Life in British Columbia

My life in Vancouver since moving to BC in 2014

8 Great Spring Hikes in the Lower Mainland

/ Maria / Leave a comment

Growing up in Newfoundland, I never really liked Spring because it’s barely a season there (pretty sure we just get a second winter). But Spring in the Lower Mainland is fantastic! It actually warms up when it’s supposed to and pretty much the entire city has been in bloom this April. But as much as I love it, it also kills me a little bit because even though it warms up so much in the city, it still takes a long time for all the snow in the mountains to melt. Proper hiking season doesn’t really start until late June, early July, but there are lots of lower elevation hikes that you can do in the Spring that are located right in our backyard! Here’s a few of my favourite Spring hikes to tide you over to those warmer summer days:

Baden Powell Trail

The Baden Powell Trail is a whopping 42km long trail that runs all the way from Deep Cove to Horseshoe Bay. But don’t be intimidated by the length, the entire trail can be done in a series of day hikes, they’re just best done with two cars (one at the start and one at the end) so that you don’t have to backtrack. The four main trail sections include Deep Cove to Lynn Canyon, Lynn Canyon to Grouse Mountain base or Cleveland Dam, Cleveland Dam to Cypress parking lot, and Cypress to Horseshoe Bay. I’ll admit that I’ve only actually done the Deep Cove to Lynn Canyon section, but I’m hoping to hike a few more sections! I believe the more popular sections are between Deep Cove and Grouse, because there is significant elevation gain between the Cypress Mountain sections. Either way, there’s a lot to explore on this forested trail! Fun fact, the trail is named after Lord and Lady Baden-Powell, the founders of Girl Guides and Boy Scouts!

Big Cedar and Kennedy Falls Trail

This is a great trail located in North Vancouver that hikes through the forest to 2 main attractions, a really big cedar tree and Kennedy Falls. The hike is 10km long, with approximately 150 metres in elevation gain. We thought it would be a pretty quick hike with such limited elevation gain, but there is a lot of up and down through the woods, so the cumulative elevation gain is greater. It’s also a more technical trail than I was expecting, so if you’re looking for an easy walk in the woods, this isn’t the one for you. However, if you’re looking to warm up those legs in preparation for the summer hiking season, this is the perfect hike! There is a lot of spray coming off Kennedy Falls with the Spring run-off, so bring a rain jacket if you want to get close for photos. The trail is dog friendly, but small dogs might struggle with all the trees and roots across the trail.

Jug Island Trail

If you don’t want to travel to the North Shore, there’s some great hikes available in Belcarra Regional Park, located just past Anmore. Jug Island Trail is one of my personal favourites because it’s a short hike, but a good warm up. It’s only 5.5km long and has about 100 metres in elevation gain (it’s listed as having none, but that’s because it starts and ends at sea level). It’s a mostly forested hike, but there is a nice view about midway through the trail looking down at the backside of the peninsula, as well as a beautiful view of Jug Island and Indian Arm at the end of the trail. The beach at the end of the trail is also accessible by kayak from Deep Cove or Cates Park if you’re up for a boating adventure! This is the only trail I’ve done, but there are other short trails in the area such as Admiralty Point and Sasamat Lake.

Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve

The Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve is located between Grouse and Seymour and protects the ecosystem running up towards Seymour Lake, one of Metro Vancouver’s 3 water supply lakes. I worked in this area for about 8 months, so I had lots of time to explore some of the trails and there’s a ton of options to choose from! They’re all pretty similar in that they’re mostly forested trails (common theme for Spring hikes as it’s too early to get up in the mountains). Parking is available just off the end of Lillooet Road at the Rice Lake Gate, at the Lynn Canyon Ecology Centre, or off of Rice Lake Road at the entrance to Lynn Headwaters Regional Park. I’d personally recommend avoiding the Ecology Centre as it draws a lot of tourists for the suspension bridge, it’s only about 1km hike to the bridge from the other entrances if you still want to visit. Some of my preferred trails include Fisherman’s Trail (13km), which hikes up to a viewpoint overlooking the River, and Rice Lake (3km), which is great for fishing (if you’re into that). I also like the Lynn Headwaters Trail (6km), which follows Lynn Creek and can be extended to hike to Norvan Falls (14km). The falls are definitely best explored in the Spring when run-off is high, by Fall, the falls are just a trickle!

Lighthouse Park

I know, I know, all the locals are already super familiar with Lighthouse Park, but as an East Coaster I only visited the park for the first time last year! This is the place to go if you’re after ocean views! There’s still a ton of forested trails here, but they pop in and out of the woods along the coastline. I think of Lighthouse Park as a bit of a build-your-own-adventure trail because there’s tons of trails running through the park and you can pick which circuit you want to do. When I visited, we mostly followed the coastline, making a bit of a loop from the parking lot. There’s limited elevation gain in this park, but lots of great views!

Golden Ears Park

I’m a huge fan of Golden Ears Park. It gets crazy busy in the summer though, which is why Spring is great time to visit! Don’t even think about doing Golden Ears Peak, it’s way too early for that, but there are some nice trails located at the back of the park. Drive to the far end of Alouette Lake and park in the North Beach Campground lot (do not actually go into the campground, parking is not permitted there). There’s two trails, the Lower Falls Trail and the East Canyon Trail to Viewpoint Beach. At 5.5km, the Falls Trails is really more of a walk, but affords some nice views of the mountains from the river and a nice waterfall at the end of the trail. The trail to Viewpoint Beach is a little longer at 8km, and has a great view looking up at the mountains from the beach at the end. There’s about 200m elevation gain on the viewpoint beach trail and none on the falls trail. On maps, it looks like you can connect between these two trails, but I’ve done these hikes several times and I’ve never been able to find where the two connect.

Capilano Regional Park

This is another park I’ve explored as part of my work and it is a great urban trail in North Vancouver. If you’re feeling ambitious, you can hike all the way from Ambleside Park up to Cleveland Dam (~14km), but you can also access the trail from Cleveland Dam or from some of the local roads on the West side of the Park. The engineer in me loves Cleveland Dam and there’s a great view of the Lions looking out over Capilano Lake (another one of Metro Vancouver’s drinking water supply lakes). You can drive right up to the lake, but I’d recommend starting somewhere lower on the trail and making the dam and lake your lunch break in the middle of the hike. I like this trail because there’s tons of neat bridges to cross over with great views of the Capilano River and canyon. You can also stop in and visit the fish hatchery along the way!

Burnaby Mountain and Barnett Trail

There’s tons of great Spring trails located around Burnaby Mountain and it’s easy to take transit to them! I’ve personally done the Burnaby Mountain Summit Trail, which loops around the top of the mountain, and the Barnett Trail, which loops around the back of the mountain. The best views are probably from Burnaby Mountain Park. Both of the trails overlap each other and I would definitely consider them urban trails as they loop in around the SFU campus and the bike park, but there are a few views looking down over Indian Arm and you do get a nice workout climbing back up the mountain. Both hikes are under 10km.

Ski Resort Series: Apex

/ Maria / 3 Comments

I’m finally up to date on my ski series and I can write about my latest trip, which I went on in late February, to Apex Mountain resort. I’m super excited to write about this one because it ended up being one of my favourite ski trips! Originally we had planned to visit Revelstoke this year, but there are limited group reservations available on the mountain and we couldn’t find anything big enough for our growing group, so we ended up renting a chalet at Apex instead.

I’ll admit, I’d never heard of Apex and I wasn’t really sure what to expect, but we ended up getting some fantastic conditions along with an amazing condo, making for one of the best trips. I’ve heard Apex called one of BC’s hidden gems of a ski resort because it is one of the lesser known resorts and therefore sees fewer visitors than some of the other resorts. We got really lucky this year though because it snowed all over the province for pretty much 2 weeks before our trip, including the day we drove out there, so we had unbelievable conditions on the mountain! Our first runs on Saturday were some of the best skiing I’ve had in a long time because there was about a foot of undisturbed powder on every run.

For those unfamiliar with the resort, Apex is located about 4.5 hours out of Vancouver in the southern part of BC. We drove through Manning Park and Princeton to get to the mountain and it’s about 30 minutes south of Penticton. Last year we visited Silver Star on the Family Day weekend, and while it was great to make use of the holiday, it was really crowded! So this year we went the weekend after Family Day, so there were barely any crowds on the mountain. I don’t think I ever waited longer than 5-10 minutes to get on a lift and most times there was no wait at all.

Apex is definitely smaller than some of the other mountains we’ve visited, but it had a really nice variety of runs. It only has 2 lifts, but like I said, it never felt crowded. We started our day on the far side of the mountain on Stocks Chair, which is a 3-person lift. It’s not a very fast lift, but we spent most of our first morning there because it has a lot of really nice blue runs, great for getting warmed up. Then in the afternoon we switched over to the main chair, which is a high speed quad chair. Many of the runs on the main lift are blacks, so we mostly stuck to the blue runs on the first day.

On the second day I got a little more adventurous and spent the whole day with my sister, Emily, who just recently moved to BC. We slowly worked our way through a good portion of the blacks. I find the black diamond runs at Whistler to be pretty intimidating, but I like trying out the black runs at smaller mountains and working on improving my skills. We started with some of the shorter black runs and slowly worked our way up. Plus, it was a great time to try some tougher runs since the snow conditions were so good! Some of the runs got a bit chewed up over two days, but it was surprising how many still had some really nice powder on them! My only complaint about the mountain would be that they need to update their map because there are a lot of runs on the mountain that aren’t actually showing on the map right now and it made it a bit confusing trying to figure out where you are.

As usual, we ate all our meals in our condo. This was our 4th trip and 3 out of 4 of the trips we’ve had ski-out access. We had ski-out access at this place too, which makes for a really nice experience when you can come back to the warm condo at lunch to eat and have a beer. As usual, I cooked traditional Newfoundland Jiggs Dinner on the first evening and Brandon cooked hotpot on our second evening. Carolyn and Seth made some lasagnas and chili for lunches, which we paired with leftover turkey sandwiches. Finally, Karen cooked us the most wonderful hot breakfast every morning!

We found our condo on Airbnb and we definitely paid a pretty penny for it, but it was one of my favourite places we’ve stayed. There were 15 of us staying there in total and we had a great view of the hill and a nice balcony with a hot tub.

While we didn’t spend much time in Apex Village, we did discover the most precious gem hidden in the trees! Apex has an adventure skating loop that runs through the woods for ~1km. I’m so pleased that we actually did it – I saw it on a facebook post a few months ago and tagged everyone in it because it looked so quaint. You always see those kinds of cool things on social media, but you almost never go, so I was thrilled that we actually got the chance to go to this one. A few of us brought skates with us and everyone else was able to rent them in the village. The loop is really nicely done and only costs $4, although it happened to be free on the day we visited! Speaking of costs, the lift pass at Apex is also incredibly reasonably priced. I believe it’s about $85 a day, but you can buy passes in advance at Costco for just $65!

The amazing ski conditions, small crowds, and awesome accommodations all combined to make this one of my favourite ski trips.

apex map

Keyhole Hot Springs Snow Camping Trip

/ Maria / Leave a comment

I went on two snow camping trips this year. My first trip was to Elfin Lakes in February in temperatures of -20 below, the second trip was to Keyhole hot springs, in much more manageable temperatures! I’ve been trying to visit Keyhole hot springs since 2016 and had two failed trips before finally making it there this year. In summer 2016, me, Brandon, and Carolyn planned to visit over the Canada Day long weekend, but were dismayed to hear that the trail was being closed due to an aggressive grizzly bear (more on this later). Then me and Brandon tried to visit again in winter of 2017, but only made it halfway there because a semi-truck had jack-knifed across the forestry road and was blocking traffic in both directions.

So this was our third attempt, and I’m pleased to say we were finally successful! We wanted to go on a second snow camping trip before the end of the season and Carolyn’s been working on visiting all the hot springs in the area, so we decided to visit and stay overnight to try and avoid some of the crowds. Like I said, our first trip was to Elfin Lakes and the temperature dropped to -20 degrees celsius overnight, so we were thrilled to see that the forecast for Keyhole was calling for 7 degrees during the day and -6 degrees overnight. I ditched my double sleeping bag system for this trip and packed in my bag liner and new backcountry blanket instead.

Keyhole hot springs has become insanely popular in the last ~5 years. It used to only be accessible with 4WD, but the road was upgraded in 2014 because of a new hydro construction project in the area and the hot spring blew up on social media, making it a really popular destination for backcountry lovers and drunk partiers alike. I have really mixed feelings about the hot spring because I do believe everyone should have the right to appreciate natural wonders like this, but it’s also been severely disrespected by some of its visitors and it’s very upsetting to many of the locals.

It’s only a 2km hike to the hot spring and due to the excessive number of visitors, and the fact that it’s not a park (so it’s not managed by any rangers), a lot of garbage started collecting around the area, which of course, started attracting bears to the area. Keyhole is located on a forestry road out past Pemberton, so there are grizzly bears in the area and they started becoming aggressive towards visitors, so the province closed the trail in 2016 between April and November to stop the bears from becoming habituated to food and people. Since then, the trail is only open in the winter, hence why we decided to visit in March.

We drove out on Saturday morning, with the intention of staying for one night. We knew it would be really busy on a Saturday, so we were happy to stay overnight in hopes of avoiding some of the crowds later in the evening. We were right about how busy it would be during the day, but we wrongly assumed we’d be the only one’s camping. Since the road has been upgraded and is kept plowed for the construction project, 4WD is no longer required to get to the trailhead, although winter tires are definitely a must. We arrived around 1pm and I counted over 20 vehicles in the parking lot at that time.

We chatted with some of the day hikers on their way out and a lot of them expressed an admiration for the beauty of the trail, but told us they didn’t end up going in the hot spring at all because there were just too many people around. I would echo the sentiment about the trail. Granted, we had gorgeous blue sky and sunny weather when we visited, but the trail itself is worth visiting and ended up being the highlight of the trip for me. In winter, the trail ends up being about 3km because you can’t make it all the way to the trailhead and you do have to walk an extra km along the road, but the rest of the trail follows the river, which looks gorgeous in the winter with huge pillows of snow on every rock.

It’s easy to find the parking lot, you just follow the Lillooet Forest Service Road for about 40km until you reach a parking lot. The road becomes a “private road” at the end of the parking lot, so you’ll know you’ve found the right place. There is a branch in the road at the parking lot and a separate road continues up the hill. The road is plowed, so it’s possible you could drive up it, but the snow was very soft by this time of year, so everyone was parking at the bottom and walking up the road. The only tricky part is it’s not clear when you have to exit the road into the woods. You walk for a couple hundred metres and you’ll eventually see another side road, if you follow it into the trees, you’ll find the path heading directly down to the river.

The trail was easy to follow when we visited because there were so many people ahead of us and it hadn’t snowed in a while. But if you were the first one to visit after a fresh snowfall, it might be a challenge because the trail is not marked. Be careful visiting in March because the sun was softening up the snow and it would be easy to punch through the trail in some locations. Given the hot weather we’re getting this week, the trail will start deteriorating pretty fast as the snow melts, and remember, it closes for the season on April 1. But we really enjoyed the hike along the river and there were some really gorgeous views of the surrounding mountains.

We were wrong about being the only snow campers. There were at least 4 other groups camping that we saw and I think another large group arrived after us. I’m not sure if they were really prepared for the sub-zero temperatures though because they were all packed up and gone by the time we finally crawled out of our tent in the morning. We found a nice little private place to camp and it didn’t feel that crowded at the campsite. Overall though, the hot spring was a bit of a letdown for us. I think it would be a lot nicer on a weekday with smaller crowds and I personally wouldn’t return on a weekend again. There were just too many people and there was one group that hogged the pools for at least 3 hours and were still there after we’d come and gone.

The set-up of the pools is really something. The hot water flows down from a stream above the Lillooet River and trickles into a man made, but natural-looking rock pool. From there the water cascades into two other pools. Unfortunately the first pool is too hot to get in and the second pool is bearable, but still quite hot. The third pool is a perfect temperature and as such, the most popular of the 3. This is where the one group were hanging out. We went down to the pools around 4pm, but it was still busy, so we came back again a little later. We were able to get into the second pool and hung out in there for a little while as the sun set. But the one group insisted on blocking up the bottom pool and stayed into the night drinking, so we did get to visit, but overall it was a little frustrating. We debated getting up early to visit again, but decided to let it be in favour of a lie in, which I definitely don’t regret!

So overall, it was nice, but I would personally recommend going on a weekday if at all possible. Also, don’t be the group that gets drunk in the bottom pool all night. I was impressed that I actually didn’t see any garbage around the hot springs, so hopefully people are learning. But if you decide to visit Keyhole, as either a day hiker or an overnighter, make sure you practice leave no trace camping! Don’t leave anything behind – take everything out with you, including your toilet paper! There’s no facilities at all, so make sure you dig a hole if you’re going #2. The hot springs really are a natural wonder and they are beautiful, so lets do our best to take care of them!

So that’s my rant on the hot springs. I didn’t want to glamourize it because social media does enough of that already. I do think everyone has a right to the hot springs, we just need to protect them. I know keyhole isn’t the only place suffering from overuse, Garibaldi Lake, Joffre Lakes, and other popular destinations also suffer from a huge amount of overuse, with people leaving a ton of garbage behind and destroying the natural landscape in search of firewood. The overuse just seems a little more pronounced at Keyhole because of its small size.

But we still had a great time camping! It was crazy warm during the day when we were hiking in because the sun was shining on us the whole time, but it still got quite cold overnight. On a warmer day, like the day we visited, I think it would be easy to underestimate how cold it can get overnight. I debated how much gear I should actually bring. In addition to my winter jacket and snow pants, I brought my -15 sleeping bag, my sleeping bag liner, a camp blanket, a winter pad, and a lightweight down jacket to sleep in. I thought the blanket and extra jacket might be overkill, but I ended up using both, so I don’t regret it. I probably would have been fine with less gear, but I was so cozy overnight, it was worth it!

We had some more lessons learned when it comes to water though. The last two places we’ve stayed have both had pretty clean snow to melt for water, but because it was later in the season, there wasn’t as much fresh snow and most of it had pine needles in it because the campsite was located in the woods and the needles fall from the canopy. I had to walk a distance to find good snow to melt for water and even then, it still had some dirt in it. We’ve discovered that melted snow tastes extremely gross, so if you’re only going for one night, it might be worth taking a bit of extra water with you for drinking to see you through the trip. But if that’s not possible, which often its not because you don’t want to carry the extra weight and even if you did, the water could easily freeze overnight anyways, so we decided next time we will probably take Brandon’s gravity filter with us. That way we can melt the snow and then put it through the filter to remove any dirt and hopefully improve the taste a little.

Overall, it was still a fun trip, but it is a long drive (~4 hours) and because of the crowds it doesn’t stick out in my mind as much as the other snow camping trips we’ve done. But we tried something new and now we can finally cross it off the bucket list after all our other failed attempts!