks history. The K'omoks people have their own deep and genuine relationship with this land, but the "Forbidden" part of the name belongs to the tourism industry, not to their oral tradition.

Strip away the invented mythology and you find a landscape that needs no embellishment. The Forbidden Plateau is a gently rolling subalpine terrain in the eastern Vancouver Island Ranges, northwest of Comox Lake, between Mount Albert Edward to the southwest and Mount Washington to the northeast. Small, rugged hills break up the rolling landscape, and small lakes pit the surface like scattered mirrors. Much of the plateau lies within Strathcona Provincial Park, connected by a network of trails used for hiking in summer and cross-country skiing in winter. On Mount Becher, in the plateau's southwest corner, a subalpine meadow harbors the Olympic onion -- one of only a few locations in Canada where this delicate wildflower can be found.

On June 23, 1946, the Forbidden Plateau became the epicenter of the strongest earthquake ever recorded on land in Canada. The Vancouver Island earthquake registered 7.3 on the Richter scale, toppling chimneys in Courtenay and Cumberland, triggering landslides in the mountains, and sending a tsunami surging into Deep Bay. The quake was felt from Portland, Oregon to Prince Rupert, British Columbia. That this quiet subalpine plateau -- a place of gentle meadows and small lakes -- sits atop such seismic violence is one of the genuine mysteries of the landscape, far more interesting than any invented legend about vanishing spirits.

The plateau's skiing history stretches back to the 1920s, when the first adventurers began exploring its slopes on wooden skis. The terrain is ideally suited to cross-country skiing -- open meadows, moderate grades, and reliable snowfall at subalpine elevation. Today, the nearby Mount Washington Alpine Resort offers both downhill and cross-country skiing adjacent to the park, while backcountry routes across the plateau itself attract skiers and snowshoers seeking solitude. In summer, the trails serve as the primary approach to Mount Albert Edward, one of the highest peaks in the Vancouver Island Ranges. The plateau is an access point, a destination, and a transit zone all at once -- a high, open doorway into the wilder country beyond.