The 2025 camping season has come to a close for Ferry Island Campground, wwhich shut its gates for the year on Sept. 28, nearly a month ago.
While the weather may have cooled off, campground caretaker Shanon Young stated it was still a great year for visitors, with roughly 6,000 campers staying at the site this season.
Young, who owns Rustic Ridge Contracting and manages the campground, said the overall turnout was close to last year’s numbers but that the composition of those visitors changed slightly.
She said it wasn’t necessarily bigger groups, it was just more campers overall in the summer.
“The numbers were relatively the same as last year,” she said. “However, the groups of numbers were smaller, so that means more campers came.”
Looking back at the season, Young said the busiest times were no shock. Long weekends and mid-summer once again brought a wave of visitors from all over.
“Long weekends are always the busiest during fishing season,” she added. “July and August are very busy with a lot of out-of-town tourists that come for fishing and also come for, they use Ferry Island as a hub because they go to Stewart to see the bears, and they go up to Highway 113 to see the Lava Beds and such.”
Young said the campground continues to attract a mix of new and returning guests from across Canada and abroad.
“They come from all over the world,” Young explained. “We have several returning tourists that come from Prince George, Alberta, the Kootenays, but we also have seen Japan, California, Washington, a lot of Swiss and German travelers.”
When the season finally came to a close, Young estimated that Ferry Island had hosted around 6,000 campers, marking another strong year for the community-owned campground.
“Until the last month, there were 4,736 people who stayed at Ferry Island,” she said. “I would say roughly 900 more in the last month, so roughly 6,000 people stayed at Ferry Island.”
However, while attendance was consistent, Young said local attendance was only slightly lower than in previous years, and she attributes this to the early and late weather of the season.
“It was a good camping season,” she said. “I don’t think that we’ve seen as many locals as we normally do, just because that’s weather dependent.”
Although the middle of summer was sunny, the season began and ended with rain and cooler temperatures, which made it harder to draw weekend campers from around Terrace.
“We had a beautiful summer, but we had a really crappy beginning of the season and a really crappy end of the season weather-wise,” she said. “And that doesn’t draw the locals to stay at Ferry Island.”
When the rain let up, Young said the campground would again fill within no time as locals took advantage of dry spells to squeeze in one last visit to the campground.
“If there was a weekend in there or even a Thursday-Friday in there where we didn’t get a lot of rain, then we were busy again with local campers,”
With the 2025 season now in the books, Young said she’s pleased with how it went and grateful for all those who passed through, whether they were local or from around the world.
