Long Beach stretches along Wickaninnish Bay between Tofino to the northwest and Ucluelet to the southeast, its full length paralleled by Highway 4. The beach faces directly into the open Pacific, with no islands or headlands to break the force of incoming swells. This exposure is what makes it magnificent and what makes it treacherous. Rocky outcrops punctuate the mid-tidal zone, forming small islands accessible only at low tide. When the tide returns, these islands become surrounded by water and battered by surf, and dangerous rip currents develop around the larger formations. Even experienced swimmers treat the water with respect. Unsupervised swimming is considered extremely hazardous.

The same exposure that makes Long Beach dangerous made it a pioneer of Canadian surfing. The consistent swells rolling in from the Pacific established this beach as one of the earliest and most popular surfing locations in British Columbia. International surfing competitions were held here as early as 1966, drawing competitors to waves that break with a reliability rare on the Pacific Northwest coast. In summer, surfers gather along the beach and at nearby Florencia Bay and Wickaninnish Beach. In winter, the surfers give way to storm watchers, who come to witness Pacific weather systems hammer the shoreline with swells that can send spray far above the beach.

The driftwood that lines Long Beach is not decorative. These are full-sized logs, remnants of the old-growth forests that once blanketed Vancouver Island's coastline, washed downriver and deposited by the sea. During high tides and storms, incoming swells can shift these logs without warning, rolling them across the upper beach with lethal force. Several posted signs warn visitors about the danger, and the risk is not theoretical. Park visitors have been swept from shorebound rocks during storm season. Beach access is restricted during heavy storm weather for good reason. The logs also tell a quieter story: they are evidence of the immense forests that border the park, where western hemlock, Sitka spruce, and western red-cedar grow to enormous size in the wet, temperate climate.

Long Beach was the reason Pacific Rim National Park Reserve exists. As early as 1929, the Canadian National Parks Association proposed making it a park, recognizing the recreational potential of this vast, wild shoreline. When Highway 4 opened in 1959, connecting Tofino and Ucluelet to Port Alberni, thousands of visitors descended on the beach each summer, overwhelming the tiny communities at either end. The environmental damage that followed, from improvised camps and abandoned vehicles to plundered foreshores, made the case for federal protection impossible to ignore. Today the beach that nearly loved itself to death is the centerpiece of a 511 square kilometre park reserve, its campgrounds and picnic areas managed by Parks Canada, its surf still breaking with the same wild regularity that first drew visitors more than six decades ago.